I think tithing was the vehicle that God gave Israel to express certain ethics. The vehicle won't be exactly the same today - especially seeing the Temple and Levitical priesthood don't exist anymore - but the underlying ethics are timeless. Therefore as believers we do fulfil the same underlying ethics - if we are led of the Spirit and walk in love.
Some of the relevant ethics include: honouring God with your substance; honouring God with the firstfruits; giving proportionately to one's income; honouring those who minister to us; offering some help to the poor; paying to all their dues; paying everyone who serves us in some way; paying our fair share of things; giving in faith that God will provide our needs - and then there is giving that is extravagantly above what is proportionate to our income. It may be that the amount of 10% is also an ethic in and of itself.
Anyway, one day I sat down and thought about all those ethics; then, completely ignoring the amount of 10% for now, I estimated the annual cost of running our local church; and I divided it by the number of adults in our church - to find-out how much each person should contribute on average; then I found out the average wage in Australia, and expressed my income as a percentage of the annual income; then multiplied that figure by the average cost per person of running the church - to find-out what my personal annual contribution to the cost of running the church should be if I pay my fair share.
I found out that the amount came to almost exactly 10% of my income - even though I calculated it not by working-out 10% of my income but purely from the point of view of pulling my share of the weight.
In other words, as New Covenant believers, we fulfil the ethics that were underneath the law of tithing just by acting responsibly and ethically - even without consciously calculating our tithe. But the Law is still good, for the lawless, said Paul.
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