Featured The Tithe Has Been Abolished By Christ Himself

In another thread, I mentioned this, and another poster told me to start another thread giving Scriptural support for my statement.

According to Malachi 3:7-8 tithing was an ordinance. Notice:

Malachi 3:7-8 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

Here, God was chastening the Priests for going away from His ordinances and instructs them to return to those ordinances.

They response is in the form of a question... "Wherein shall we return?" I suppose in today's terms, we would say "How are we to do that?"

God then tells them how they had gone away from His ordinances by explaining that they robbed Him in tithes and offerings.

God reveals to the reader that tithes and offerings were ordinances written in the Mosaic and Levitical covenant with God.

In Ephesians 2:14-15, we read:

Ephesians 2:14-15 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;

Here, we can see that Christ abolished in His flesh the commandments written in the ordinances. They are no more required. God reveals that they were enmity with us.

One may ask how ordinances that were meant to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24) could possibly be enmity, or hostile, to us? The very fact that it is found in the Law reveals that it is hostile to the saved. Those who submit to the Law are under a curse if they do not continue in all things written in the Law to do them. (Galatians 3:10).

Paul said that the commandments were a "ministration of death." How can that which is a ministration of death, and brings a curse to people who do not continue in them, not be enmity to those whom the Word of God says are freed from the Law?

Paul told the Galatians that they were foolish to submit themselves to the Law (Galatians 3) after having begun in the Spirit. In Hebrews, Paul wrote to the Jews encouraging them to turn away from Judaism and the Mosaic Law.

Yes, the Law is enmity with those who are in Christ Jesus. We who are His are freed from the Law (Gal 3:25) We are no longer under the schoolmaster.

The tithe ordinance has been abolshed through Jesus Christ by His death, burial and resurrection.

Our giving today is to be out of love for our fellow man, not out of obligation or coercion.

 

Thanks Steaver,

I was reading posts on another forum concerning Ephesians 2 and it hit me that the tithe truly is not for the Christian Church but is rather hostile to how God wants us to give.

 

Sure looks like He abolished it to me. He abolished the commandments written in the ordinances.

Which ordinances if not the tithe?

And if the tithe wasn't abolished, why is it conspicuously absent from the writings of the Apostles?

 

Because it is part of the Law, which is contrary to walking in the liberty as Christ called us into.

 

For me, Ephesians 2:14-15 is writing enough to show Christ abolished the tithe.

 

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

 

I am sure you meant that in jest.

But for some, they might just have that mindset.

"Lord, I know that that drunk over there needs the Gospel, and that woman standing over there on the corner dressed in such revealing clothes who is walking around the corner with a different man every couple hours. But God, there are 1440 minutes in the day, and I have already passed out tracts for the last three hours. I have done my service for you... and then some. Send someone else"

Funny, God probably put that drunk and that woman in your path for you to talk to.

Thanks Alcott, for reminding us that God doesn't expect us to stop at 10% when working for Him.

God bless!

 

Hi Steaver,
Yes, it is indeed a RCC doctrine that has carried over into other walks of faith.

From the first century to the late sixth century, no one in the Church tithed. Then, at the Council of Macon in 585, the Catholic Church incorporated tithing into their doctrinal creed.

It might surprise many Baptists to find out that tithing among Baptists is less than 100 years old. John Harvey Grime, in 1934 wrote in a book that at that time Baptists did not tithe. He gave 10 reasons that Baptists did not tithe, stating for one of those reasons that if the Baptist began tithing he would cease being Baptist. Interesting statement, to say the least.

 

From slaveoftheword.org

John Harvey Grime (Baptist; 1934)

Grime provided ten reasons Christians are not required to tithe.

“1. It violates the divine plan laid down in the New Testament Scriptures.

2. It violates every principle of church polity upon which all our churches stand.

3. If the Scriptures require our churches to tithe, we have not a single scriptural church in our association.

4. It changes our giving from the realm of voluntary worship to that of slavish obedience to law.

5. It makes our churches tax gatherers.

6. No Baptist Church has ever adopted it. Should a church adopt it, they would cease to be Baptist.

7. So far as history goes, it was never mentioned as a Christian or church obligation until after the ‘great apostasy’ in 250 A. D., and the union of Church and State in 325 A. D., and then only by the apostate church, and not by Baptists. The agitation among Baptists, of this question, is of recent date.

8. No Baptist Confession of Faith has ever mentioned it.

9. It screens the rich, and oppresses the poor.

10. Not one syllable in all the Bible that connects the tithe system with the churches of Jesus Christ. When Baptists leave the Bible, they get into trouble.”

John Harvey Grime, The Bible and History on the Tithe System ( n.p.: n.p., 1934), 4.

 

slaveoftheword.blogspot.com is owned and operated by David Croteau (crow toe) a teacher at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.

Russell Kelly, a teacher at Iron Hill Baptist Church, has done much research on this as well. He has a site with much, much information on the history of the tithe.

Let me get the site...

http://www.tithing-russkelly.com/

Dr. Kelly has also done extensive research on the Seventh Day Adventists, having come out of that denomination.

That research, if you are interested can be found at http://www.tithing-russkelly.com/sda