Once a believer sees that the tithe was Israel's law and was never laid on the body of Christ, an honest question follows close behind: then what do I actually do when the plate comes by? It is a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer. The man who has been freed from the ten-percent rule is not thereby freed from the privilege of giving — he is freed into something better. Paul did not knock the law's prop out from under us and then leave us with nothing to lean on. He gave the body of Christ a fuller, freer, more searching pattern of giving than the tithe ever was. This study takes up that positive pattern: where grace giving comes from, what governs it, what it is not, where the gift goes, how the apostle himself modeled it, and the contented heart it all rests on. (The case that the tithe itself is gone is made in Tithing, Grace Giving, and the Believer's Liberty in Christ; here we assume it and build on it.)

Giving Begins Where Grace Begins

The tithe began with a command. Grace giving begins with a fact — a fact about what God has already done. Before Paul ever mentions an amount, a day, or a method, he sets the whole subject on its only proper foundation:

"For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9 KJV)

That verse sits in the middle of Paul's longest passage on giving (2 Corinthians 8–9), and it is no accident that he plants it there. The pattern for the believer's giving is the giving of Christ Himself, who gave up everything and held nothing back. Grace giving is therefore never a way of getting something from God; it is the overflow of having already received everything from Him. We are the rich, not the needy — already blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3), already complete in Him (Colossians 2:10). A man gives freely once he is persuaded he lacks nothing. That is why law could command the tithe but could never produce a cheerful giver: fear can open a wallet, but only grace can open a heart.

This is also why grace giving is harder than tithing, not easier. The law settled the question with a number — pay the ten percent and the account is closed. Grace asks something the law never could: that the gift come from a heart that has understood the riches it has in Christ and gives in answer to them. You cannot discharge that with a percentage. It reaches further than your money; it reaches the disposition of the man.

That is why Paul lists giving among the graces a believer is to grow in. As the Corinthians abounded in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, and in love, he urged them to abound here too:

"Therefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also." (2 Corinthians 8:7 KJV)

Giving is not a tax laid alongside the spiritual life; it is a grace that grows up within it — something the maturing believer comes to do more freely, not less, as he comes to know his Lord.

Purposed in the Heart, Not Pressured in the Pew

When Paul does describe how the believer gives, his very first concern is the condition of the giver's heart:

"Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver." (2 Corinthians 9:7 KJV)

Read what that verse rules out. It rules out giving grudgingly — squeezed out under guilt. It rules out giving of necessity — extracted by a rule that leaves no room for the will. The gift God loves is the one a man has purposed in his heart, decided freely and gladly for himself. The amount is left to the individual believer and his God; what is not left open is the spirit of it. A reluctant tithe and a cheerful gift may be the same number of dollars, yet only one of them is grace giving.

Paul says the same thing from the other side when he commends the willing mind:

"For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not." (2 Corinthians 8:12 KJV)

The gift is measured against what a man has, never against what he does not have. This single verse dismantles every manipulative appeal that tells a struggling believer he must give beyond his means and "believe" for God to make up the difference. God does not accept a gift according to what you lack. He accepts the willing mind that gives out of what is actually in hand. That is liberty, and it is also dignity: the poorest saint and the richest saint stand on exactly the same ground before God, because both are measured by the heart and not the sum.

Paul will not even let his own counsel harden into a command. In the very passage where he urges the Corinthians to give, he is careful to say he is not legislating:

"I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love." (2 Corinthians 8:8 KJV)

"And herein I give my advice:..." (2 Corinthians 8:10 KJV)

The apostle of grace gives advice, not a statute — counsel offered to a willing heart, never a rule pressed on an unwilling one. The moment giving becomes a commandment with a number attached, it has stopped being grace giving.

Notice what is absent here. There is no fixed percentage. There is no storehouse. There is no curse hanging over the believer who falls short, and no extra blessing dangled in front of the one who gives more. All of that belonged to Israel's covenant program, where giving was tied to the land, the Levites, and the promises of the law. Drag any of it into the body of Christ and you have quietly traded the liberty Paul fought for back into "the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1 KJV).

As God Hath Prospered: Proportion Without a Percentage

Liberty is not the same as carelessness. Grace giving has no percentage, but it is neither random nor occasional. Paul gives it a rhythm and a measure:

"Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." (1 Corinthians 16:2 KJV)

Paul gave this order in connection with the collection for the saints (1 Corinthians 16:1); but the way of giving it prescribes outlasts that one collection, and three things in it stand out. It is planned, not impulsive — upon the first day of the week, set aside deliberately rather than dropped in on a wave of feeling (Paul is describing orderly, forethoughtful giving, not binding a sacred day on the conscience). It is for every believer — let every one of you, not only the wealthy and not only the farmer, as the tithe in fact was. And it is proportionate — as God hath prospered him. There is the grace measure that answers the law's flat tenth. The tithe asked the same percentage of every Israelite under its terms; grace asks each believer to give in keeping with how the Lord has actually prospered him. For one that will be a little; for another, far more than ten percent. The man who waits for a rule to tell him the number has missed the point. He is to weigh his own prosperity before the Lord and give accordingly.

Paul's reason for the regular laying-aside is worth noting too: that there be no gatherings when I come. He wanted the saints giving thoughtfully and in advance, so that giving never became a last-minute pressure campaign. The whole arrangement is calm, orderly, and free of the emotional drives that mark so much modern fund-raising.

Sowing and Reaping — Rightly Divided

No passage on giving is more abused than the verse that comes just before the cheerful-giver verse:

"But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully." (2 Corinthians 9:6 KJV)

The prosperity preacher reads this as a money machine: plant a "seed" of cash and harvest a financial windfall. But look closely at what Paul actually says, and at what he does not say. He does not say the man who sows a little money reaps a lot of money. He says the man who sows sparingly reaps sparingly, and the man who sows bountifully reaps bountifully — like for like, in measure. This is not a covenant promise of supernatural return like Malachi's open windows of heaven; that promise belonged to Israel under the law. This is the plain principle God built into His creation: you reap the kind and the measure of what you sow.

So what does the bountiful giver reap? Paul tells us in the surrounding context — not money, but the working of God's grace in him: the joy, the proof of love, the fruit that giving produces in the giver's own heart. He is quoting the Lord's own principle that Paul recorded for us:

"...It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20:35 KJV)

The blessing falls on the giver, and it is the blessing of being made more like the God who gives. That is also why Paul could tell the Philippians, who had supported him generously, that his joy was not in their cash:

"Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account." (Philippians 4:17 KJV)

The "return" on grace giving is real, but it is spiritual and it accrues to the giver's account before God — not a check in the mail. Anyone who tells you to give in order to get rich has read Israel's covenant into Paul's epistles and turned the grace of giving into a transaction.

What God does promise the giver is not wealth but sufficiency — enough, and to spare, for every good work:

"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:" (2 Corinthians 9:8 KJV)

That is the true increase Paul holds out: a God who supplies the cheerful giver with all he needs to keep on doing good — never a guarantee of riches, but the steady sufficiency of grace.

Where the Gift Goes

Grace giving is free, but it is not aimless. Paul points the body of Christ's giving in three directions — two that the assembly tends to together, and one that is the individual believer's own.

First, the practical needs of the local assembly and the work. Paul shows assemblies handling money together as a body — partnering in the work of the gospel and meeting its costs. He commends the Philippians for exactly this:

"Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity." (Philippians 4:15-16 KJV)

Giving and receiving is the language of a church's corporate financial life — a congregation gathering its means and directing them to the needs of the work. Paul speaks of it again when he tells the Corinthians he had taken support from other assemblies: "I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service." (2 Corinthians 11:8 KJV)

Part of that need is simply a place to gather. Here grace leaves the believer free, for Scripture commands no particular form. Often the early saints met in one another's homes — "...the church that is in their house..." (Romans 16:5 KJV); "...the church which is in his house." (Colossians 4:15 KJV); "...the church in thy house:" (Philemon 2 KJV) — which suited their circumstances, including the realities of assembling under Roman law. But meeting in a home was never laid down as the proper way. Securing a place is just as fitting: the Lord Himself sent His disciples to arrange a furnished upper room in which to keep the passover — "And he shall shew you a large upper room furnished: there make ready." (Luke 22:12 KJV) (This is cited only as a historical practice, not as a doctrinal point for the body of Christ; the passover and the upper room belong to Israel's program. It shows simply that arranging a place to meet is no novelty and nothing to be ashamed of.) A home, a rented hall, or an owned building are all matters of liberty and wisdom, none commanded and none forbidden. What the body of Christ does not have is a temple or a storehouse God has made sacred and commanded us to fund — that belonged to Israel's program. The standing principle is the one that does carry over: the saints provide together, in an orderly way and among themselves, for the practical needs of their gathering and the work that goes out from it, so that the work is not hindered.

Second, those who labor in teaching the Word. Paul is plain that the man who is fed spiritually owes material support to the man who feeds him:

"Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things." (Galatians 6:6 KJV)

In his fullest treatment of the matter, Paul begins with three pictures drawn from ordinary life, each making the same point — the worker shares in what his work produces:

"Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?" (1 Corinthians 9:7 KJV)

The soldier does not finance his own campaign; the man who plants a vineyard eats its grapes; the shepherd who tends the flock drinks its milk. So it is with the man who labors among the saints in spiritual things. To press the point further, Paul reaches back to a single line in the law of Moses and shows the principle God had folded into it all along:

"For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope." (1 Corinthians 9:9-10 KJV)

The ox that treads out the grain is not kept from eating as it works; it has a right to a share of the very harvest it labors in. Paul says that statute was written not really for the animal's sake but for our sakes — to teach that the man who labors has a right to partake of the fruit of his labor. Applied to the teacher, the conclusion follows at once: the laborer in the Word may live of the Word.

"If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?" (1 Corinthians 9:11 KJV)

He draws the same lesson once more from Israel's own sanctuary, where those who served at it were fed by it:

"Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?" (1 Corinthians 9:13 KJV)

Then he seals the whole argument with the Lord's own ordinance:

"Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel." (1 Corinthians 9:14 KJV)

"Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine." (1 Timothy 5:17 KJV)

This is not a salary demanded by law or a tithe owed to a clergy class. It is the grace recognition that "...The labourer is worthy of his reward." (1 Timothy 5:18 KJV) The saints who profit from a man's faithful teaching gladly share their material things with him — willingly, not as a tax.

Here a word of caution is needed, because the believer coming out from under a tithing arrangement is prone to overshoot the mark. Stung by years of pressure, he often concludes that the man who taught him the tithe was simply greedy, and from there he swings to the opposite error — that a preacher should receive nothing at all for the ministry, that any paid minister is suspect. Both halves of that reaction need guarding. First, the fault in tithing is almost always doctrinal, not a matter of motive: the man failed to rightly divide the word, not necessarily to master his love of money. Charity reads a brother as mistaken before it reads him as covetous. Second — and more to the point — the cure for a false rule is not to deny a true right. We have just heard Paul insist, from the ox to the altar to the Lord's own ordinance, that the man who labors in the Word may live of the Word. To answer the tithe by withholding all support from a faithful teacher is to land in the opposite ditch and rob him of what Paul plainly calls his right.

It is true that Paul, on occasion, declined to use that right. He labored with his own hands so as not to be a charge to the young assemblies — "...labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God." (1 Thessalonians 2:9 KJV) — and he said he would rather die than have his glorying made void:

"If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ." (1 Corinthians 9:12 KJV)

But mark why and how he did it. He waived the right freely, for the gospel's sake, in particular circumstances — and in the very same breath he affirmed that the right was genuinely his (are not we rather?). A right voluntarily set aside is not a right that never existed. The same Paul who refused wages at Corinth gladly received the gift the Philippians sent, calling it "...an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God." (Philippians 4:18 KJV) The lesson is not that ministers go unpaid; it is that support is the saints' glad privilege and the laborer's real right, to be given freely and, at times, freely forgone — never demanded, and never despised.

Third, the believer's own open hand to those in need. Here the instruction is personal — it governs how each believer uses what God has given him, not a corporate offering the assembly is obliged to take. Paul tells the individual saint to be ready and generous toward brethren in want: "Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality." (Romans 12:13 KJV) He even gives the working believer a reason to earn beyond his own needs — so he will have something to share: "...that he may have to give to him that needeth." (Ephesians 4:28 KJV) And he charges those with means to make open-handedness a settled habit: "That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate;" (1 Timothy 6:18 KJV)

A word is needed about the well-known relief offering of 2 Corinthians 8–9, since it is so often pressed into service as a pattern for ongoing missionary budgets and annual pledge drives. It was nothing of the kind. It was a single, special collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem in their want — gathered once, for a particular need, in a season of dearth that fell on Judaea (Acts 11:28-30) — not a standing offering the churches repeated. Its very rationale belonged to that hour in God's dealings: the believing Gentiles had been made partakers of the Jews' spiritual things, and so it was fitting they minister to them in return in carnal things.

"For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things." (Romans 15:26-27 KJV)

What still instructs the body of Christ from that collection is its manner — the willing mind, the cheerful heart, and the fairness Paul required: that giving be "...by an equality...", never a matter of "...other men be eased, and ye burdened..." (2 Corinthians 8:13-14 KJV). But its occasion was singular. To bind it on the saints as a recurring obligation is the very error Paul guarded against — turning a free, one-time relief into a standing levy.

One more freedom belongs here, and it belongs to the assembly as a whole. Just as Scripture commands no fixed form for the place of meeting, it commands no fixed machinery for the offering. Paul left the gathering and handling of the gift to the saints' own judgment: they approved their own trusted men to carry it (1 Corinthians 16:3), and the brother who travelled with it was chosen of the churches themselves (2 Corinthians 8:19). How a local assembly collects its giving — a box at the back, a plate passed, gifts sent by mail or by hand — how often it does so, and how it apportions what comes in among the work, its teachers, and the needy, are all matters of its own liberty and wisdom. Paul binds only two things: that it be honest and open —

"Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men." (2 Corinthians 8:21 KJV)

— and that it be done in order: "Let all things be done decently and in order." (1 Corinthians 14:40 KJV) Within those, no assembly need conform to another's pattern.

And what of the believer who has no sound assembly near him — meeting with none, or only at a distance? He is not shut out of any of this. The objects of grace giving are still within his reach: those who actually feed him the word, wherever they labor, have the claim Paul describes (Galatians 6:6), and saints in want are never far to seek (Romans 12:13). A believer on his own is still free, and still privileged, to give.

Behind all of this stands the ordinary expectation that the believer works for his living — "...that if any would not work, neither should he eat." (2 Thessalonians 3:10 KJV) — so that giving flows out of honest labor and not out of presumption.

Paul's Own Example: Not Yours, but You

Paul did not merely teach this; he lived it, and his own conduct is the best safeguard against turning grace giving into a racket. He refused to be a financial burden, and he made his motive unmistakable:

"...I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you:..." (2 Corinthians 12:14 KJV)

Not yours, but you. That single phrase is the heart of grace giving from the side of those who receive support. The faithful teacher is after the saints themselves — their growth, their joy, their service to the Lord — not their money. The man who labors in the Word is worthy of support, yet he never manipulates, never guilts, never threatens, and never makes the gift a test of anyone's spirituality. He trusts the same grace he preaches to do its work in the giver's heart. Where that trust is missing, you find the appeals and the pressure; where it is present, you find liberty on both sides.

Godliness with Contentment, Not the Love of Money

There is one more thing the tithe could never touch, and grace giving cannot do without: a heart set free from the love of money. Paul's whole doctrine of giving assumes a believer who has learned to be content.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content." (1 Timothy 6:6-8 KJV)

The contented man gives easily, because money has no grip on him. The man who must be rich cannot:

"But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." (1 Timothy 6:9-10 KJV)

This cuts two ways, and both belong to the matter of giving. In the giver, the love of money chokes the cheerful heart and turns every gift into a grudging loss. In the teacher it is more dangerous still: a man who supposes "...that gain is godliness..." (1 Timothy 6:5 KJV) will trim the truth to keep his hearers content and paying — and there the love of money becomes the very root from which a whole ruined ministry grows. This is the deepest reason a tithe-driven pulpit goes wrong, and the deepest reason the answer is never to despise honest support, but to prize the truth above the money on both sides of the offering: to give cheerfully, and to teach faithfully, each man held by contentment rather than gain.

The Liberty and the Joy

Put it all together and the picture is the very opposite of the burden so many came out of. There is no percentage to satisfy, no curse to dread, no windows of heaven to pry open. There is instead a free man, persuaded of the riches he already has in Christ, giving as he has purposed in his heart — regularly, proportionately, cheerfully — toward the work of the assembly, the support of those who teach him, and the relief of saints in need. He gives because he has received, and the blessing he reaps is to be made a little more like the Giver who became poor for his sake.

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." (Galatians 5:1 KJV)

That liberty is not an excuse to give nothing; it is the only soil in which true giving grows. The tithe is gone. What replaces it is not a smaller rule but a larger freedom — and a deeper joy than the law could ever command.

© 2026 Edward R. Cross