What bothers me when tithing is taught as a New Covenant necessity is that it puts people in the deceived position of believing they control their own blessing. This, and other teaching that tells the sons of God that if they don’t do the right thing, God won’t either, makes the complete sufficiency of Christ’s death and resurrection of little benefit (“in vain”; 2 Cor 6:1), other than a one-day home going to heaven.
The gospel loses its majesty, and the sons and daughters of God become like elder brothers of the prodigal, working in the fields to earn what they have already been given.
Jesus earned entirely everything for us for entirely nothing from us. In Him we have been given every blessing already. Believing that fact is the challenge; earning it is not.
Anything that teaches less than that makes us crazy.
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It's nice to know that there are some pastors who know and teach the truth.
ReplyDeleteI've known way too many Christians who believed they were robbing God if they didn't tithe.
Being led by the Spirit, I find myself giving far more than a mere tenth of my income. But for many, $1 might be a sacrifice. No one should be told how much they should give.
Thank you Ralph, this is so good! One of the things that ripped my marrage apart was this. We did not agree with the tithing messages we were getting, my thoughts were more in line with yours and he was stuck in giving for God's aproval; kinda more old test.views. When he said we must keep moving our giving got to almost 50%, I was not in agreement. We had hardly anthing to eat, borrowed $ to pay bills and rent. I tried to explain what you just did, but he was under a wrong sprit of giving in my opinion, and we clashed on this matter. And not to say I did not have the sprit in me to give, it was just in me by the Lord's love and grace in me, and not motivated in any other way, and so it still is today! So thank you for making this matter more clear! THANKS REALLY GREAT RALPH!
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