Tuesday 1 July 2014

Tithing in the First Century Church

If the early Church at Jerusalem tithed, it would have been to the Temple while it still stood, not to the  church. Tithing was a Jewish-Temple thing.

That's why the Gentile churches weren't asked by the Apostles to keep Moses' laws about tithes - because Gentiles weren't connected to the Temple.  

But the Apostle Paul did expect the Gentiles to carry-out the ethics which the Laws concerning giving illustrated.

That is, he wrote that it was their duty to physically support those who ministered spiritual things to them; and also to remember the genuinely poor.

In one place he instructed them to set-aside a weekly amount proportional to the amount God had prospered them.

He praised those who contibuted over and above dispite their deep poverty.

Aside from appealing to the ethics which the Law illustrated, Paul appealed also to Jesus' direct instructions regarding the support of preachers of the Gospel and regarding the poor.

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