And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?”

They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:20-21)

The Tuesday before the cross, Jesus spent much of the day at the temple. Jesus taught the multitudes and dealt with the religious leaders who opposed Him. These leaders among the Jews thought they could trap and embarrass Jesus with difficult questions.

Some of the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with a question over the paying of taxes. Before the curious crowds, they asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to the Roman Caesar, or not. They thought if Jesus said “yes, pay the taxes,” then the common people would think He was pro-Rome, and He agreed with their oppressive regime. They thought if Jesus said “no, don’t pay the taxes,” then He would be in trouble with the Romans.

They just couldn’t trap Jesus. He asked them to show Him a Roman coin, and then Jesus asked: Whose image and inscription is this? With His wise answer, Jesus showed that He was in complete control. He rebuked the wickedness and hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

Holding the coin for all to see, Jesus then told the leaders: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. What a wise answer!

In this answer, Jesus affirmed that the government makes legitimate requests of us. We are responsible to God in all things, but we must be obedient to government in matters civil and national. It doesn’t mean that everything any government demands of its people is good to be obeyed, but most things – like basic taxes – are to be obeyed.

Yet Jesus added that we must also render to God the things that are God’s. Every person has the image of God impressed upon them. This means that we belong to God, not to Caesar, and we don’t even belong to ourselves.

This means that the government doesn’t own everything – there are limits to what the government may rightly demand, because some things are God’s and not the property of the state. The image of God stamped upon the soul of mankind means that we fundamentally belong to God, not man.

So, we sin when we think we have no obligation to the civil government we live under. We should be good, honest, tax-paying citizens who genuinely want the best for our community.

At the same time, we have an even greater obligation to God. We don’t give our soul to the state, but only to the God revealed to us in the Bible. When the government dares to require things of us that should only be given to God, we obey God first and bear the consequences.

1 Peter 2:17 says it like this: Fear God. Honor the king. Rightly understood, the two complement each other. Give the state its due but give God what belongs to Him alone.

Click here for David’s commentary on Matthew 22