What is more pleasing to the Lord: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to His voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams. Rebellion is as sinful as witchcraft, and stubbornness as bad as worshipping idols. – 1 Samuel 15: 22-23

There’s so much debate about offerings and tithing among Christians that it’s become hard for a lot of people to discern what God’s command is on the matter.

I’ll be honest and say that I had a lot of uncertainty about giving and tithing.

But in order to be obedient to God’s commands, we must look to Jesus’ teachings because He was the law personified and the Son of God; no one comes to the Father except through Him.

In Matthew 22:38, Jesus clarifies where our focus should be in terms of obeying God’s commandments:

‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.

Now let’s examine what Jesus said about tithing in Luke 11: 42:

Woe to you Pharisees (judgment is coming), because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

Basically, sacrificial giving is not sold separately from the package deal of being obedient to God’s greatest commands.

If we look back to what the Prophet Samuel told Saul in 1 Samuel 15: 22-23, in essence, this is exactly what he’s saying – that sacrifice without true love for and obedience to God is just as bad as practicing witchcraft or worshipping idols.

The Apostle Paul also emphasizes this point in 1 Corinthians 13: 3:

If I give away all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but I do not have love, I gain nothing.

Sacrifice through offerings and tithes is not a stand alone command from God. Nobody can buy their way into salvation.

Rather, your sacrificial giving should be a natural result of your obedience to the first and second greatest commandments that Jesus preached.

Your devotion to God and love for others should lead you to give sacrifically without any reservations or prodding.

We must remember that God’s ultimate command for us is to love.

So when we sacrifice, we must examine ourselves to make sure we’re doing it in the right Spirit.

Be blessed,

Alexia