No. The New Testament does not command Christians to tithe.
This is not a permission slip to give less, and it is not an argument against giving regularly and generously to your local church. It is an argument that the New Testament asks for something more demanding than a percentage — and that the popular teaching that 10% is the biblical floor for Christian giving rests on exegetical claims that do not survive a careful look at the actual texts.
Three claims usually carry the weight. That tithing predates the Mosaic law and is therefore a creation-order principle. That the Mosaic tithe was a flat 10% that carries forward as a moral norm. And that Malachi 3:10 promises material blessing to faithful tithers in any age. None of them holds up. And the New Testament — when you actually go looking for what it says about a tithe — turns out to say something else entirely.
Did Tithing Exist Before the Mosaic Law?
Two texts get cited for this: Abram giving a tenth to Melchizedek in Genesis 14, and Jacob vowing a tenth at Bethel in Genesis 28. If tithing predates Moses, the argument runs, it must be a creation-order principle binding on every age.
Read carefully, neither text carries the weight.
Genesis 14 is a one-time act. Abram gives a tenth of war spoil — not regular income, not agricultural produce — to Melchizedek as he returns from battle. Gordon Wenham places this within the standard ancient Near Eastern practice of tribute from war booty: one-tenth was a customary share given to the local priest-king. It is what victorious warriors did. The text records it without prescription, and Abram never does it again.
When the author of Hebrews picks up the same scene (Heb. 7:1–10), he is not establishing a giving principle. He is making a Christological argument — that Melchizedek is greater than Abraham, that the Levitical priesthood is therefore inferior, and that Christ as priest after the order of Melchizedek supersedes the entire Levitical system. The tithe is the vehicle of the argument, not its point.
Jacob’s vow at Bethel is even thinner. If God will be with me… then the LORD shall be my God… I will give a full tenth to you (Gen. 28:20–22). The syntax is conditional — if God does this, then Jacob will do that. This is not covenant faithfulness; it is a bargain. The text tells us tithing was a known religious practice in the ancient world. It does not tell us God commanded it.
Was the Old Testament Tithe Actually 10 Percent?
It wasn’t.
If you grew up hearing about “the tithe” in the singular, you absorbed a simplification of the Mosaic system that the texts do not support. The Pentateuch describes not one tithe but at least three, each with a distinct purpose, recipient, and timing.
The Levitical tithe (Lev. 27:30–33; Num. 18:21–24) was an annual tenth of agricultural produce given to the Levites — who, unlike the other tribes, received no territorial inheritance and depended on this tax for their sustenance. The Festival tithe (Deut. 12:17–18; 14:22–27) was a second annual tenth consumed by the family at the central sanctuary during the appointed feasts. The Poor tithe (Deut. 14:28–29; 26:12–13) was a third tenth given every third year to the Levites, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.
Add it up. Two annual tithes plus a triennial third-year tithe averages to roughly 23% of annual produce. Not ten percent. Randy Alcorn’s widely read Money, Possessions, and Eternity collapses these multiple tithes into a single 10% figure — a simplification that obscures the actual Mosaic system before it gets to the prior question of whether that system applies to you.
Christopher Wright’s analysis is decisive on the larger point: the Levitical tithe is a civil compensation mechanism embedded in the institutional life of a theocratic state — a payroll tax for the priestly tribe sustained by the agricultural output of the landed tribes. The moral principles those mechanisms embodied — that ministry deserves sustenance, that worship belongs at the center of common life, that the poor are God’s particular concern — remain in full force. The specific Mosaic mechanism does not. When the theocratic state ceased to exist, the institutional basis for the levy ceased with it.
What Is Malachi 3:10 Actually Promising?
No text gets deployed in modern giving appeals more than this one: Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing.
Read in context, the verse does not promise what most sermons claim it promises.
Malachi addresses post-exilic Israel — a community that has rebuilt the temple and resumed covenant life with profound halfheartedness. The priests are offering blemished sacrifices (Mal. 1:6–14). The people are violating their marriage covenants (Mal. 2:13–16). And they are withholding the Levitical tithe so the temple personnel cannot fulfill their duties.
The charge — you are robbing me — is a covenant lawsuit. The promise that follows is a covenant restoration promise to a specific people who have violated a specific Mosaic obligation. The “storehouse” is the temple storehouse. The “blessing” is the covenant blessing of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28: fruitfulness in the land, abundance of harvest, protection from locusts.
The character of God this passage reveals — his faithfulness, his generosity, his invitation to trust him with material things — is permanently true. But the specific mechanism cannot be transposed onto your relationship with your local church without importing covenantal terms that don’t apply, and promising what the New Testament does not promise on those terms.
Does the New Testament Command Tithing?
Tithing advocates usually reach for Matthew 23:23, where Jesus tells the Pharisees they should tithe their mint, dill, and cumin. The argument: Jesus affirms tithing, therefore tithing binds Christians.
Notice when Jesus says this. He is addressing Jews under the Mosaic covenant — before the cross, before the resurrection, before Pentecost, before the new covenant is inaugurated. Of course they should tithe. The Mosaic law required it. Jesus’s point is not “keep tithing.” His point is that they have turned a Mosaic obligation into a meticulous performance while neglecting the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. The text indicts hypocrisy within the old covenant; it does not establish a norm for the Gentile church.
Now turn to the rest of the New Testament — the letters written to actual churches after Pentecost, after the new covenant is in full effect — and look for the tithe.
It isn’t there.
Paul addresses sexual ethics, food laws, lawsuits, spiritual gifts, the Lord’s Supper, the relationship of Jew and Gentile. He is not shy about telling churches what God requires. And he never mentions a tithe. Not once. Not in any letter to any church.
His actual giving instruction is 1 Corinthians 16:1–2: regular (on the first day of every week), universal (each of you), proportional (as he may prosper), and purposive (the collection for the suffering saints in Jerusalem). What it does not contain is a percentage. Paul had every opportunity to say “give a tenth,” and didn’t. Acts 2:44–45 goes further: the early church shared possessions to meet community need — a generosity that makes the tithe look modest by comparison.
The pattern is consistent. Jesus indicts Pharisaical priorities without commanding tithing for the church. Paul instructs churches to give regularly, proportionally, and cheerfully — without naming a percentage. The early church practices something more radical than a tithe. And nowhere does any New Testament writer impose the Mosaic tithe on the new covenant community.
What the New Testament Asks Instead
What replaces the floor is not less demanding. It is more.
Paul’s most developed teaching on giving is in 2 Corinthians 8–9, and it begins not with a number but with a person. Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9). The incarnation is the paradigm. Christ did not give 10% of his divine wealth and retain the rest. He emptied himself. He became poor so others could become rich. That is the pattern your giving is called to reflect.
The character of giving that flows from this grace, Paul says, has three features. It is voluntary — as he has decided in his heart. It is uncompelled — not reluctantly or under compulsion. And it is cheerful — the Greek word is hilaros, from which the English hilarious comes directly. Not grim duty. Not the satisfaction of a number met. Something closer to delight.
This is not a softer ethic. It is a far harder one. Ten percent can be discharged. The grace of 2 Corinthians 8:9 cannot. The question it asks is not “have I given my number?” but “does my giving reflect the grace I have been shown?” That is a question the most generous person in any room cannot fully answer yes to. It is meant to produce a generosity that deepens over a lifetime — not because you must, but because you have been given to first.
The Westminster Confession (XX.2) puts the Reformation principle that protects this freedom plainly: God alone is Lord of the conscience, and to bind the conscience where God has not bound it is to usurp his authority. Where Scripture is silent on a percentage, the teacher who imposes one has exceeded his warrant — and the Christian who lives under that imposed obligation is bearing a weight Scripture did not place there.
What This Means for Your Giving
Pull up the floor and the question shifts. It is no longer have I met my obligation? It becomes does my giving reflect the grace I have received? That is a harder question — and a better one.
Give to your local church regularly and generously. The New Testament’s silence on a percentage is not a license for stinginess; it is an invitation to a deeper, more sustained generosity. The local church remains the central community in which the gospel is preached, the sacraments are administered, and the body of Christ is formed. Faithful support of it is a real expression of kingdom generosity — not because Malachi 3 requires it of you, but because the New Testament forms a people who instinctively give where they are being fed.
Give without compulsion. If your giving is being squeezed out of you by guilt or by a number you cannot quite meet, something has gone wrong with the engine. Paul says it plainly: not reluctantly, not under compulsion. The giving that pleases God flows from a heart that has seen what Christ gave up. If yours doesn’t yet, the answer is not a tighter pledge. It is a longer look at the cross.
And once the floor is gone, where your generosity goes becomes nearly as live a question as how much. That is a conversation for another day — but it is the conversation that opens up once the obligation framework is set down.
This is the kind of question worth sitting with — preferably alongside someone trained to think about money theologically and practically at the same time.