The Lord Jesus and tithes Others will make private interpretation of Scripture to justify tithes by claiming that the Lord Himself endorsed the law of tithes (Matt 23:23, 24), asserting that the Lord was speaking to New Testament people! Many Christians blindly receive such conclusions and subsequent imposition not perceiving the simple observation that the Lord lived under the Old Covenant. As one born under the law, Christ, in the days of His flesh, did not encourage the people, at any time during His ministry, to break the Law of Moses. Their full liberty from the law to a life of faith in Him was an event still to take place through His death and resurrection. He taught the people to observe the spirit of the law rather than the letter and continually called them to place faith in Him for a new dispensation of inner law, His own life deposited in man, which would not need legal precepts to be manifest, but would depend on the working of the Spirit. The Lord was not endorsing the continuity of an element of the Mosaic Law in the coming of the New Covenant but merely pointing out a spiritual principle of the need for overall obedience in one’s relationship to God. In fact, He condemned the Pharisees’ preoccupation in giving a tenth of the most insignificant herbs grown in Israel to the exclusion of the most important principles of mercy, justice, and faithfulness. He likened this form of distorted obedience to straining a small insect from sweet wine with the teeth and then going on to swallow the largest unclean animal in Palestine! Is this not what modern Pharisees are doing? They impose the obedience of the law of tithes, a legal requirement from which Christ came to free us and call cursed people who have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places and through which they serve God without fear of the law but in the newness of life.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 08:39:56 +0000
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