The Pharisees and Herodians were attempting to catch Jesus in a calculated trap. If He responded “yes” He would look like a traitor to the Jewish people and if He responded “no” He would Have been immediately arrested for sedition against Rome.
He turns their question around by asking a question of His own: “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” This coin bore the face of Caesar and would have read an inscription declaring him to be of divine origin (Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus).
To “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” points towards the coin and the image of Caesar that is stamped upon it. Returning a coin to him is reasonable in the confines of secular order. “And to God what belongs to God” which points towards the fact that God claims our entire soul, heart, mind, and body.
As is stated in the Book of Genesis: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” God’s authority is radical because it extends to the very essence of who we are as one who has been created in the image and likeness of God. What do we allow to control us in this life which pulls us away from such a reality?
As Peter and the apostles would answer in the Book of Acts, “We must obey God rather than men.” Such a profession of faith makes it known that the state does not own our human dignity, conscience, or salvation. When civil law contradicts moral law or human rights God must be obeyed over man.
We must guard ourselves against moral relativism that seeps in, causing us to falsely claim that what’s true for you is true for you, instead of morality being informed by truth. At the same time we fail to form our consciences in such truth and are so willing to be kept morality divided by political parties or other ideologies which become our basis for truth. If the Church, in her teachings, says something we disagree with we would rather hide behind cultural norms, biased opinions, and political parties rather than truth.
On moral issues—such as abortion, the nature of marriage, human sexuality, the protection of the poor and vulnerable, care for the environment, and even capital punishment, which has been highlighted recently here in Tennessee—we are willing to trade objective divine truth for political reasons or social comfort. Rather than standing firm on the sacred dignity of every human life, which has been stamped with the image of God from conception to natural death, we selectively embrace only those moral teachings which align with our preference, be it political or social.
Caesar can claim his coins, but it is God who claims our very soul. Let our hearts, consciences, and identities be turned toward God and not the powers of this world which attempt to consume us. “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
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