Other Scriptures On Tithing

A Careful Look at the Texts on Tithing

A doctrine that cannot stand on its own texts will always borrow someone else's.

The case for mandatory New Testament tithing is built almost entirely on passages drawn from the Old Testament, or from New Testament texts that mention tithing without commanding it. Each of those passages deserves a fair reading. Many of the people who teach from them are sincere, and several of the arguments are long-established. But sincerity and longevity are not the same thing as exegetical accuracy.

The question to hold through this essay is simple:

Does this passage command New Testament believers to give 10% of their income to the local church?

Scripture mentions many things it does not command. The test is whether these texts establish the binding doctrine that has been built on them.

They do not.
But they do teach real and serious things.

Malachi 3: Already Answered

Malachi 3:10 is the weight-bearing text in most tithe sermons, and Part 1 gave it a full hearing: a covenant lawsuit against Israel's corrupt priesthood, a temple storehouse that held food, and a curse that belonged to the Mosaic covenant Christ has redeemed His people from.^[1] The command cannot be carried into the church without transferring the covenant, the people, and the curse across a boundary the New Testament treats as decisive, while quietly redefining the tithe, the storehouse, and the recipient along the way.

We cannot preserve the command by changing all the nouns. That case is made; this chapter takes up the texts Part 1 left standing.

Abraham: Spoils, Not Salary

The pre-Law argument pushes the tithe back before Moses: if Abraham tithed before the Law existed, then the tithe cannot be merely a Mosaic regulation. It must be universal and permanent.

The argument depends on what Abraham actually gave. Hebrews 7:4 is specific: Abraham gave Melchizedek "the tenth of the spoils."^[2]

Battle plunder. A one-time, voluntary gift following a military victory. Genesis 14 adds that Abraham then refused to keep the rest for himself, so that the king of Sodom could not claim credit for making him rich.^[3]

Spoils, not salary. A single voluntary act of honor, not a recurring obligation. A gift of spoils, not a requirement from income.

If Abraham's tithe establishes a universal pattern, the pattern would be: give ten percent of captured battle plunder to Melchizedek, once, and keep nothing for yourself.

But even that clear example is not the doctrine usually drawn from the passage.

A description is not automatically a command.

And even as a description, it still doesn't match the modern doctrine. So why would we cite this as proof of compulsory tithing if we don't even follow its example?

Jacob: A Vow Proves Voluntariness

Jacob's vow at Bethel is the second pre-Law exhibit. After his dream, Jacob said:

"If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go… then shall the LORD be my God… and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee."^[4]

The form of the statement matters. "If God will… then I will." That is a conditional vow, made in response to a specific moment of encounter, as a personal act of devotion.

A man does not vow to do what he is already required to do. Vows are voluntary additions beyond ordinary obligation. Jacob's vow therefore proves the opposite of what the argument claims: if the tithe were already a universal standing requirement before the Law, there would be nothing to vow.

You do not pledge what you already owe.

The vow may inspire gratitude and generosity. We can follow that example within the New Testament framework. It shows a man responding to God's promise with a pledge of loyalty, and that is worth learning from.

But we have to be honest: a personal vow made by one patriarch in one specific moment is not a standing command for every believer in every generation. That is not how vows function, and it is not how Scripture handles them.

Matthew 23: Rebuking Pharisees Still Under the Law

Jesus says to the scribes and Pharisees:

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone."^[5]

This verse is sometimes read as Jesus endorsing the tithe for the church. The context tells a narrower story.

Jesus is speaking to people living in Israel, under the Mosaic Law, before the cross. They are tithing herbs, precisely as the Law prescribed: agricultural produce from the land. Jesus tells them they should have attended to justice, mercy, and faithfulness without neglecting the tithe, because they were still under the Law's full obligation.

The moral weight of the rebuke does extend across covenants. Careful observance of small things while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness is a recurring failure among religious people, and the church is not immune. If anything, the passage should make us uneasy about anyone who can calculate ten percent with precision while neglecting the harder demands. But Matthew 23 rebukes law-keeping Pharisees for misplacing their religious priorities.

We have to be honest: it does not command the New Testament church to tithe their monetary income.

Hebrews 7: A Priesthood Argument, Not a Giving Manual

Hebrews 7 references Abraham, Melchizedek, and tithes, which draws it into the proof-text conversation. But the passage makes a specific argument about the priesthood, not the percentage.

The author shows that Melchizedek received tithes from Abraham and that Levi, being in Abraham's loins, effectively paid tithes through Abraham.^[6] The conclusion is that Melchizedek's order is superior to the Levitical order, and Christ's priesthood, being after the order of Melchizedek, is superior to both. The tithe is evidence in a case about who holds the greater priesthood.

Then comes the sentence that locates the whole passage:

"For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law."^[7]

A changed priesthood means a changed law.

Hebrews 7 does not replace the Levitical system for the church. It is showing that the entire system has been surpassed in Christ. The right response to this passage is to let it preach what it is preaching: Christ holds an unchangeable priesthood, greater than Aaron's, greater than Levi's, able to save to the uttermost. That is the glory of the passage.

Pressing it into service as an argument for a 10% giving requirement does not honor what Hebrews is doing. It conscripts the argument for a conclusion the passage was never heading toward.

The Test We Will Not Apply Consistently

There is a single question that does more damage to the compulsory-tithe argument than any individual text, and the introduction already set it down: if we know how to read circumcision through Christ without binding it on the church, why do we treat tithing differently?

Watch how easily the test works everywhere else.

Jesus said, "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way."^[8] That is as direct a command as any tithe verse, spoken by Jesus Himself. Yet nobody marches New Testament Christians to a physical altar with a slain animal. We recognize the temple setting, apply the moral principle of reconciling before you worship, and let the ceremonial form stay in its covenant. We do this instinctively, correctly, and without anxiety.

Circumcision was commanded before the Law, to Abraham, with a sign that was to last for generations. Sabbath-keeping was written by the finger of God into the Ten Commandments. Feast days, sacrifices, firstfruits, the whole apparatus of approach to God—each appears in Scripture with at least as much force as the tithe, and most with more. We read every one of them through the cross. We ask what covenant they belonged to, what they pointed toward, and how they are fulfilled in Christ. We do not lift them out of Israel's covenant life and re-impose them on Gentile believers as standing law.

Except the tithe.

The tithe gets a different rule. It alone is pulled forward intact, its percentage preserved while its substance, recipient, location, and covenant are quietly swapped, and then it is preached as a binding command of God. The same readers who would never tell a believer he must keep the Sabbath or bring a lamb to an altar will tell him he must give ten percent or rob God.

That is not a reading of the text. It is a selection against the text's own logic. And once you see that the tithe is the one Old Covenant obligation we refuse to handle the way we handle all the others, you cannot unsee it. The doctrine survives only by exemption from the very consistency we apply everywhere else.

Acts 15: The Apostles Had Their Chance

Acts 15 is not usually cited as a tithing proof text, but it matters because the early church faced the exact covenant question underneath this whole discussion.

Must Gentile believers keep the Law of Moses?

The apostles answered. They did not command circumcision. They did not command feast-keeping. They did not command Sabbath-keeping. They did not command tithing.

They wrote:

"For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things…"^[9]

No greater burden.

If the apostles required Gentile believers to pay the tithe, this would have been a natural place to say so. If they required it, why did they never explain what counts as a tithe, who receives it, and how it survives the change of covenant? They explained none of it, because they laid none of it down.

The silence is not the whole case, and it should not be made to carry more than it can. The argument rests on the positive pattern the epistles already supply, the willing, cheerful, proportionate, sacrificial, need-oriented giving that runs free of compulsion, and Acts 15 confirms what that pattern implies rather than standing in for it. But the silence is loud where it falls. This was the one moment the church convened specifically to decide how much of the Law bound Gentile believers, and the tithe is absent from the answer.

That does not make generosity optional. It means the apostles knew the difference between commanding Spirit-led generosity and placing Gentiles under a greater burden than necessary.

We should recognize the difference, too.

What These Passages Actually Teach

The proof-texts teach plenty. They just do not teach that anyone outside of the Old Covenant is commanded to tithe 10% of their income in perpetuity, or else live under God's curse.

Malachi shows God's seriousness about covenant faithfulness and the cost of corrupt leadership. Abraham shows a patriarch honoring Melchizedek with battle spoils in a single voluntary act. Jacob shows a man making a personal pledge of gratitude and devotion. Matthew 23 shows Jesus rebuking religious leaders who prioritized precision in small things while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Hebrews 7 shows that Christ's priesthood surpasses the entire Levitical order and that a changed priesthood means a changed law. Acts 15 shows the apostles refusing to place Gentile believers under the yoke of the very Law that included tithing.

These are real, preachable, serious texts. But not even one of them commands New Testament believers to give 10% of their income to the local church. The compulsory tithe has to be imported, assembled from texts that were never designed to carry that weight, and then preached as a commandment of the God who gave no such command. The import label is right there on the box.

None of which licenses greed. The New Testament still commands generous, willing, proportional, sacrificial giving, and using this essay as a reason to give less only trades a bad doctrine for a bad heart.

The correction to bad tithing is not cheap freedom.
It is truer obedience.

Part 6 addresses what faithful giving actually looks like. But Part 5 addresses something more urgent first.

UP NEXT:
What happens when we use fear or threats to stimulate giving? (Part 5)

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