Hi Pastor John,
If a wife wants to pay tithes and offerings but her husband does not share the same desire, what is the right thing to do in that situation? Can she pay her tithes and offerings? Also, if the wife does not have an income of her own, is she obligated to pay tithes and offerings?
Thanks,
Amy F.
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Hi Amy.
A wife can bring her tithes and offerings, even if her husband does not. However, she must not bring tithes and offerings from her husband’s salary. God made it very clear in the Old Testament that whatever anyone brought to Him had to be willingly offered.
Leviticus 1
3. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice from the herd … he shall offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle…
As to your second question, no one can be obligated to pay tithes and offerings if he has no income of his own. I cannot locate the specific verse that states this right now, but in God’s law, one of the basic rules concerning sacrifices was that the animal you sacrificed to the Lord had to belong to you; you could not sacrifice to God what belonged to someone else.
Years ago, before I understood many of the truths in my book on Tithes and Offerings, a woman who attended our meetings was paying tithes on her husband’s salary in addition to her own. I did not know she was doing that. Her husband was a nice guy, but he was an unbeliever, and he didn’t know, any more than I did, that his wife was using his earnings to bring me tithes. She was, in reality, stealing her husband’s money and giving it to me.
When I learned what this sister had done, I immediately researched my records for the couple of years she had been bringing me tithes, to determine how much she had given. Then I called her husband and apologized for the error. I told him that a check would be made out to him for all the money he had lost. I was surprised when he insisted that I not do that, but we did agree that from that point on, his wife would not use his income to bring me tithes and offerings.
This woman is long gone from our midst. I hope that, wherever she is now, she has learned not to do things behind her husband’s back. That is not a godly thing for a wife to do, especially when her husband in working hard and trusting her to take care of his money.
Pastor John