“If you just have enough faith, you can have all the wealth in this world you could ever want,” promises one high-profile, high-energy preacher.

“Those who would truly follow Jesus must practice radical discipleship, move to a poor neighborhood and give generously to the needy,” insists a less well-known but equally committed urban minister.

What is a Christian to believe? What does the Bible teach?

Sacrificial Giving
The Old Testament records God’s covenant with Israel, which does, indeed, bear some resemblance to the so-called “health-wealth” gospel. From Deuteronomy to Ezra, the pattern is that when the Israelites are more faithful than not, God gives them peace and prosperity in the land. But this is not a promise given to every individual Israelite—plenty of Psalms and Proverbs disclose the plight of the pious poor, oppressed by the unjust rich. It is a promise given to the people collectively about the destiny of the nation in any given generation. But it is given to no other nation.

In the New Testament, there are no passages to suggest that the principle of prosperity as a reward for obedience carries over to the church. Indeed, Paul learns precisely the opposite when God declares to him that His power is perfected in weakness and that His grace is sufficient for him (2 Corinthians 12:9).

God may choose to bless a faithful believer with material wealth, but there is no promise that He will do so. Throughout church history, mature Christians more often than not have been poor rather than rich.

So is our second preacher right? Must well-off believers do what the rich young ruler refused to do and sell everything they have and give to the poor? Not necessarily.

Paul addresses this misconception, as well. In 2 Corinthians 8:13, he explicitly declares that he does not want the wealthier believers to become “hard pressed” in the process of relieving the poverty of others. Instead, he just calls Christians to give from their surplus; but to be ruthlessly honest, just how much is surplus.

In fact, if one traces the role of material possessions in both testaments, one finds faithful and unfaithful people at every economic level. What is consistent, however, is that God’s people, when they are obedient, are generous and even sacrificial in their giving to help those needier than they.

Ten Percent of What?
How much does this mean we give up? A long-standing answer in some Christian circles is 10 percent—the tithe. Malachi 3:10 has been a popular proof text for this position, in which God challenges His people to bring all their tithes into the storehouse and see if He will not bring them material prosperity. But most people who appeal to this passage don’t realize that there were three tithes in the Old Testament law. Every year, individuals had to give a tenth of their earnings to the temple priests to support them and the upkeep of the temple in Jerusalem. They had to give a second tithe to put on the annual festivals in Jerusalem, which they, in turn, benefited from when they attended them. And every third year, they were to give a tithe for the poor. By New Testament times, this tithe had been prorated so that every year, people gave 3 1/3 percent. Add up all the tithes and the faithful Israelite was giving 23 1/3 percent to the Lord’s work annually. Not many who insist that the Old Testament laws of tithing remain in force really obey all of them.

In spite of all this, the New Testament does not suggest that the laws of tithing remain requirements for Christians. The only place the topic even occurs is in Matthew 23:23 (and its parallel passage in Luke). Here, Jesus acknowledges that the laws are in force for the Jewish leaders. But this is prior to the cross, before the inauguration of God’s new covenant with the Resurrection of Jesus, His ascension and His giving of the Spirit at Pentecost. Afterward, despite numerous passages about Christian giving, there is not a word about a fixed percentage.

Equity of Resources
What one does find is the consistent concern in the early church for the poor in their midst. In one situation, this leads to believers pooling their resources and redistributing them more equitably (Acts 2:43-47). In another situation, they create the first “deacons’ fund,” from which church leaders give limited amounts of material help to the neediest among them (Acts 6:1-7). Still later, a voluntary offering is collected to help relieve the suffering of fellow believers hit particularly hard by a famine (Acts 11:27-30). The methods vary, but the principle of caring for the poor remains constant.

Second Corinthians 8-9 remains the longest uninterrupted teaching passage on material possessions in the New Testament. Paul stressed the need for giving sacrificially, for carrying through on commitments, for the spiritual (and, at times, material) rewards that accrue to generous giving, and for scrupulous accountability mechanisms to ensure that money given goes to where the donors believed they were giving it.

But perhaps the most important principle again appears in 2 Corinthians 8:13. Citing the principle that went all the way back to the provision of manna in the wilderness in the book of Exodus (16:18), Paul explained that it is “equality” among believers that he wanted to promote (2 Corinthians 8:13-14). The term could also be translated “equity” or “fairness.” The point is not that everyone will have exactly the same amount, but that no one will have “too much” or “too little” (verse 15).

These expressions are never quantified. Different people have different needs. What is generous or sacrificial varies from one person and situation to the next. But, in general, the person who earns $200,000 a year needs to give a significantly higher percentage of his income for it to be considered truly sacrificial than a person who earns $20,000 a year. This suggests that, other things being equal, the more money one makes, the higher percentage one should give.

Then there is the question of to what or to whom to give. Believers are called to participate actively in church life, so they should give to support those who minister to them (see Corinthians 9:1-18). But the average American church gives a pathetically small amount of its annual budget to reach the spiritually lost or physically needy, especially overseas, where the needs are often the greatest. So Christians who want their giving to really make a difference usually need to support parachurch ministries that more directly address these needs in addition to supporting their local churches.

Living Frugally
My wife and I were married in August 1979. Three weeks after our wedding, we left for a three-year honeymoon in Scotland, otherwise known as doctoral studies. We had very little money, and what we did earn went straight to the university to pay our bills. By our second and third years there, we were living in what in this country might well have been called inner-city conditions. To our surprise, we discovered that local evangelical Christians simply considered this good stewardship—almost normal Christian living. We learned firsthand why “Scottish” has often been considered a synonym for “frugal”!

When we returned to the U.S., we struggled with how to apply the practices we had become accustomed to in Scotland. Whereas we could get by with public transportation overseas, not enough parts of town are serviced in the typical American metropolitan area for people not to own cars. At least we didn’t have to aspire to the fanciest cars but could look for something modest. When we settled in Denver, it made sense to buy a house rather than to continue to “waste” our money renting. But unlike many of our peers, we settled on a 25-year-old home in good condition rather than looking for something new. We also avoided the temptation to buy the trendiest technology, whether in home entertainment or computers or, once they were invented, in cell phones or digital cameras or numerous other “toys.”

In Scotland, we had committed to giving 10 percent of our annual income to the Lord’s work, with an emphasis on a church and other ministries that supported a holistic gospel—meeting people’s physical as well as spiritual needs—and that targeted the particularly needy in the third world or the worst of urban or rural blight in the first world. Once we returned to the U.S. and actually had full-time employment paying a decent wage, we committed to try to up that percentage each year that our income increased above what was necessary to keep pace with inflation or cost of living increases.

Some years we added 1 percent; many years we added 2 percent. The increases were small enough that they never seemed onerous. In recent years, we have been well over 40 percent in our annual giving and often closer to 50 percent. Now that we have one daughter in college and another soon to start, we have reached a temporary limit in our increases if we are going to be responsible in meeting all our family commitments.

We would never have come close to reaching what we have if it were not for more extra income than I ever imagined possible coming from book royalties, additional speaking and teaching engagements, fortunate investments, and an inherited estate from my grandfather. We would never have even thought of trying to give so much if it were not for the exemplary models of two pastors, one in the U.K. and one in the U.S., who quietly modeled giving 25 percent of their earnings back to the Lord’s work. We were also challenged by the writings of Ron Sider, who first introduced to us this principle of a “graduated tithe.”

We Can Do Better
The point is not that we expect anyone else to give exactly as we have. But I am profoundly convinced that most Americans can do considerably more than the 3 or 4 percent a year that the average American evangelical Christian gives to all charitable causes, including church and other Christian ministries put together. I am even more convinced that the average church can do better than the 7 percent they give to missions of all kinds.

The suffering of the more than 1 billion people in the world who live beneath the U.N. poverty line demands that we do better. That conservatively, one fourth of the world’s population has never heard anything remotely resembling the gospel requires us to do more. If we realize that all we have has been given to us simply as a loan from God so that we can be conduits of it to do His work in the world, we will want to be good stewards. The joy that comes from seeing how our giving can transform others’ lives for the better will make us want to do more and to do so gladly.