We are Not Under the Law (of Tithing)

There are two parts to the Old Testament law: the moral law, and the ordinances and sacrificial law. Christ has fulfilled both the moral law and the ordinances and sacrifices (Rom. 10:4, Gal. 2:16) so then the person who has faith in Christ finds that they fulfill the moral law by His Spirit living in them (Rom. 7:4-6). As Christ is the fulfillment of the law then the person in Christ fulfills the moral law because Christ, the fulfillment lives in them. Now it is their new creation nature to love God and man, honor parents, not lie and not steal etc. The fruit of the Holy Spirit fulfills all the moral law (Gal. 5:18).

And then they realize that the ordinances, which were not moral commands but were shadows of Christ and prefiguring Christ (Heb. 10:1) were perfectly fulfilled in Christ, the substance and are no longer relevant to those in Christ (Col. 2:16-17) and that by His sacrificial death on the Cross, once and for all, there can be no more sacrifices made for sin. Tithing was one of those ordinances of the OT which has been fulfilled in Christ and we are no longer under it. That whole temple-priest system has been fulfilled by the New Covenant. If a person feels they need to tithe in order to please God: to be blessed and not cursed, then they would also need to recreate the whole OT temple priesthood system and observe it to the letter. If you follow the law of tithing then you can’t just pluck that law out of its context and ignore the rest of the law, for you would then be obliged to keep the whole Levitical law and not just the law of the tithe (Gal. 5:3).

But on the other hand, freewill giving is simply the fruit of love, of the love of God in us which causes us to give to those in need and support those who feed us God’s word and it is the fulfillment of the moral law by the Spirit: it is the fruit of the Spirit (Rom. 13:10). Which is why it goes against the Spirit to try and superimpose the OT ordinances over Him, for then we would have no need any more to be led by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit would become obsolete and we would just follow the OT ordinances. But if you are led by the Spirit then you are not under the law (Gal. 5:18). If we give as we are led by the Spirit then we have perfectly fulfilled the law of love. We should never think in terms of trying to fulfill the OT ordinances which have been fulfilled in Christ (Gal. 3:10). And this is why tithing was never taught or practiced in the NT churches.

Babylon the Great (Rev. 17) simply perpetuates the OT temple priesthood system, refusing the New Covenant and keeping people in the Old. And these superstitions define religious Babylon: where you find Christians superstitiously believing that if they don’t tithe they will be cursed; or believing that the pastor is the equivalent of an OT priest, and the Church building and worship service is somehow mystically the continuation of the OT temple and priesthood service, and so on. If we sincerely and honestly read the NT we see that the New Covenant Church was a complete departure from the OT church and infinitely superior: The greatest and most glorious religious expression in the OT is weaker than the simplest expression of the Spirit in the NT.

From Reality Church – by Ian Vincent