faith for faith

With the ferocity for which it is argued, it is not difficult to surmise that the matter of Christian Giving is not a light one. And more often than not, when the subject is brought up in Christian circles, Christian Giving is synonymous with the tithe, i.e. ten percent of one’s pre-taxed income given to one’s local church. It is a principle that has been with many churches for a long time, and as such it has been one that has become foundational and nearly irrefutable. Many churches have been so enamored with the tithe that it has become to them as unquestionable as the deity of Christ, his virgin birth, the Trinity, etc. Therefore, when questions are raised which offer the slightest hint of opposition to the antiquated ordinance, the church arms itself as it would against heresy and casts the labels of rebellious and liberal upon those who would seek to understand Christian Giving in a different manner.

And as such, it matters very little that opposition against the principle of the tithe is brought with the desire for biblical fidelity, for it is to them foundational and irrefutable. Therefore, for those who seek to establish a biblical pattern of Christian Giving with their own lives that is not necessarily opposed to tithing (that is, not opposed to tithing for the sake of being opposed to tithing without Scriptural warrant) but is desirous to live lives that accord with God’s Word in all matters of life including giving, the battle is for them an uphill one. For it is not (in many cases) a matter of “Let us search the Scriptures for understanding,” but it is rather a matter of “Why do you break the traditions of the elders?” And as such, one might quote and discern Scripture till he blue is in the face, and yet he will gain little ground in the battle for common understanding.

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Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality (Rm. 12:12, 13).

The three–rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer–if any are to be fulfilled in the life of a Christian, each must rest upon the other. For patience in tribulation will not come apart from rejoicing in hope, nor will it come apart from incessant prayer. However, our hope will not come apart from tribulation, for the apostle says earlier in his letter, “We rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rm. 5:3-4). And incessant prayer will not come apart from rejoicing in hope and patience in tribulation, for hope and patience are the wellspring of godly supplication. The three are a three-stranded rope, where together the three are strong and stay a Christian’s life, but remove even one, and the others’ strength is diminished.

And when these three are found in the life of the Christian, it overflows practically in the contribution to the needs of the saints and the showing of hospitality. For the one who rejoices in hope of his future Inheritance by necessity does not rejoice in the world’s temporal pleasures and thereby uses his resources for the needs of the saints rather than for worldly gain. Also, the one who is patient in tribulation, because of his own suffering, sympathizes with the plight of his fellow brothers and sisters and seeks to aid them in their need and suffering. And, finally, the one who does not cease to pray to the Lord, is constantly fixed upon doing the will of the Lord, which is to love his brothers and sisters in the same manner that Christ loved him, suffering even unto death for sake of the saints. Each of these–hope, suffering, and incessant prayer–hold the Christian fast and overflow in a wellspring of generosity to the needs of the Church.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! (Matthew 23:23, 24).

There is something in human nature that strives to do as little as possible to appease one’s conscience. A classic case of this in many traditional church backgrounds is the act of tithing. It is this one act coupled with regular church attendance that makes some Christians feel as though they are square with God. They feel no guilt, and they feel that they are at peace with God in spite of the fact that God never once commands the Church to tithe and in spite of their utter neglect of the weightier call of God upon their lives.

Jesus Christ during his stint upon this earth also encountered a group who had clear consciences in spite of their disobedience to the law—the Pharisees. These self-righteous men thought that they could one-up God on his commandments so that they would be sure never to break them. They called this one-upmanship, “putting a hedge about the law.” For example, if the law commanded them not to use the Lord’s name vainly, the Pharisees would not speak the name of the Lord at all. If the law commanded them not to be drunk with wine, they would not drink wine at all. If the law commanded them not to work on the Sabbath, they would count their steps on each Sabbath and would even not save a man’s life if he were in need of rescue on the Sabbath.

Aside from not saving a man on the Sabbath, we might look upon the Pharisees’ practices quite favorably. Many of us do in fact choose not to participate in certain activities, not because they are forbidden by Scripture, but because we believe that those things are not profitable or might lead us into a certain temptation. Therefore many Christians choose not to drink, not to go to R-rated movies, not to listen to secular music, etc., all so that they might live lives that honor God. And all these are fine to practice so long as we recognize that they are not God’s law and that they are not a substitute for it.

In Matthew 23:23, this is exactly what the Pharisees had done, namely they had taken one part of God’s law given to the nation Israel, viz. tithing, and they had made it into a refined science of dividing herbs and spices. As the text indicates, this practice was not wrong in and of itself (in fact it was in accordance to the nation’s laws), but the Pharisees had put great weight and worth on tithing and regarded as worthless the truly weighty laws of God, viz. justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Christ’s condemnation of them is not light, for he declares that they not only will not enter into the kingdom of heaven, but they, by their teachings are blocking others from entering (cf. v. 23:13, 14).

Christ says elsewhere that the greatest two commandments are to love God with all our being and to love one another as we love ourselves. We should find no consolation for our consciences if we are not keeping these commandments every moment of our lives. If we are not and find satisfaction for our consciences in our tithing, our church attendance, and our G-rated movies, we are no better than the Pharisees and are just as likely to split hell wide open. And if you are wondering how loving God and loving others as we love ourselves looks, here is an example from 2 Corinthians 8:

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints—and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. But as you excel in everything—-in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also.

For anyone who has read even a few of my blog posts, you probably have noticed a trend in them: I do not think too highly of the present state of the American Church. In fact, I believe that our state is so terrible that even those among us whom we would label as the “best” of Christians are unwittingly ensnared by money and materialism. Our problems as a Church are exponentially compounded in the South where tradition regularly trumps Scripture and where we have been explaining away our disobedience to the Word so shrewdly for so many decades that we do not even view it as disobedience any more. This indeed is a great tragedy—that we sincerely believe that our disobedience is obedience and our loving the world is loving Christ.

But rather than perpetually play the role as diagnoser of the American Church’s ills and never offer a cure, God through his Word has convicted a number of us locally to form a group that we haved called “The Acts Forum” that is seeking to address two foundational doctrines of Christianity that we believe the American Church has crassly ignored: 1. The selling of possessions and living impoverished lifestyles for the sake of Christ and 2. The daily gathering of saints for fellowship, prayer, and the “breaking of bread.” My hope in writing this post today will be to challenge your minds to think outside the box of the materialism of American Christianity and to encourage those of you with similar convictions to submit your thoughts, talents, funds, and even your lives to help make this a possibility in our country and hopefully, by the pleasure of God, spark a revival to obedience in the American Church.

1. The Selling of Possessions and Living Impoverished Lifestyles
One of the clearest teachings in Scripture is God’s demand for his creature’s to delight in him over the riches of the world. This is even more explicit in the Gospels where every instance that Jesus Christ mentions the action of “storing up treasures in heaven” it is directly tied to the action of “selling all that one has.”¹ Also, whenever Christ mentions the phrase “store up treasures in heaven,” it is not clearly distinguished from salvation in general. As in the case of the rich young man of Matthew 19:16, the man asks, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life,” and Jesus replies, “Sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” And in Matthew 13, in the parable of the hidden treasure, Christ says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

As I mentioned before, these are texts that we as American Christians have been shrewdly explaining away for decades. We first throw out the “This command is applicable only to the rich young man” excuse, forgetting that most of us probably have more possessions that the rich young man ever did. Then we throw out the “This is a works based salvation” excuse, when James clearly writes, “Faith without works is dead.” And then we conveniently ignore passages like Luke 12:32, 33 where Christ says, “Fear not, little flock [i.e. poor disciples in the context and the Church in the greater context], for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.” Or we ignore examples like the Macedonians who gave joyfully to the saints out of their own extreme poverty (cf. 2Cor. 8:1-6). The testimony of Scripture is there, if we have ears to hear it.

Now I will get to the point, for I know that I am, for the most part, preaching to the choir. What we have seen in the Acts Forum in these Scriptures is not the selling of possessions just for the sake of getting rid of them (though that would be a great start), but it is the selling of possessions to give them to the poor and thereby demonstrate the love of Christ. Because of this, our chief focus is to minimize our consumption so that we might maximize our giving. Looking at all of our budgets, we determined quite easily that the highest percentage of our income goes to housing, and therefore determined that our first project would be to come up with ways to live as cheaply as possible. We have since tossed about ideas that have included the affectionately named, “Church Trailer Park,” and other similar ideas that involve constructing a Church community on a donated piece of land made up of low cost living structures that would cost not a penny more than $30,000 a piece (preferably less). This price point is set for several reasons: 1. To allow people to give more to the Church and to the spreading of the Gospel, 2. To allow people to work less so that they might serve more, 3. To make it so that a mother can stay home with her children instead of having to work to help pay a mortgage, and several others.

2. The Daily Gathering and Communion of the Saints
You might have already picked up on this aspect in the “Church Trailer Park” concept, and it is the idea of a community that consists of members of the Church. In an age of freeways and long commutes, it is quite often the case that we live so far away from other members of our local church that we only see them once or twice a week. The Acts Forum seeks to remedy this by making the Church those whom we go home to not the place where we go on Sunday. In such an environment, accountability and edification would be daily occurrences and would be constant reminders to us that our home is not in this present age.

I would like to challenge you to pray for us who make up the Acts Forum—to pray that God would provide the means and the ingenuity to glorify his Name in America and in the nations through the giving up of material wealth for the sake of the Church and the spread of the Gospel. I would also like to challenge you to get involved with the Acts Forum. We meet weekly (for the most part) on Saturday mornings at Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell, North Carolina for a time of prayer and discussion about the Kingdom. You can stay up to date with the Acts Forum events by joining the Facebook group linked here. Thanks and God bless.

¹ Matt. 6:19,20; 13:44; 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 12:33; Luke 18:22

Thanksgiving Day in America could be more accurately renamed “National Gluttony Day.” The holiday to us is more a day to feed our mouths and to overfill our stomachs than it is one where we reflect on the goodness of the Lord revealed in the abundance that he has given to us and to thank him for it.

This Thanksgiving season, I challenge you (as I am challenging myself) to think of and to pray for the saints abroad who do not share in our abundance. I challenge you to think of them as they starve out of their poverty or imprisonment, and to remember their starvation while you gorge yourself. I challenge you to have a broken heart for those saints who for the Gospel’s sake do not get to eat turkey & dressing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc., and to have a broken heart for yourself knowing that those who starve have a better understanding of the Gospel than we who glut.

I would also challenge you not to forget the saints after you have remembered them this week. Remember them throughout the year, and aspire to help them with your abundance. Remember from the Scriptures the Macedonians who gave out of their extreme poverty with great joy to the relief of the saints in Jerusalem. Cannot we who know nothing of extreme poverty sacrifice a bit of what we have to aid our brothers and sisters who are starving, who have no place to live, and who have no clothes on their back?

Our Father in Heaven, you have been most gracious to us in this country. You have given us much more than our daily bread and have provided for us beautiful homes and closets full of clothes. I pray, dear Lord, that our abundance would not be a snare and a trap to us, but that we would look at our riches as gifts to be given to the saints on whom you have set your love abroad. Burden our hearts with their plight for the rest of our lives so that we might love you rightly by loving your saints and thereby store up for ourselves treasure in heaven. Amen.

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints—-and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. But as you excel in everything—-in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you see that you excel in this act of grace also(2 Cor. 8:1-7).

A big problem with American Christianity is that it is all supposing and no practice. We suppose that if we were persecuted for the sake of Christ that we would keep the faith. We suppose that if Christ called us to forsake our family and friends and to follow him that we would drop our nets and follow him. We suppose that if Christ commanded us, like he did the rich young ruler, to sell all of our possessions and give them to the poor that we would. And we suppose that if we found ourselves impoverished, that we would be satisfied with Christ as our portion. At least so we suppose.

Our problem also is that we view these Scriptural “supposals” as the circumstances of a niche and not as demands for the whole. We cannot be persecuted, for example, because we live in a free country. We do not have to sell our possessions, because Jesus was simply making a moral point. And we do not have to worry about being happy in poverty, because, obviously, impoverishment isn’t our calling as Americans.

But then we encounter the impoverished Macedonians. These saints could have easily looked at their poverty and concluded that the Lord did not bless them with the gift of giving. They could have easily been content with praying for the needy saints and with tending to their own physical needs. But they were not content. They heard of the church’s plight and chose to give to the saints according to their impoverished means–that is, whatever little they had in excess. And yet they were not content with that. Scripture says that the Macedonians begged the Apostle to allow them to give beyond their means to the relief of the saints. What does this mean? It means that the Macedonians became creative. They looked at their present impoverished way of living and asked themselves what they could do as a church to consume less so that they might give more. Perhaps they decided that they could live okay on one meal a day instead of two. Perhaps they decided to squeeze multiple families into one home to cut their housing expenses. Perhaps they decided to make do with the clothes on their back though they were worn and torn. Whatever they did, they did it with joy-filled hearts, because they gave all of themselves to God and his purposes.

Now, let’s take a look at ourselves. Do we even give according to our means to the relief of the saints of God and to the spreading of his Gospel? I must confess that I do not, and I am sure that most of us, if we were honest, would admit that we do not. We certainly do not give beyond our means and are, for this reason, robbing ourselves of the same joy that the Macedonians had in Christ alone. Let’s for the sake of our joy challenge each other to be like the Macedonians and to think of creative ways that will minimize our consumption and maximize our giving.