You Do Not Owe God Ten Percent: Tithing, the Law, and the Church That Keeps the Money

Giving Is Not the Question

Every Christian should give. That is not in dispute. Jesus praised a poor widow who put in two small coins, because she gave out of her poverty and not out of her surplus (Luke 21:3–4). Paul told the Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7). The first believers in Jerusalem sold land and houses so that no one among them was in need (Acts 4:34–35). Giving is woven into the Christian life from the beginning. So the question here is not whether we give. The question is whether Christians are commanded to tithe. Most American churches say yes. Many teach that ten percent belongs to God, and that it belongs to the local church. Some teach that a believer who does not tithe is robbing God. Others say ten percent is only the starting line and real Christians give far more. Behind all of it sits an assumption that rarely gets examined. The assumption is that a Christian owes money to a church, and that the church is the place God’s money goes. That assumption needs testing. The test starts with what the law actually required. Then come what Jesus did with it, what the apostles taught, and what the early church practiced. The answers are not what most of us were taught.

What the Law Required

The tithe appears before the law, but only twice. Abram gave Melchizedek “a tenth of everything” after a battle (Gen 14:20). Jacob promised God a tenth if God would bring him home safely (Gen 28:22). Both were one-time acts. Neither was commanded. The commanded tithe begins at Sinai, and it was not one tithe but several. Leviticus says, וְכָל־מַעְשַׂ֨ר הָאָ֜רֶץ מִזֶּ֤רַע הָאָ֨רֶץ֙ מִפְּרִ֣י הָעֵ֔ץ לַיהוָ֖ה ה֑וּא, “Every tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the Lord’s” (Lev 27:30).¹ The tithe was crops and herds. It was the produce of the land God gave Israel. It was not wages, and it was not money, except when a farmer lived too far away to carry his grain. The first tithe went to the Levites. God said, “To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service” (Num 18:21). The reason is stated in the same chapter. The Levites received no land, so the tithe was their inheritance instead (18:24). Even the Levites tithed. They gave a tenth of what they received to the priests (18:26). The second tithe was different. Israel was to set it aside every year and eat it in the place God chose, “before the Lord your God” (Deut 14:22–23). If the trip was too far, the family could sell the produce and buy food there: oxen, sheep, “wine or strong drink, or whatever your appetite craves” (14:26). That tithe was a family feast. The third tithe came every third year. It was stored in the towns for “the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow” (14:28–29). Moses called that year “the year of tithing” (Deut 26:12). Put together, the law required a feast, a welfare fund, and the support of a tribe with no land. None of it went to a building fund.

How Serious Was It?

The law attached very few penalties to the tithe. A man who wanted to keep part of his tithe and pay its value instead had to add a fifth to it (Lev 27:31). There was no death penalty, as there was for the Sabbath. There was no court case. The enforcement came from the prophets. Amos mocked Israel for bringing tithes to the shrines while living in sin (Amos 4:4). Nehemiah made the people swear to bring the tithe so that the Levites would not abandon the temple (Neh 10:38; 13:10–12). The best-known text is Malachi. God asks, הֲיִקְבַּ֨ע אָדָ֜ם אֱלֹהִ֗ים, “Will a man rob God?” He answers, “In tithes and contributions,” and says the whole nation is under a curse for it (Mal 3:8–9). Then he says, “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house” (3:10). That verse is preached in American churches more than any other text about money. It was spoken to Israel under the Sinai covenant. The storehouse was a room in the temple where grain was kept for the Levites. The blessing promised was rain and harvest, the blessings of that covenant on that land. Malachi was not describing a Christian’s paycheck or a church’s offering plate. To use the verse that way, a preacher has to carry the curse of the law into the new covenant. Paul said Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law (Gal 3:13).

How Men Lawyered Around It

Jesus lived among people who took tithing very seriously. He said to the scribes and Pharisees, ἀποδεκατοῦτε τὸ ἡδύοσμον καὶ τὸ ἄνηθον καὶ τὸ κύμινον, “you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt 23:23). He added, “These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” Some preachers use that line to prove that Jesus commanded tithing. He was speaking to Pharisees, under the law, before the cross. He told them to keep the law they were under. He also told a cleansed leper to show himself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded (Matt 8:4). No one thinks Christians must do that. The Pharisee in Luke’s parable boasted, “I give tithes of all that I get” (Luke 18:12). He went home unjustified. Jesus also exposed the way men used religion to escape duty. In Mark 7 he described a man who told his parents that whatever help they might have had from him was Κορβᾶν, “that is, a gift” to God (Mark 7:11). William Lane explains how it worked. Declaring something qorban “signified rather that it was withdrawn from its intended use and was no longer available for a particular individual ‘as if it were an offering.’” The son “neither promised it to the Temple nor prohibited its use to himself, but he legally excluded his parents from the right of benefit.”² Jesus said that by this tradition they made void the word of God (7:13). The pattern is old. A religious gift becomes a way to avoid the people God told you to care for.

What the Apostles Taught

The New Testament never commands a Christian to tithe. The word appears only in the Gospels, about Pharisees, and in Hebrews, about Abraham and Levi (Heb 7:5–9). Hebrews uses the tithe to prove that Melchizedek was greater than Levi, and that the Levitical priesthood has been replaced. It never tells the church to tithe. What the apostles taught instead is giving. Paul’s longest teaching on money is about a collection for poor believers in Jerusalem (2 Cor 8–9). He praised the churches of Macedonia, who gave κατὰ δύναμιν … καὶ παρὰ δύναμιν, “according to their means … and beyond their means” (8:3). He said, “If the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have” (8:12). He set no percentage. Then he gave the rule: ἕκαστος καθὼς προῄρηται τῇ καρδίᾳ, μὴ ἐκ λύπης ἢ ἐξ ἀνάγκης, “each one as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (9:7). A tithe preached under threat of a curse is giving ἐξ ἀνάγκης, under compulsion. Paul forbade exactly that. Paul also taught that those who preach may be supported. He asked, “Do we not have the right to eat and drink?” He pointed out that “the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas” traveled with their wives at the churches’ expense (1 Cor 9:4–5). He said, “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (9:14). He told Timothy that elders who rule well, “especially those who labor in preaching and teaching,” are “worthy of double honor” (1 Tim 5:17). William Mounce says that “honor involves money,” and that these elders “should also be paid for their work.” He adds that this “was Paul’s general rule … although he himself often chose to earn his own living.”³ So the New Testament allows a worker to be supported. What it does not do is tie that support to a tenth.

Paul Refused His Right

Paul had the right to be paid, and he refused it. He wrote, Ἐγὼ δὲ οὐ κέχρημαι οὐδενὶ τούτων, “But I have made no use of any of these rights” (1 Cor 9:15). He told the Corinthians why. His reward was “that in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge” (9:18). He told the Ephesian elders, “I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me” (Acts 20:33–34). He told the Thessalonians that he and his team worked night and day so as not to be a burden, “not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate” (2 Thess 3:8–9). Then he said something that ought to be read in every church budget meeting: “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’” (Acts 20:35). Paul quoted those words to church leaders. The leaders were the ones who were supposed to give. Jesus sent out the Twelve with the same instruction: δωρεὰν ἐλάβετε, δωρεὰν δότε, “freely you received, freely give” (Matt 10:8). The apostle who wrote 1 Timothy 5:17 chose to make tents. He did it so that no one could say the gospel came with a price tag. The modern church has taken his right and forgotten his example.

What the Early Church Did

The first Christians gave a great deal, and they did not tithe. The Didache, written within living memory of the apostles, says a true prophet or teacher is “worthy, as the workman, of his support.” It tells believers to give the firstfruits of the wine-press and the threshing floor to the prophets, “for they are your high priests.” Then it adds, “But if you have not a prophet, give it to the poor.”⁴ The poor came right behind the teacher. Justin Martyr, around AD 155, described what happened to the collection on Sunday. “They who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit.” The money went to the president of the meeting, “who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.”⁵ Irenaeus contrasted Christians with Israel directly. The Jews “had indeed the tithes of their goods consecrated to Him, but those who have received liberty set aside all their possessions for the Lord’s purposes.”⁶ In his view the tithe was a mark of the old bondage, and freedom meant giving everything. Tertullian, writing to pagan officials around AD 197, described the church’s money in a way that ought to embarrass us. “On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary.” He called the gifts “piety’s deposit fund,” and he said what it was spent on. It was not spent “on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people,” to care for orphans and the elderly, the shipwrecked, and believers sent to the mines or to prison for their faith.⁷ Cyprian, a bishop in the third century, was already lamenting the decline. The first believers sold houses and estates for the poor, he wrote, “But now we do not even give the tenths from our patrimony.”⁸ He used the tenth as a rebuke to stingy Christians, not as a law. That is the church’s money in the second and third centuries. It was voluntary. It was mostly for the poor. And no one called it a tithe.

When the Tithe Came Back

The tithe returned to the church slowly, and it returned as law. The Catholic Encyclopedia is candid about this. It says “the payment of tithes was adopted from the Old Law.” It says “the earliest positive legislation on the subject seems to be contained in the letter of the bishops assembled at Tours in 567 and the canons of the Council of Maçon in 585.” The council of Mâcon did not ask politely. Its fifth canon says the tithe “is to be expended for the use of the poor (also of the clergy), and for the redemption of prisoners,” and that “whoever obstinately refuses it is for ever excommunicated.”⁹ After that, “we find the payment of tithes made obligatory by ecclesiastical enactments in all the countries of christendom.” The civil government followed. “The earliest instance of the enforcement of the payment of ecclesiastical tithes by civil law is to be found in the capitularies of Charlemagne, at the end of the eighth century.”¹⁰ So the tithe as church law is roughly five hundred years younger than the New Testament. It came back with a clergy that had begun to think of itself as a priesthood. The same encyclopedia says the purpose was “the support of the clergy.” The Levitical tithe supported a tribe with no land. The medieval tithe supported a priesthood the New Testament never created. It also funded the cathedrals. The Reformers threw out much of the medieval system, but most of them kept the state church, and the state church kept the tithe. Many American churches inherited it without the state. They still teach it, often with Malachi 3 attached. They have kept the obligation of the old law and the clergy of the medieval church, and called the combination biblical.

Where the Money Goes Now

The American church keeps most of its money inside. The largest lines in a typical church budget are the salaries of the staff and the cost of the building. The building has to be paid for, heated, cooled, insured, and maintained, and many congregations carry a mortgage on it for decades. Programs for the members come next. A Christianity Today survey of 2,200 churches found that on average 47 percent of a church budget went to pastors and staff, about 22 percent to property, utilities, maintenance, and insurance, and about 5 percent to missions, foreign and domestic together.¹¹ A 2025 church-staffing report puts the staff share at about 52 percent.¹² The research group empty tomb found that in 2022 “a weighted average of about 2¢ of each dollar given to a congregation was spent for denominational international missions,” compared with 8 cents a century earlier.¹³ Two cents on the dollar reaches the nations. I am not saying those dollars are stolen. Most pastors are not wealthy, and many are underpaid. I am saying the system is pointed inward. In the second century the deposit fund went to widows, orphans, prisoners, and the shipwrecked. In the twenty-first it goes mostly to the people who run the meeting and the room they hold it in. The believer is then told that this is where God’s tenth belongs. He gives to the system and counts it as obedience. Fewer believers accept the deal than the sermons suggest. Lifeway found that only 31 percent of regular Protestant churchgoers say they tithe, with another 19 percent giving more.¹⁴ Then he gets up on Sunday, sits in a building, listens to someone else talk to him about Jesus, and counts that as obedience too. Both feel like duty done. Neither looks much like the church in Acts, where believers met in homes, ate together, and sold what they had when a brother was in need (Acts 2:46; 4:34–35). A salaried pulpit also changes the office itself. When preaching becomes a career with a paycheck, benefits, and a retirement plan, the pulpit becomes a job people compete for. Much of the fighting over who may hold it is a fight over who may have the job. Paul’s answer to that pressure was to work with his hands.

If I Were Satan

Suppose I were Satan, and I wanted to build a church that would keep Christians busy and harmless. I would not abolish giving. I would capture it. I would teach believers that a tenth of their income is owed, and that it is owed to a building. I would threaten them with Malachi’s curse so they would give under compulsion and call it worship. I would make the gathering a performance with one speaker and a silent audience, so that the people would watch ministry rather than do it. I would give that speaker a salary large enough that he could not afford to say anything that might empty the seats. I would put the meeting in an expensive building, finance it with debt, and make the debt payment the first claim on every offering. I would fill the calendar with programs for the people already inside. I would make sure the widow down the street, the prisoner across town, and the unreached people on the other side of the world received whatever was left over. Then I would convince everyone that attending this meeting and funding this system is the Christian life. People would feel faithful. They would be busy. They would be generous. And the mission Jesus gave his church, to make disciples of all nations, would get the scraps. I do not believe the American church was designed by Satan. Most of the people in it love Jesus, and many of its pastors are faithful men. But a church that matches the design point for point should ask itself who benefits from that design.

What the Church Could Become

The New Testament gives a different picture, and it is not complicated. Believers give, freely and cheerfully, as each has decided in his heart (2 Cor 9:7). They give first to the poor, especially poor believers, as the Jerusalem collection did (Gal 2:10; 2 Cor 8–9). They may support those who labor in teaching, and they should do it generously (1 Tim 5:17–18). Those who teach should be willing to work with their hands, as Paul did, so that the gospel stays free of charge (1 Cor 9:18; Acts 20:33–35). The church meets, and it must meet (Heb 10:25), but it does not need a building to do so. For most of its first three centuries it met in homes, and it spread across the Roman Empire without great sanctuaries. Every member serves. The gathering is for encouraging one another, not for an audience. The money moves outward, toward the widow, the orphan, the prisoner, and the people who have never heard. Many churches are already moving in this direction because they have to. Congregations are shrinking, and buildings are being sold. Lifeway estimates that in 2019 about 3,000 Protestant churches were started in the United States while 4,500 closed.¹⁵ I do not know what the American church will look like in fifty years. It may be smaller, poorer, and closer to the New Testament than it has been in a long time. That would not be a tragedy. The tithe was for a priesthood that Christ has replaced. The church does not owe God ten percent. It owes him everything, given freely, and spent the way Jesus would spend it.

Notes

1. Hebrew text throughout is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex; Greek text is from The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition, ed. Michael W. Holmes (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010). Translations are my own. ↩
2. William L. Lane, The Gospel of Mark, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 250–51. ↩
3. William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, WBC 46 (Dallas: Word, 2000), 306. ↩
4. Didache 13, trans. M. B. Riddle (ANF 7). ↩
5. Justin Martyr, First Apology 67, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (ANF 1). ↩
6. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18.2 (ANF 1). ↩
7. Tertullian, Apology 39, trans. S. Thelwall (ANF 3). ↩
8. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 26 (ANF 5). ↩
9. Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 4 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1895), §286. ↩
10. The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Tithes” (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912). ↩
11. Brant Henshaw, “How Churches Spend Their Money,” Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Methodist Church, December 2, 2014, summarizing a Christianity Today survey of 2,200 churches, https://www.pnwumc.org/news/how-churches-spend-their-money/. ↩
12. Vanderbloemen, “Healthy Church Budget Percentages,” September 5, 2025, https://www.vanderbloemen.com/blog/healthy-church-budget-percentages. ↩
13. empty tomb, inc., The State of Church Giving through 2022, 34th ed. (Champaign, IL: empty tomb, 2025), Executive Summary. ↩
14. Marissa Postell Sullivan, “Churchgoers Are Still Tithing, More Comfortable Doing So Outside of Church,” Lifeway Research, April 25, 2023. ↩
15. Aaron Earls, “Protestant Church Closures Outpace Openings in U.S.,” Lifeway Research, May 25, 2021. ↩