Generosity, tithing, and firstfruits

What the passages teach

Giving in the Old Testament was structural, not sentimental. Israel’s law wove generosity into the economy itself: firstfruits offered before the harvest was counted (Proverbs 3:9; Deuteronomy 26), tithes supporting the Levites and the poor (Numbers 18:21; Deuteronomy 14:28-29), gleaning edges left for the gleaner (Leviticus 19:9-10). The prophets treat withholding these as robbing God (Malachi 3:8), because in covenant Israel, they were owed.

One detail is usually missed: the law never asked for ten percent full stop. It asked for a tenth plus: festival offerings, firstfruits, the third-year tithe for the Levite and the stranger and the fatherless (Deuteronomy 14:28-29), sacrifices, and freewill gifts on top. Wayne Grudem’s summary is that Israel gave “10 percent plus something” each year: under the law the tenth was a floor, not a ceiling.

The New Testament changes the mechanism without lowering the bar. Jesus commends the widow’s two mites over the rich men’s large gifts (Luke 21:1-4), measuring gifts by cost, not amount, and ties giving to the heart’s location: “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21, KJV). Paul, collecting relief for the poor in Jerusalem, gives the fullest teaching in 2 Corinthians 8-9: giving is decided in advance (“as he purposeth in his heart”), proportional (“as God hath prospered him,” 1 Corinthians 16:2), cheerful, and never coerced, grounded not in law but in Christ: “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9, KJV).

The two passages the debate actually turns on

Anyone who tells you this question is settled has skipped one of these.

Hebrews 7. Abraham “gave a tenth part of all” to Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:2, KJV) centuries before Sinai. That is the strongest case that the tithe is not a Mosaic invention and so did not expire with Moses. But read the chapter to its end and it argues the other way as well: the writer’s point is that a greater priesthood has arrived, and “the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law” (Hebrews 7:12, KJV). The same chapter that supplies the pre-law tithe also dismantles the priestly system that collected it. Honest readers land on both sides of it.

Matthew 23:23. The only time Jesus mentions tithing, he faults scribes and Pharisees who “pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law” (KJV), then says of those weightier matters: “these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” (KJV). One camp hears the tithe affirmed. The other notes that he is addressing people still under the old covenant, before the cross.

Both cases are set out side by side below, each stating its own weakest point as well as its best one. For the argument at book length, from four scholars who disagree with each other, see David Croteau’s Perspectives on Tithing: Four Views (B&H Academic, 2011), the volume Grudem and GotQuestions both recommend, from opposite ends of the question.

What they do not teach

• A guaranteed return. Malachi 3:10’s “prove me now” was spoken to a nation under a specific covenant, about a specific storehouse. God is generous to the generous (Proverbs 11:24-25; 2 Corinthians 9:8-11, “sufficiency,” so you can give more), but as a Father, not a slot machine.
• A universal 10% law, in either direction. Honest Christians divide here. Some hold the tithe as a continuing minimum standard (it predates Moses: Genesis 14:20); others hold that Christians are under grace-giving, which for most should exceed ten percent. What no serious reading supports: giving as optional, occasional, or from leftovers.
• That giving must go only one place. The biblical streams are the local congregation’s work, the poor, and gospel workers. Discernment among them is part of stewardship.

The practice

Pick a percentage on purpose. Take it off the top, first line of the budget, before anything else is counted. That is what “firstfruits” means in practice. Review it yearly with one bias: upward as God prospers you. Teach it to children with a give jar that fills first.

Four questions people actually arrive with:

• Gross or net? Scripture does not say; withholding did not exist. “Firstfruits” language favors gross, since Israel gave off the harvest before anything was deducted. But a household giving 10% of take-home pay is not disobeying a rule, because there is no rule to disobey. Decide once, write it down, and stop relitigating it monthly; see deciding your percentage.
• While paying off debt? Both are stewardship, and neither cancels the other. A common approach is to continue giving at some deliberate level while attacking the debt hard, rather than pausing generosity for three years and finding the habit gone.
• Tithe or offering? In the law the tithe was owed and the offering was free (Deuteronomy 16:10). On the grace-giving view both are now free, which its holders argue raises the bar rather than lowering it.
• How do I know a charity is worth it? Vetting is part of giving, not a lack of faith: how to check a charity. And if giving is a large or lumpy part of your year, the mechanics matter too (donor-advised funds, appreciated stock, bunching) in tax-smart giving basics.

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