Does the Bible Teach Socialism / Marxism / Communism? #3
What about the Bible in general? Does it support socialism/communism’s desire to legislate wealth redistribution? Under the Old Covenant, which was specifically for the nation of Israel (Deuteronomy 5:2-3), God legislated a ten percent tax called a tithe (Leviticus 27:32); it was to be used to support the priesthood, not to redistribute wealth to the poor. (God had a process for helping the poor [Leviticus 19:9-10], but it didn’t include wealth redistribution.) However, when Jesus died on the cross, “He wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). The word “wipe out” means to obliterate or erase. The Old Covenant was obliterated by Christ! Because of this, there are no more tithes that God expects anyone to levy, government sponsored or otherwise.
Some might object and say that since God provided government under the Old Covenant, then that government should serve as a model for government today. To the contrary, God’s purpose for using a government under the Old Covenant was to ensure the coming of the Messiah. In Galatians 3:24-25, the apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” A “tutor” (Greek: paidagogos, lit. a little-child leader)was a person who escorted children to a teacher. Today, we call them school-bus drivers. In other words, the law was a school-bus driver to escort us to our Teacher and Messiah, Jesus. The paidagogos becomes obsolete after he completes his task. This means that the government God used under the Old Covenant is now obsolete since there are no more Messiahs coming; that government had a unique purpose in the history of the world that no government will ever fulfill again (to be continued).