The Tithe Is Not a Law

"I know I should be giving more. But technically, tithing is an Old Testament thing, right? The New Testament doesn't actually command a tithe."

I've heard some version of that from more men than I can count. It comes out quickly, almost pre-loaded, as if the man has been waiting for someone to either confirm it or challenge it.

Sometimes it's honest confusion. A man who grew up outside the church, came to faith as an adult, and is genuinely trying to understand what God asks of him with his money. He heard 10% from somewhere. He also heard that Christians aren't under the law. He isn't sure which principle wins.

Sometimes it's something else. A man who has found a theological edge to stand on that keeps him from having to look too closely at what he's actually doing with his income.

Both men deserve a straight answer. So here it is: the tithe is not a New Testament law. That part is correct. What the New Testament asks of givers is harder than a percentage, and it is freer than a rule.

That's what this article is about.

The Rule You Have Been Given, and What It Was Actually For

Most Canadian Christians, whether they grew up in the church or not, have encountered the same basic teaching: give 10% of your income. Tithe means tenth. God commands it. Malachi 3:10 gets cited: "Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you."

That passage gets preached often. The message is: give 10%, and God will bless you. Withhold it, and you're robbing God.

There are a few problems with that reading.

The first is context. Malachi was written to the Israelite community returning from Babylonian exile. They had rebuilt the temple and restarted the sacrificial system. But the priests and Levites were not being supported, because the people were not bringing their tithes. The prophet is calling a specific people, in a specific covenant relationship, to fulfil a specific obligation that belonged to the theocratic economy of ancient Israel.

The second is the nature of the tithe itself.

The tithe was a tax.

What the Old Testament Tithe Actually Was

Leviticus 27:30 establishes that a tenth of the land's produce belongs to the Lord. Numbers 18:21 is more specific: "To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service that they do, their service in the tent of meeting." The tithe funded the tribe of Levi, the priestly class who had no land allotment in Israel and were set apart entirely for the work of the tabernacle and temple. The tithe was how they were paid. It came out whether anyone felt particularly generous that season or not.

And there was more than one tithe.

Deuteronomy 14:22-27 describes a second tithe: produce set aside annually for festival celebrations in Jerusalem, so the whole community could eat and worship together. Deuteronomy 14:28-29 adds a third, collected every three years for the poor, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow. Scholars debate the exact calculation, but the total obligatory tithe burden for an Israelite farmer was closer to 23-25% of agricultural produce. The flat 10% most of us picture is a later simplification.

When people invoke "the tithe," they are usually invoking one tier of a multi-layered tax system designed to fund the priesthood, national worship, and care for the poor in a theocratic nation-state. This was an obligation woven into Israel's civic and religious economy at the same time. It was as much a government obligation as a spiritual one.

When the New Covenant arrived in Christ, the Levitical priesthood ended. Hebrews 7-8 makes this explicit: the old priestly order, with all its requirements, "has been set aside because it was weak and useless" (Hebrews 7:18). Galatians 3:24-25 adds the broader picture: the law was a guardian until Christ came. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. The machinery the tithe was built to fund no longer exists, and the law that required it functioned as part of a covenant that the cross has fulfilled and surpassed.

The tithe was a tax for the Levites. Leviticus says so plainly. That economy is gone.

What the New Testament Actually Says Instead

Jesus mentions tithing exactly once in a way that looks like an endorsement. In Matthew 23:23, he rebukes the Pharisees: "You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."

He is speaking to Jews under the Mosaic law, condemning religious performance that counts herbs while ignoring human beings. His words address people who were already legally obligated to tithe. Matthew 23 is a rebuke to legal Israel, addressed to men who had been tithing since birth. It was never meant to reach across the centuries and land as a command for Gentile believers.

The New Testament's actual giving theology is found primarily in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, where Paul is taking up a collection for the suffering church in Jerusalem. He does not say: give 10%. He says something more demanding and more beautiful.

"Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." (2 Corinthians 9:7)

"For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have." (2 Corinthians 8:12)

"Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously." (2 Corinthians 9:6)

There is a heart posture here instead of a percentage: cheerful, proportionate, freely chosen, not compelled. And the standard Paul holds up is the example of the Macedonian churches, who "gave according to their means, and beyond their means, of their own accord." Beyond their means. Voluntarily.

The widow in Luke 21 is the most striking example of all. Jesus watches rich people drop large gifts into the temple treasury. Then a poor widow drops in two small copper coins. "Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

All she had.

She gave 100%. And Jesus held her up as the model of faithful giving.

The New Testament moves the question somewhere more interesting than a higher percentage. Away from percentage and toward posture. What are you holding back? What are you holding loosely? What does your giving say about where your trust actually lives?

Both Men in the Room Are Missing the Same Thing

I said at the start that two men need this piece. Let me be more specific.

The first man has been faithfully calculating 10% of his net income every month and giving it to his church. He has the habit, and the habit is good. But somewhere along the way, the 10% became a ceiling. He hit the number, checked the box, and his giving became a line item he pays like a bill. No joy in it. No growth.

What this piece offers him is a question rather than a permission slip to stop: what is on the other side of the line he has drawn? Paul says God loves a cheerful giver. Is the man checking the box cheerful?

The second man is the one using theology as cover. He has read, or been told, that the tithe is an Old Testament law. And he has used that information to give very little, or nothing. He tells himself he gives spontaneously, or that he is still figuring out his relationship with giving. But the truth is that the absence of a legal requirement became the permission he needed to stop.

Are you trying to reason your way out of giving to God? What's the worst that could happen?

That is not a rhetorical question. I mean it as a genuine challenge. If the reason you are not giving is a theological argument about the tithe's Old Testament origins, I would gently push back: that argument does not touch 2 Corinthians 9. It does not address the widow. It does not explain why you are not giving "cheerfully and generously" according to your means. The absence of a law does not answer those questions.

Debt is a different reason, and a more honest one. Whether to keep tithing while you pay off debt is a real question with a real answer. It is just not this one.

Both men are using the 10% number as a substitute for the harder question: what does my giving say about what I actually trust?

What Giving Looks Like When the Law Falls Away

Here is where I want to be honest about what the New Testament is actually asking.

If you were hoping that "tithing is not a law" meant you were off the hook, I have some news. The New Testament giving standard is harder than a percentage, because it is about your heart.

The Macedonian churches gave "beyond their means." The widow gave everything she had. Paul says the generous man has "scattered abroad; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever" (2 Corinthians 9:9, quoting Psalm 112). The early church in Acts 2 held things in common so that no one among them was in need. Read all of that as a picture of what happens when people understand, deeply, that they are stewards and not owners.

The tithe was a recognition that a tenth of what God gave you belonged back to him. The New Covenant goes further.

All of it came from him. All of it is his.

Whether you are holding the remaining 90% with open hands matters far more than whether you have returned your 10%.

This does not mean you should sell your house and give everything to your church this week. It means you should hold your finances with open hands, give deliberately and cheerfully, let your generosity stretch you, and keep asking whether you are growing toward more open-handedness or more tightness.

If 10% is where you start, good. It is a wise starting point for most households, and if you want help landing on your own number, I have written out how much Christians should actually give. In Canada, the charitable donation tax credit means that giving from gross income actually costs less than the gross number suggests. A $5,000 annual donation at the federal level earns a 15% credit on the first $200 and a 29% credit on the rest, reducing the real cost to your household to closer to $3,600 before provincial credits. The government, in effect, participates in your generosity. But do not stop at 10% and call it finished.

Generosity is not a destination you reach at a percentage.

For more on what giving looks like when the tithe becomes a floor instead of a ceiling, generosity beyond the tithe picks up exactly here.

Three Questions Worth Sitting With This Week

Sit down this week and look at what you are currently giving. Open your bank statement. Find the actual number. Be honest about it. The goal is to know what you are actually giving, with no adjustments or rounding for what you intended to give or meant to give. Just the number.

Most men I know who are not giving deliberately have not looked at the number recently. The avoidance is its own answer. The man who checks his investment account weekly and cannot tell you his annual giving total has revealed something about where his attention actually lives.

Then ask three questions.

Is it cheerful? Do you give freely, or is there a grudgingness in it? Paul says God loves a cheerful giver. Cheerfulness in giving is something that grows with practice. The first year of intentional giving is often mechanical. The third year starts to feel like something you want to do. If you have never given consistently, 5% is a better starting point than 0%. Start somewhere, and let the habit form you.

Is it proportionate? Second Corinthians 8-9 establishes clearly: more is more. "Whoever sows generously will also reap generously." If your income has grown significantly but your giving has stayed flat, your generosity has not grown with you. A man earning $120,000 who gives the same dollar amount as when he earned $60,000 is giving half of what he used to in any meaningful sense.

Is it sacrificial? The widow gave more than anyone else in the treasury that day, and her gift was two copper coins. What made it count was that it cost her something. Does your giving cost you anything? Is there a line in your budget where giving competes with a desire? That tension might be exactly where God is asking you to grow.

You do not need to answer all three perfectly to start. You just need to start.

What Giving Is Actually Doing to You

I have been a pastor long enough to know that most men who are anxious about money have not thought seriously about generosity. The link between them is not accidental. A man who holds his money tightly tends to fear more, not less. A man with open hands tends to trust more, worry less, and find that what he feared losing was never his security to begin with.

Generosity is participation in who God is. God himself is the giver of all things. Every good gift in your life traces back to him: the breath in your lungs this morning, the income you earned this week, the family that comes home to you. When you give, you are doing something that mirrors his nature. And it does something to you in the process. Something loosens. The grip on what you have eases just a little. That is worth paying attention to.

When I give, it brings me closer to God than almost anything else I do with my money. I do not think that is a coincidence.

The 10% question is worth settling. But once you have settled it, there is a much better question waiting.

What would it look like to give with a genuinely open hand?

Start there, and see what happens. If you are wondering whether your giving is connected to something deeper, the gospel page is worth reading first.

Our wealth is in the cross. Everything else is held loosely.