He said to them, "Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." – Luke 20:25

Today's Scripture Reading (February 6, 2024): Luke 20

Question: What do Henry David Thoreau, John Adams, Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, and Mahatma Gandhi all have in common? Answer: At some point in each of their careers, they were tax resisters. Tax resistance is an ancient practice whereby those ordered to pay tax refuse because of their disagreement either with the government in power or with the intended purpose that the government proposes for the tax collected. The Quakers have been tax resisters during times of military conflict, not because they object to the government in charge but because, as staunch pacifists, they object to their tax being used to finance a war. In our contemporary environment, Americans might become tax resisters because they oppose the building of a wall on the southern border of the nation, and all over the Western World, citizens might be evaluating the taxes paid to their governments because of the support being paid to fight both the Russian-Ukrainian and the Israeli-Palestinian wars. Tax resistance has been blamed for the failure of several historical World Empires, including the empires of the Egyptians, Romans, Spanish, and Aztec civilizations.

So, Jesus is asked by religious leaders whether it was legal, in a Jewish political sense, to pay taxes to the Romans, who were currently occupying the nation. The question was not an arbitrary one. During the first century, various parts of the Jewish population were active tax resisters. The hope was that they could make the occupation of Israel financially impractical. The Jewish Zealot's refusal to pay the Roman poll tax resulted in the First Jewish-Roman War, which ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and her Temple.

Jesus's answer to the question regarding our tax remittance is ingenious. First, he strikes a blow against Christian tax resistance by declaring that the coin, which bears Caesar's image, should be returned to Caesar. Essentially, his ruling is that since the government provides the currency used in commerce by a nation, the provision of the coin is the only rationale required for a government to demand taxes from its population. With this ruling, it would seem that Christ's faithful followers are prohibited from following any active tax resistance policy.

But Jesus did not stop with this prohibition. Not only are we to give to the reigning government what belongs to them in the form of our taxes, but we are also to give to God what belongs to him. If the coin used to pay taxes bears the king's image, then our very lives bear the image of God (after all, Genesis states that we created in his image), and we are to give what possesses his image back to him. Ultimately, our finances may belong to our governments, but our lives belong to God. And while the governments of our world may use our money to tear the earth apart, God will use our lives, given back to him, to put it all back together again.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Luke 21

See Also Matthew 22:21