1. Sowing and reaping is a natural principle of the world

Tithing is basically a form of sowing and reaping – the belief that if you sow money, you will reap financially and materially; if you don’t sow money, you won’t reap financially or materially. I don’t dispute that sowing and reaping is a principle in the Bible, nor that it works; what I dispute is that Christians should live according to it when it comes to the financial/material realm. Let me explain.

Genesis 8:22 is often quoted: that God instituted ‘seedtime and harvest’ and that this will never cease. This is obviously true in both the physical realm – to get a harvest you must plant a seed first. And it also works in the financial/material realm, as shown by verses such as Proverbs 11:24-25:

One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.

A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.

So if it works, why not live according to this truth? Here are two simple questions to think about.

Question 1: Does sowing and reaping take faith to make it work?

When you plant a seed, do you need to believe that that seed will grow in order for it to grow and produce a harvest? Of course not! In the physical world, given that the seed is planted and left in the right conditions, it will automatically grow, even if the farmer forgets it’s there. And there are no passages in the Bible that state that sowing and reaping takes faith to make it work; instead, the principle is taken for granted (e.g. Gal 6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows).

Question 2: Does sowing and reaping work only for Christians, or for everyone?

Does it only work for people who have lived after the cross of Jesus Christ, or did it also work for people in Old Testament times? The answer is obvious: it works for all people, for all times – believer and non-believer, both before and after the cross. In other words, it works apart from the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross – that’s because it’s a natural principle that’s already in the world; that’s how the world works, how God instituted it when he created it.

What these two questions tell us is that the principle of sowing and reaping has nothing to do with faith, and nothing to do with the cross of Jesus Christ. That raises an issue – why are we teaching something in the church that is basically a natural principle of the world, which applies to both Christians and non-Christians, applies both before and after the cross – and presenting it as a New Covenant truth?