The enemies of Jesus thought they had Him trapped. They approached Him with a question designed to be a perfect snare. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
It was a brilliantly constructed question. If Jesus said yes, He would be seen as a Roman collaborator, a traitor to His people. If He said no, He would be arrested as a revolutionary. The world held its breath.
And then, with brilliance of His own, He asked for a coin.
He held it up for everyone to see. “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” he asked. “Caesar’s,” they said.
“Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” Jesus replied. (Matthew 22:21).
On the surface, Jesus’ profound answer let him off the hook, but he wasn’t just talking about taxes. His core message was allegiance. He was challenging them (and by extension, us) to a new way of thinking.
He was asking them to consider the two coins of life. One has the image of Caesar. This represents our worldly obligations, the things of this age: our taxes, our jobs, our social contracts. These are things we must give to the world. But then there is the other coin. The one stamped with the image of God.
Think about it for a moment. What bears the image of God?
You do. You, the human soul, were created in His likeness.
“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
So, while the coin belongs to Caesar, you belong to God.
This changes everything. It means that while you give your time to your job, your energy to your family, and your taxes to the government, you do so knowing that your most valuable possession — your very self —belongs to God. It means your primary loyalty, your first offering, your deepest devotion must be for Him.
The great undoing of our age is to give our best to Caesar and our leftovers to God. We give the world our peak performance, our undivided attention, and our strongest ambitions, and we offer God what remains: a few tired moments at the end of the day, a fraction of our resources, and a half-hearted effort at faith.
But we are made in the image of God. Our thoughts, our passions, our talents, our very lives are meant to be a return on His investment.
It’s time to render to God what is rightfully His. All of you.
