I don’t know that anyone enjoys paying
taxes. I just paid my 3rd
quarter, and it was not a small chunk of change! And yet, I think we can agree that at least a
portion of our taxes goes to things that benefit us. In today’s passage, we see that Jesus’s
enemies are trying to set another word trap for Him to fall into. They ask Him if it is lawful to pay taxes to
Caesar or not. Jesus shows in His answer
that although taxes are legal, our duty to God as God’s image bearers is the
most important thing.
The religious leaders have just heard a
parable spoken against them. They know
that they can’t do anything to Jesus, so they are hoping that they can get
Jesus to say something so that Pilate will have cause to put Jesus to death. If Jesus said paying tax was wrong, they could
report it to the Roman authorities. After all, there was a rebellion against
Rome over the poll tax in 6 AD led by a man named Judas. His rebellion was short-lived as he was
killed by the Romans. Gamaliel mentions
this rebellion in Acts 5:37. Despite the fact that the parable Jesus told
indicated that the rule of Rome wasn’t going to come to an end soon as everyone
had hoped, the expected answer to the question is that Jesus is going to say
taxation is wrong, but even if he goes along with taxation, the hope is that He
will lose a good chunk of His support, for the tax wasn’t popular among the
common people. We have seen how tax
collectors were among the most disliked of people.
Jesus could have answered with a list of
Scriptures from the Law and the prophets about the responsibility to pay
tribute as part of covenantal obligations.
He could have traced how God’s people were conquered as a result of
their disobedience. But Jesus does not
give a long historical and theological discourse. Instead, He asks for a denarius. They provide one. Jesus doesn’t have one, but someone else
does. When Peter had answered a
different time that Jesus paid taxes, this one the temple tax, Jesus had to
send Peter to catch a fish with a coin in its mouth, to cover the amount of
both Jesus and Peter. A denarius was the
exact amount of the debated poll tax or head tax—the tribute each person, 14
years or older, had to pay annually to Rome.
It was equivalent to a day’s wages, certainly not excessive. The fact that they had a coin showed that
they were participating in the economic system that they were claiming was
unjust. Furthermore, the coin had
Caesar’s picture on it with an inscription “son of the deified Augustus.” On the back was a picture of his mother Livia
with an inscription “high priest.” It
could have been argued that possession of the coin violated the second
commandment against idolatry, having a graven image, esp. since Caesar was
worshipped. No one was arguing about
whether it was right to possess and use money.
Remember that we have already heard that these religious leaders were
“lovers of money.”
Jesus doesn’t stop with “Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”
He goes on to add, “And to God, the things that are God’s.” By asking about the image on the coin, Jesus
is reminding His audience that they are God’s image bearers. They were created in the image and likeness
of God. Wherever we go and whatever we
do, we bear God’s image. We belong to
God. We represent God. We carry God with us. As image bearers of God, we are called to
give our lives to and for God.
Jesus also reminds us that God’s reign
is bigger than Caesar’s. Everything
belongs to God. Caesar falls under the
reign of God. Though paying tribute is
legitimate, obedience to Rome or any authority must be measured first against
obedience to God. The apostle Paul
reminds us of this in Romans 13:1-7. READ We do have to submit to the governing
authorities, because God put them in place.
Their role is to punish evil, execute justice, and protect the people,
and support the common good. But this
doesn’t mean that they always stick to their role. Caesar may get our money, but God gets our
hearts, our minds, our bodies, and our wills, along with our stuff, remembering
that the first fruits belong to God.
Governments are not perfect. There will be no perfect government until
Christ returns to reign on earth.
Earthly governments are made up of flawed human beings, most of whom
aren’t even disciples of Jesus, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t ordain
and direct them. Still they will do evil
things. Both Jesus and Peter told us to
expect the governments to persecute followers of Jesus even to the point of
martyrdom. They warned us to not be
afraid, to be prepared to stand strong, and to trust that the Holy Spirit will
be our guide and voice. We prepare
ourselves by staying close to Jesus through prayer, learning the Scriptures,
and learning how to hear and obey the Holy Spirit. Faithful Christians make good citizens
because they are submissive, work hard and ethically, and care about their
fellow human beings, and yet the gospel is a threat to those who thirst for
power because the way of the gospel is the way of humility and not power. There is always a higher power who comes
first, and it’s not those in control or who want control, but it is God
Almighty. This is why Christianity is
hated around the world despite all the good done by Christians.
There are times when civil disobedience
is necessary. Toward the end of our
peacemaking Bible study series, the group watched a 2-part documentary on
non-violent resistance. People united
together in civil disobedience were able to tear down and stand against evil
regimes, like apartheid in South Africa, resistance against the Nazis in
Denmark, the overthrow of military dictatorship in Chile, the overthrow of the
communist regime in Poland, the end of segregation here in the US. We see an examples of nonviolent civil
disobedience in the book of Daniel both when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
refuse to bow down to the golden statue of Nebuchadnezzar, and when Daniel
opens his window and prays toward Jerusalem against the edict to pray only to
the emperor. Remember that God comes
first, so when governments grossly violate God’s demands for justice, it’s time
to resist. If rulers demand obedience to
a law that directly violates God’s commands, it’s time to resist.
God must always come first in our
lives. We belong to God and we bear
God’s image. Regardless of what regime
is in power wherever we live, our true citizenship is in heaven as Paul reminds
us in Philippians 3:20. And we are
commissioned to be Christ’s ambassadors, representing the kingdom of heaven on
earth. As ambassadors that means that
our job is not to try to escape from or disengage from civic duties, but to
engage from a biblical point of view, with the gospel as our message. We are to act like God acts, for indeed God
acts through us. We are to value what
God values. We are to be Jesus’s voice,
hands, feet, eyes, ears, and heart in the world. We carry God with us wherever we go. As we are reminded of the original way that
God created us, we also remember the original mandate, to care for the earth,
to make it fruitful and productive, to live into God’s goodness. And we ought to value our fellow human beings
as well, because whether they believe in Jesus or not, they too are made in the
image and likeness of God and deserve dignity.
Treating people the way we want to be treated is hard enough, but what
if we treated people as if they were Jesus?
In Bible study today, we are finishing up our discussion of the Matthew
25 passage where Jesus compares Himself to the “least of His followers,” and
that doing or neglecting to do basic, although often inconvenient things in
service to others is the way we treat Him.
Jesus’s command to “render unto God the things that are God’s” reminds us
to look for the image of God in others.
Sometimes it’s hard to see. This is turn ought to cause us to examine
ourselves. Is the image of God easy to
see in us, or is it hard to see?
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