9. We have been set free to live according to our new natures

If tithing was a valid practice in the New Covenant, it would have been clearly retaught to New Covenant believers. Not only is this not the case, but the current teaching on tithing transgresses clear New Covenant principles. One of these is that in the new birth God has given us a new holy and righteous nature (Eph 4:24, 2 Pet 1:3-4), and we are to be led by that as opposed to being led by any external directives.

The external system of laws was only ever supposed to be a temporary administration. Before Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, God’s people had no personal relationship with Him, in the sense that they were not born again. They needed external prompting and guidance to stay on God’s pathway for their lives.

But Jesus’ triumph on the cross opened up a whole new way of living for us – a way that had been impossible before. We were born into his family, and became a whole new creation (2 Cor 5:17). God put His Spirit in our hearts, and put his laws in our minds and wrote them on our hearts (Heb 8:10, 10:16, 2 Cor 3:3). We now have Christ’s own spirit within (Rom 8:9, Gal 4:19).

Christ himself taught that the ‘laws’ we were to follow in the New Covenant were in reality one new ‘law’ – the overarching principle of the love of God (Matt 22:37-40, John 13:34-35), poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). Verses such as Romans 13:8-10, Galatians 5:13-14 and James 2:8 make it clear that whatever commandments there are, are both summed up and fulfilled in this one principle – love for God expressed in love for others. Now the only thing that counts is faith working through love (Gal 5:6). Every area of our life needs to be motivated by love, or our efforts profit us nothing (1 Cor 13:1-3).

The important point is that in the New Covenant, external laws have been replaced by an internal principle – the internal prompting and guiding by the love nature of God within us. This new nature in us is a reflection of God’s own giving and serving character. God so loved that he gave (John 3:16 – and not just a percentage, but all that He had), and likewise, with God’s nature of love, He has put it into our hearts to give.

Now, instead of obeying the old letter of the Law, we have been set free to follow the ‘Law’ of love within leading us through our new natures (Galatians 5:22-23). Living this way is the ultimate in Christian living and giving; giving according to any external directive now misses the mark as it represents reversion to a temporary way of living which the cross made obsolete.

But instead, if we live according to this new nature, we’ll automatically fulfil the righteous demands of God’s law i.e. not just the letter of the Law to give a certain amount, but the original intention behind the Law, to give freely, from our hearts (Romans 6:18,22, 8:4, 1 John 3:9, 5:18).

Sons of God support the work of God on earth without the threat of curses or the enticement of blessings. They do God’s will because it is their nature. They live like Jesus would live on the earth because he is living in them.

(Matthew Narramore – Tithing: Low-Realm, Obsolete and Defunct p 126)

The conscience of our new nature IS the law for us now! ‘We are to give according to the law of conscience. Just as we don’t have to sin because our new nature has both empowered and commanded us not to sin, our new nature has also empowered and witnessed to us about our giving. That means as we walk according to our new nature, we will not only stay free from sin; we will also be set free in our giving!

(Dave Roberson - Newsletter April 2002)

In sum, teaching people that they must give a certain minimum amount regularly is going back to using an inferior Old Covenant motivation, which worked through the law to hold people under slavery to the basic principles of the world (Gal 4:3). But we died with Christ to the basic principles of this world (Col 2:20-22); why should we live according to them any longer? Paul did not want his people to be enslaved all over again (Gal 4:9).

In multiple passages1, we are exhorted to stand firm in the freedom that Christ has bought for us, and not allow ourselves to get into bondage again. Notice that in his writings, Paul never gives any limits at all to our liberty – it’s an unqualified freedom in that it is a freedom from all external restraints of the Law – a freedom that is to be tempered with love and a consideration for our fellowman. It is a freedom to walk righteously (Rom 6:18) and to serve (Gal 5:13-14, 1 Pet 2:16).

We have now truly been set free to serve God and one another in love, from our hearts, as God had always intended us to. To say that believers cannot have this choice of serving one another according to their own conscience by giving freely when it comes a certain percentage of their money is to deny the reality of both the new nature and the freedom that Christ has bought for us at such a high price at the cross.

1 For instance, John 8:31,36, Rom 8:21, 1 Cor 6:12, 7:23, 10:23-24, 2 Cor 3:17, Gal 2:4, 4:8-10, 31, 5:1,13, 1 Pet 2:16.

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© Julie Groves (2010), P O Box 1626, Shek Wu Hui, Hong Kong