The Commands of Christ, Part Thirty-One

Part thirty-one comes from a familiar story: Pharisees trying to trap and/or trick Jesus into saying something he shouldn’t. You’d think they’d have learned by now, but… The story takes place in Matthew chapter 22. The Pharisees get some Roman officials with them to try to get Jesus to tell the crowd that’s following Him not to pay their taxes so they can have Him arrested. Jesus, being who He is, asks why they are testing Him, calls them hypocrites, and asks for the coin used to pay the tax. Verses 20-21 read:

And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” Then He said to them, “Then pay to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

It’s not secret that Christ had a way with words. It’s to dismiss this exchange as Jesus dealing with Pharisees and miss the command he’s giving us ever-so-subtly. Let’s back up just a bit from our core verse and look at verses 15-17 in the same chapter.

Then the Pharisees went and plotted together how they might trap Him in what He said. And they sent their disciples to Him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and do not care what anyone thinks; for You are not partial to anyone. Tell us then, what do You think? Is it permissible to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not?”

See, based on the question wasn’t “Do we pay taxes to Caesar OR do we pay our tithes?” The question was central around the poll-tax. Jesus could have simply left it as, “…pay to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s…” and been done with it. So, why add the second half? Because he was also giving instruction beyond the initial question. “…and to God the things that are God’s.”

So, what are the things that are God’s? There are some points the Jewish community would have had back then that don’t translate to modern times. For example, most Christians today aren’t living under the rule of an occupying force. So while there was an intentional trap the Pharisees had set to try to get Jesus to be dismissive of Caesar’s rule so He would be arrested (Herodians served Herod and Herod served the Roman Empire), in our modern culture the situation would revolve less around taxes and more around getting Jesus to make a Biblical stand that might get Him “cancelled.” Ultimately, what Chris is saying to give to God is our allegiance. But what does giving God our allegiance look like?

I have heard pastors in the past use this verse in the New Testament to reinforce the concept of tithing. It’s not a big stretch, but it is a stretch. The Bible outlines that there were women who followed Christ and contributed to his mission from their own resources (Luke 8:1-3). These women undoubtedly had an allegiance to Christ and, as a result, they sought to help His ministry by sharing what God had blessed them with. I think those short verses do more to reinforce tithing than this story in Matthew.

There is also the story of the widow’s offering (Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4). Here, Jesus praises the woman who gave the last of what she had because she wanted to honor God over those who gave more but still had ample to fall back on. So while the New Testament reinforces the concept of tithing to support the ministry; it’s the heart we have when we tithe that ultimately matters most.

It’s also important to acknowledge that we live in a different culture now than existed back then. The word “tithe” literally means “a tenth part” and it was intended as a part of whatever the person did to support themselves. If you were a farmer, it was a tenth of your crops. If you raised livestock, it was a tenth of whatever animal you raised. Nowadays, we work jobs and get paid in money. So our tithe is money. But there’s another aspect of tithing that speaks more to our level of allegiance to God than our tithing of money.

For some, money is difficult to part with. Maybe it’s because they don’t have much of it. Maybe it’s because they feel a need to horde it, even in a state of plenty. For others, money is just a tool and whether their tithe is small or large, it doesn’t really matter to them. God is really great at making whatever you give more. But, and I’m sure someone, somewhere is going to cringe when they read this: you also need to tithe your time. If we tithe our income because every dollar is a gift from God then we must also tithe our time because every breath is also.

Now, I know what you’re thinking because I thought it too the first time God punched me in the feels with that: ten percent of my time is 2.4 hours a day. 8 hours for work plus 6 hours for me to sleep is already 14 hours. Maybe your commute is 30 minutes each way, so an hour a day. That brings it down to 13 hours. If you’re having three healthy meals a day, let’s assume an hour per meal. That’s only 10 hours left. If you want 8 hours of sleep instead of 6, it’s only 8 hours left at this point. By the time you factor things like meal prep, cleaning, family time, the window to fit in time for God keeps getting smaller. This is going to sound blunt, but there’s no other way to say it: if your screen time is more than 2.4 hours per day, you have 2.4 hours you can give to God.

There’s a lot of different ways that 2.4 hours can look. It can be studying your Bible. It can be prayer. It can be helping in your community and using that service as an opportunity to spread God’s word. It can be Godly fellowship with members of your church that helps you grow. It is often going to be a mix of those things. But, at it’s core, it should always be time you are investing to grow your relationship with the Father.

When I was struggling to tithe monetarily, the advice I received was “start small.” I was scared of being able to afford 10% at the time, so I started by tithing what I felt I could. I think at the time, it was around $10 and it wasn’t super consistent. Once I was able to do that small amount consistently, increasing the amount became something easier to do. “Well, I’m already doing $10, I probably won’t miss another $10 on top of that,” was the mindset I was developing. Then, I was already doing $20, so $30 probably wouldn’t be too hard either. This same process works when tithing your time.

Start by making sure you’re spending at least 10 minutes between your Bible and prayer every day. Build from that and remember that it doesn’t have to be all at once. Maybe you can only make 10 minutes in the morning before you have to start getting ready for work, but you can make another hour after dinner. Great! But the point is to get started building that time with the Father.

Remember: “…and to God the things that are God’s” is ultimately about our hearts, our minds, and our souls (Matthew 22:37). Anything that is getting in the way of doing so is something you have made an idol in your life. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hobby or an obligation. It doesn’t matter if it’s something you’re doing or something you’re not doing. Fulfilling our obligations is the modern version of “Then pay to Caesar…” and it doesn’t excuse us from “…and to God the things that are God’s.”