Should every Christian tithe? 

Yes

Is there ever a time when a Christian is not obligated to tithe?

No.

What if a Christian is married to a non-believer and he/she says "no" to tithing?  Should he/she tithe off of the mother-load, only tithe off of his or her income, or do what the spouse suggest?

It depends if the money maker is the Christian or not.

Should a person tithe if they can't pay their bills? 

Yes, tithe is first.

How do people tithe if they don't attend a church? 

What? Who are these people?

Do they tithe to various organizations and/or do they help their fellow man?

What?

Does grace change the law of tithing?

Clearly not!

Should we tithe off of our gross or net income?

Net (after the canker worm has eaten [the government])

If you aren't tithing, why not? 

Great question! 

In my diocese there is a big push to try to make people good stewarts...but I really like the approach. They say being a good stewart is not only tithing from our treasure...its actually threefold. We should be giving from our time, talent and treasure!

The best thing would be to tithe from all three in equal proportions... but if you can't tithe from your treasure, tithe from your time and talent.

I personally do not see a problem at all with not tithing from my treasure when I really can't afford it. I mean, by providing for my family I am providing for His people! I have been in a position when if I give 10% of my income I wouldn't be able to make rent... so I didn't tithe, but I was still giving Him my treasure by providing for my family...

obviously, if I spent the alloted 10% shopping and eating out then there might be a problem :)

I've gone to Calvary Chapels a lot.  Their teaching on tithing has one simple guideline: "If you feel like giving, then give.  If you don't feel like giving, then don't."  They also have another teaching: "Where God guides, He provides."  If provision doesn't exist for some additional ministry, it isn't pursued.  I haven't heard of an ineffective Calvary Chapel, nor I heard of one that is in unmanagable debt.

Personally, there are times when I've tithed and times when I haven't.  When I was without steady income, I prayed about tithing.  God put it on my heart to time only my time, and not my money.  I helped to set up and take down chairs at my church, and led worship when the occasion presented itself.  Now that I have a steady income, I give regularly, and I volunteer.  I never give out of guilt or a sense of needing to follow the rules (2 Cor 9:7).

Here's the verses Calvary Chapel base their teaching on (emphasis added by me):

2 Cor 9:7

7  Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.




Exod 35:5
5  'Take from among you a contribution to the LORD; whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it as the LORD'S contribution: gold, silver, and bronze,

Exod 36:5-6
5  and they said to Moses, "The people are bringing much more than enough for the construction work which the LORD commanded us to perform."
6  So Moses issued a command, and a proclamation was circulated throughout the camp, saying, "Let no man or woman any longer perform work for the contributions of the sanctuary." Thus the people were restrained from bringing any more. 

Should a person tithe if they can't pay their bills? 

I think 1 Tim 5:8 covers this.

1 Tim 5:8
8  But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

  I would like to say some thing, I hear alot of talk on tithing,  one of you said that dose grace change the law od tithing ? and you said no it didn't, You can not have things two ways. If we are to still live by the law, we have to do it in every thing, and not pick what we have to do. you say tithing is in the law, so we have to do it, but there are other things in the law, and you say, we are not under that no more, we arw under grace, and another person,  if you can't pay your bill, you still have to tithe. show me where Jesus said that, you will not fine it, Jesus ;oves us amd our kids, and he would never tell us not to feed our kids, so we can pay him.

Just an interesting fact:

By levitical law, Jesus never had to tithe, and there is no recorded instance of Him doing so.

http://home.earthlink.net/~russkellyphd/index.html 

Interesting quote:

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association: Questions and Answers.

It (tithing) is not mentioned in the New Testament except where it is describing Old Testament practices or in the Gospels where Jesus is addressing people who were under the Old Testament law. Note Jesus' comments to the Pharisees in Luke 11:42? A New Testament teaching on giving which may be helpful to you is found in 1 Corinthians 16:2.... This passage brings out four points: we should give individually, regularly, methodically, and proportionately. The matter of your giving is between you and God, and He always takes into account our circumstances. He knows when they are beyond our power to direct and control. The important thing is that we see giving as a privilege and not a burden. It should not be out of a sense of duty, but rather out of love for the Lord and a desire to see His kingdom advanced. Second Corinthians 9:6-7..... What has priority in our lives? Is Christ really first--or do we put ourselves and our own desires first? Make sure Christ is first in your life, and then ask Him to guide you.  Note: Billy Graham himself does teach tithing. http://www.billygraham.org/LFA_Article.asp?ArticleID=28

Act 20:17-36 "Now from Miletus he [Paul] sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. And when they came to him, he said to them: "You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 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. 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.'" And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all."

Paul is on his way back to Jerusalem and he has called ahead to have the Pastors in the region of Ephesus to meet him. The above passages tell us a great deal about the Apostle Paul's feelings concerning the ministry.

If you study carefully the way Luke (a frequent companion of Paul!) treats money in all  of his writings, you will see a great reversal in his treatment of money. He is not anti-wealth, but anti-greed.

Folks, we have gotten so far away from how the Church was intended to handle money it is sickening.

From where do we pull all proof texts for tithing?

Then are we saying we are still under the Law?

Some of the very same posters above argued with me that we are under no Law on one of Mike's (Mike and Laura) blogs concerning Law. Friends, we don't get to have it both ways. Either we are or we're not. Tithing was an OT principle that was placed on Land Owners and Farmers.


Chris

Voice, we gave money we didn't have. And I don't mean sacrificial as much as I mean just being 'stupid". We were brow beat that we needed to give and give and give some more. Many times we gave ourselves into the poor house. God never intended that. Although that's what was being preached to us at the time. I pray for people who are struggling with this.

Jesus said, "I will build my Church." He is God and will do this work without one cent of anyone's money. God's blessed us when we have tithed, but he has blessed us much more since we have been giving according to how he has prospered us.

Once we have taken care of our financial needs, we are free to give to meet any need that may arise. We have found ourselves giving more than what we gave just giving a tithe. Oh, yeah, and did I mention that God still has blessed.

There is a reason that this teaching is giving pause, it contradicts what most of us have heard for years.

Is the husband always the one who should make the decision on how much to give, even if he isn't a believer?  

Hi all,
I'm going to write about the #1 thing people write me about, which is tithing, and they always ask open ended questions like: What do you believe about tithing?

That's something like Groucho Marx asking the hapless guest on his show; "Have you stopped beating your wife?" If you answer yes, you're in trouble; if you say no, you're in trouble.

A question like that does not give me a clue where they're coming from or what their church experience has been, which puts me in the unenviable position of trying to write in some detail, yet for the sake of time and space having to summarize and assume a basic knowledge base, and inevitably I get burned as a result.

Most of those who ask such a question have a 'hot' button they got because they experienced a church that was either (A) very legalistic; or (B) very prosperity '100% tithing' minded; or; (C) they are tired of preachers arm twisting for money to the extent they now break out in hives if someone mentions Malachi 3, or; (D) all of the above or some combination thereof.

But they prefer to keep their little 'hot' button hidden from view, ask me an open ended question, and then attack or at the least, back off, when their button is pushed.

With the start of the new year it only seems right (in a funny sort of way) to try to push ALL the buttons on this week's "Thoughts" by sharing some basic principles, coming at it from another perspective, and once you have the principles down you can apply them to any situation you've experienced (even over and above money issues), and questions you may have...it may be a help.

The first principle sounds ridiculously elementary, yet it needs to be said: People have been giving to God since Abel's offering. The 2nd principle is: People have been getting mad over giving to God since Abel's offering. (Cain didn't take too kindly to it if you'll recall)

But seriously...
Giving to God is normal behavior for believers in God...but wait, here are some statistics from George Barna's organization:

Percentages of people who Donated money to a nonprofit organization in the past month:
Non-believers - 48% Christians - 47%
Gave money to a poor or homeless person in the last year:
Non-believers - 34% Christians - 24%

The fact that non-Christians out give Christians may be because we (Christians) have been so abused, beaten over the head, and had our arms twisted so much over the years from the traditional church that we are shell-shocked over the issue of giving and tithing.

Here I hope, is a little sanity to soothe your soul:

The first thing to keep in mind is that the Old Testament contained a series of 613 external laws to guide Israel's behavior. These laws were broken up into 3 groups: Worship, moral, and dietary/sanitary.

But now, God through the New Testament has written those laws in our hearts and minds. What used to be external is now an internal grace. Note Hebrews 10:16-17 quoting Jeremiah 31:34: "This is the new covenant, I will write my laws in their hearts and in their minds..."

This is why Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 that he didn't come to abolish the law, he came to fulfill it. Fulfilling the law is like this: When a person buys a car over the course 5 years with 60 months of payments for example, once they make that last payment they have fulfilled the contract. They didn't abolish the contract (negate the purchase), they fulfilled it.

Because they fulfilled the contract (law) they have now become the possessors of the contract and have (now) the grace to do whatever they wish to that contract. It's the same with a person paying off a mortgage. By paying the price in full you become possessors of the contract - burn the thing, frame it and hang it on a wall - it doesn't matter because you now own the contract.

Jesus fulfilled the law by walking blameless in all 613 rules, and then nailed those rules to his cross, taking possession as owner of the law. Colossians 2:14 says Jesus took the contract, the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and nailed it to his cross. Jesus now owns the contract, and we own it by virtue of being in Him and He in us.

Those external laws of the Old Testament are now in us, we possess them, and we can do with them what we want...so keep that in mind as we proceed.

There is another principle that builds on the principle of owning the law that we need to look at, and that is the principle of using the cross as a strainer.

Think of the Old Testament, from Genesis through Malachi as the thing we want strained. The 4 gospels are the funnel, and the cross is the strainer. Anything that makes it through the strainer into Acts through Revelation is applicable today in one degree or another.

How do we know something has made it through? - If it's written about as being in the life of the churches Paul and others wrote to, OR if nothing is mentioned of it at all in the New Testament but understood to be relevant by the writers of the New Testament.

How do we know if something did not make it through? - It will be written about as being not for today.

How do we know if something made it through, but modified? - If it's written about in the New Testament as still being applicable but modified to the church then it's made it through the strainer. These issue are what I would term, swallowed up by grace and become part of a larger whole.

As a side note lest someone try to apply cultural issues to the 'strainer' and not understand this principle is limited to the Mosaic Law: Cultural issues are clearly identified as being cultural, such as Paul mentioning three times in I Corinthians 11 that the veiling of women was a local custom when he wrote about it. In Rome women weren't veiled, but in Corinth's area it was common, not unlike the Muslim mid-east versus the west today...follow the local customs is what he said. (I Corinthians 11:6,13,16)

Back to the subject at hand:
Some things making it through untouched that ARE addressed in the New Testament:

Sexual sin. Leviticus 18 is a chapter largely devoted to instructions about not uncovering the nakedness of various men and women - a friend's wife, your sister, your son's daughter, your sister in law, your dad's brother, etc.

Jesus in the 'funnel' of the gospels, and on the other side of the strainer, the letters of the New Testament have several passages dealing with fornication, which is sexual relations outside of marriage, so we know that guidelines for sexual relations has successfully made it through the strainer of the cross. (Incidentally, the instructions in Leviticus cover the subject of pornography, as seeing another man's wife/relative or husband/relative is forbidden)

The subject of sexual sin was in the Old Testament, addressed as being relevant in the gospels, and addressed as being relevant in Acts-Revelation; Therefore we are possessors of the law in this matter...it's not in my spirit to uncover another woman's nakedness...it's not a matter of external law, the law is inside my spirit man - the spirit/Spirit constrains me from the inside not to do such a thing.

Something not mentioned at all in the New Testament, and therefore has made it through unchanged:

Abortion and the question of life in the womb. Exodus 21:22-23 is a law that states if men are fighting and a nearby pregnant woman has a miscarriage as a result of inadvertently being injured in that fight, then the man responsible is to pay for it; anything ranging from a monetary fine to being put to death, giving "life for life", as the judges determine.

Therefore we know God considers a baby in the womb as life...was it addressed in Mathew through John? No. Is it addressed in Acts - Revelation? No. Therefore it made it through the cross untouched and we can say (it should be) illegal to kill a baby in the womb.

Now for 2 things strained out, that are mentioned in the New Testament and modified - diet and holy days:

Leviticus 11 and elsewhere limits what Israel's diet should be - including not eating scavengers of any kind. Those who know me know that I don't eat what I call, "insects of the sea" (crab, lobster, shrimp), which is consistent with the law. I don't eat them because I don't like the taste and texture, and am mentally turned off because they eat poop and dead things, not because Leviticus tells me not to eat them.

But...can you eat them nowadays if you want? We strain them through the cross and look for something in Paul's writing, and lo and behold he talks about food in Romans 14: 1-18 and I Corinthians 8:1-13 and 10:23-33.

In Romans 14 he mentions 2 issues of the day: those who consider one particular day a Sabbath day (who he calls weak in the faith) versus those who think all days are equal; and those who "believes he may eat all things; another, who is weak (in the faith), is a vegetarian."

His answer? If a person wants to eat anything under the sun; or if they want to eat just vegetables, let them, for each does so unto the Lord. As he would later say in I Corinthians 10:23, "all things are lawful, but not all things are expedient."

So the dietary laws are now on the inside of us and we can eat what we want...eating 3 Big Macs a day might not be expedient, but it is lawful. John the Baptist ate grasshoppers, buy hey, who am I to argue with him?

The same with holy days...the OT says Saturday is the Sabbath (as well as other OT feasts/fasts), but places in the NT show they met on Sunday (I Cor 16:1-2 for instance) and from house to house any day..."Let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind." (Romans 14:5)

Thus...both the OT Sabbath laws and the OT eating laws got strained out. No where does Paul or the other apostles command Christians to worship on Saturday or hold other Sabbath days, nor do they command them to eat according to the Levitical law...it all got strained. Yet the principles, the kernel of truth, remain. It is good and right we set a Sabbath to rest, reflect, worship, and recharge. It's still needed, though not mandated to be each Saturday. And the eating laws are good principles that make for healthy bodies, so the kernel of truth remains, but it's up to us if we want to follow them.

In fact, Acts 15: 20-21 says the only constraints from the Old Testament they put on the believers was to abstain from sexual sin, idolatry (Commandments #1 & #2 having made it safely through the strainer), and from eating blood (for the sake of the synagogues and Jewish population around them - in other words, that part is a directive to be sensitive to local custom and culture no matter how 'free' you are in Christ - ie be considerate - if you're having dinner with an orthodox Jew, don't order your steak rare)

Thus whatever gets strained remains a good principle, and we can learn from it...but it is now a grace on the inside of us to do with as we wish. Paul said the things that happened to Israel were examples for us. ( I Cor 10:6)

Now something superceded and swallowed up by a larger principle:
What about giving to God, either 10% (tithe) or more, or even less? Giving to God has been in existence since Abel gave to God, and giving has made it safely through the cross, for giving is talked about quite a bit in the Gospels and rest of the New Testament, but not through legalism, but with grace.

Is there anything from Acts to Revelation about tithing?

The answer is no. Why is that? Because the law, having moved inside us, is now a grace. Therefore giving in the New Testament has superceded and swallowed up the 10% level of giving, for in Acts 2: 44-45 we see: "And all that believed were together and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them to all men, as everyone had need." and in Acts 4:32 "...but they had all things common."

Why drop down from 100% to just 10%? Tithing has been swallowed up by the 100% giving of the New Testament. (laying down your life for others) You aren't held to an external law, but rather an internal one - love, grace, integrity.

The Law not only set a minimum of 10%, but by naming a percentage it also provided a cap...they didn't have to give anything beyond that 10%. In the New Testament there is no cap. You give as you have, as you want, as you are led. Why would I want to drop down to 10%???

You don't suffer a curse at 9.999% giving and then burst into heavenly blessing at 10.001%...you are blessed because of Jesus' blood, and that is how God relates to you in terms of his relationship with you.

But in the natural realm we must ask: Is the truth of 'what is released on the earth is also released in heaven' still at work? Yes...from Genesis, through Proverbs, through Jesus' statements, through Paul's writings, God does bless the giver...that has made it through the strainer for sure, untouched.

How we give is modified by grace, but giving itself went through the strainer of the cross untouched.

There is a grace over Christian givers that is not over stingy Christians - a sense of timing, 'luck', favor, and a host of intangible things that are hard to put into words...we still live in this world and if you give you enter a flow of blessing that involves inflow and outflow and timing...it's just the way it is. God so loved that he gave...and those who follow in His footsteps by giving are blessed.

Paul called giving a grace in II Corinthians 8:7: "You abound in faith, utterance, and in knowledge, and your love for us, see that you abound in this grace also." Abound...in this grace also. We want to abound in grace when we come before the throne asking for mercy, or help, or peace...do we want to abound in this grace as well? (that's a heart issue each of us must ask of ourselves)

He says in verse 10 that he gives advice on that matter. Why advice? Because giving is a grace, not an external law. (His advice became our scripture so it was very good advice)

He continues: Verse 11