Introduction
There are some interpretations of scripture that I’ll probably always love. This week is one of them. Caesar’s image is on the coin, but God’s image is on us. Give the coin to Caesar. Give yourself to God.
I stayed close to that reading when I wrote about this passage three years ago, and I’m staying close to it again. But reading it within the larger temple scene has me lingering over the second half of Jesus’ answer.
“And to God the things that are God’s.”
We can spend so much time discussing or debating what Jesus permits us to give Caesar that we forget to think about God. Or perhaps we so spiritualize what belongs to God, that we never actually give anything. What belongs to God? What would it mean to give it?
These questions have been taking shape throughout the encounters we’ve followed. Jesus has asked about believing John, doing the father’s will, and producing the fruit of the vineyard. Again and again, the question is what an actual response to God looks like.
Now a new group approaches with a question about the emperor. Jesus’ answer brings us back to God’s claim on our lives.
Narrative Context
We’re still in the temple during Holy Week, but there’s a shift in who is speaking to Jesus.
For the last several weeks, we’ve followed a confrontation that began when the chief priests and elders questioned Jesus’ authority. Jesus responded with a question about John the Baptist and then a series of parables. By the end of the parable of the wicked tenants, the chief priests and Pharisees recognized that he was speaking about them.
Now the Pharisees go away to make a plan. When the next question comes, it comes from their disciples, accompanied by the Herodians.
That change is worth lingering on. We can become so accustomed to grouping everyone together as “the religious leaders” that we miss the movement in the scene. The people who have been challenged step back. Others approach Jesus with what sounds like a new question.
“Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth…”
After the confrontations we’ve been hearing, this is quite an introduction. They address Jesus respectfully, affirm his teaching, and praise his refusal to show partiality. Then they ask about paying taxes to the emperor.
Where did that come from?
The question seems to arrive from out of left field. We’ve been hearing about authority, John’s baptism, sons, vineyards, and a wedding banquet. Suddenly, someone wants Jesus’ opinion about imperial tribute.
Matthew has already told us what’s happening. The Pharisees have plotted to entrap Jesus in what he says. We know something that their flattering introduction is intended to conceal. They’re approaching him as though they want his guidance, but they’re looking for an answer they can use against him.
The composition of this group helps us understand the danger. Matthew identifies some of those approaching Jesus as disciples of the Pharisees. These may have been students learning from teachers associated with the Pharisaic movement. They could also be understood more broadly as followers being formed within that tradition.
The Herodians are harder to identify precisely. They are generally understood as people associated with or supportive of the Herodian ruling house, whose power depended on Rome. Their presence brings those political interests into the conversation.
We should avoid turning these groups into two neatly opposed political parties, but we can recognize why a question about the emperor is especially charged with both groups standing there together.
“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”
This is a real question about living faithfully under Roman domination. The tax is imperial tribute, a payment that reinforces the people’s status as subjects of Rome. Endorsing it could make Jesus appear accommodating toward the power that rules over them. Rejecting it could provide grounds for portraying him as a threat to that power.
Either answer could be used against him.
Their praise makes the trap more pointed. They’ve just described Jesus as someone who speaks truthfully and shows deference to no one. Surely such a teacher will give them a direct answer. Surely he won’t hesitate because of who might be listening, especially after he has just challenged the chief priests and elders with a similarly difficult question about John the Baptist.
Jesus’ question left them weighing the consequences of either answer until they finally said they didn’t know. Now the question about taxes attempts to put Jesus in that same position. Will he answer plainly when either response could cost him? Their flattery presses him to demonstrate the very courage that the earlier leaders lacked.
That’s what makes this encounter more than another disagreement. A serious question about faithfulness has been turned into an opportunity to endanger the person being asked.
Jesus recognizes the intention beneath the respectful words.
“Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?”
Then he asks them to bring him the coin used for the tax.
“Whose head is this, and whose title?”
They answer, “The emperor’s.”
“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Jesus has answered without giving them the simple statement they wanted to use against him. They are amazed, and they leave.
It’s easy to admire that response. But Matthew’s readers still have to reckon with what Jesus has said. The questioners asked about their obligation to Caesar. Jesus has also named their obligation to God.
What does that obligation involve?
The preceding scenes give us somewhere to begin. In the parable of the two sons, the son who says the right thing fails to do what his father asks. The other changes his mind and goes to work. In the vineyard, the tenants have been entrusted with something that belongs to another, and the owner comes seeking its fruit. Jesus has already pressed the question of whether those who claim a relationship with God will respond to what God asks of them.
There’s even a verbal connection between the vineyard and this exchange. The verb used for rendering the owner the produce in 21:41 and the command to “give” in 22:21 are forms of the same Greek verb, ἀποδίδωμι (apodidōmi). The word can mean to give back or render what is due. We don’t need to insist that Matthew intends a direct callback to notice how naturally this answer belongs within the larger conversation. What has been entrusted to us, and what response does it require?
The question about taxes seems to change the subject. Jesus’ answer returns us to a demand that has been before us all along.
This is where the traditional reading opens the passage further.
The Greek word translated “head” in the NRSVUE is εἰκὼν (eikon), meaning “image.” Jesus asks them to identify the image on the coin. Readers familiar with Genesis can hear another question alongside it: whose image do we bear?
God created humankind in God’s image.
Jesus doesn’t explicitly finish that connection in this passage, but it has a long history in Christian interpretation. Tertullian develops it in On Idolatry: Caesar’s image is on the coin, while God’s image is in the human person. Give Caesar the money. Give God yourself.
It’s a simple idea. It sounds pretty. But when we really think about it, it asks a great deal of us.
We can hear that we bear God’s image and receive it as an affirmation of our worth. We should. But in this reading, that identity also gives shape to Jesus’ command. What belongs to God includes our whole lives: our money, our loyalties, our relationships, our decisions, and the authority we exercise.
We can’t give God a designated religious portion of ourselves and then treat everything else as ours to use however we please.
Nor can we imagine God and Caesar as two equivalent owners dividing the world between them. But, within this reading, Caesar himself bears God’s image. He, too, belongs to God. Whatever authority he exercises remains accountable to the God who made the people over whom he rules.
The same is true of religious authority. The same is true of ours.
This brings us back to the responsibility we considered in the vineyard a couple weeks ago. We are the tenants. We have been entrusted with something we didn’t create and cannot finally possess. That includes the small portions of God’s world where our decisions affect other people’s lives.
Giving ourselves to God therefore involves more than what we say about God. It involves what we do with what has been entrusted to us. Do we use our authority to protect our standing or to care for those affected by it? Do we treat our resources as entirely ours, or as gifts through which we can participate in God’s work? What happens when the security of our institution comes into conflict with the well-being of a person it is supposed to serve?
And the people affected by our decisions bear God’s image, too. Their lives cannot become the price we are willing to pay for our own comfort, influence, or success.
The encounter leaves its readers with a question that recognizing Jesus’ wisdom cannot answer for them. What will they render to God?
Matthew tells us that the questioners are amazed and leave. We shouldn’t claim to know everything that departure means. But amazement is the only response described. We aren’t told that they reconsider their purpose or ask what belonging to God might require.
We can leave the passage in much the same way. We admire Jesus’ answer, appreciate the image-of-God interpretation, and continue living as though our lives belong entirely to us.
But we also need to remember where this story is going. Jesus gets out of this particular trap. But he will still be crucified under Roman authority.
His answer doesn’t offer a way to keep every powerful person satisfied and remain safe. As Matthew’s narrative continues, Jesus’ faithfulness leads him into the consequences of refusing to abandon the work he has been given.
Giving ourselves to God may cost us something, too. It may require surrendering an advantage, changing a practice that benefits us, or standing beside someone whose mistreatment we’ve learned to tolerate. The claim that we belong to God reaches into the places where other loyalties have become comfortable.
But that belonging is also a promise. The powers that threaten, condemn, and discard people do not have the final claim on their lives. The power ultimately does not belong to them. As this Holy Week story moves through the cross to resurrection, we see the limits of what those powers can finally determine.
We belong to God before we decide what we will give. We bear God’s image before we produce anything of value. The invitation is to live from that belonging, allowing it to shape what we do with the lives we’ve received.
Preaching Possibility
“And to God the things that are God’s.”
Most of us can name something we give to God: time, money, service, prayer. It may be harder to recognize the parts of our lives where we assume God has little to say. Our authority. Our political loyalties. The authority we exercise within our families. The way we protect our comfort. The decisions we defend because changing them would cost us something.
The traditional interpretation presses us to consider the whole person who bears God’s image. We can be generous with certain parts of our lives while holding others beyond the reach of correction. We can profess that everything belongs to God and still insist on having the final word about how we use it.
“Give to God” unsettles that arrangement. Our faithfulness may require us to change something we’d rather defend, relinquish a privilege we’ve come to expect, or take responsibility for a neighbor whose suffering has been convenient to overlook. We don’t get to decide that God’s claim ends where our comfort begins.
After first telling his disciples about his coming suffering and death, Jesus asked, “Or what will they give in return for their life?” (16:26). All the wealth, authority, and security we accumulate cannot purchase the life we’re trying so hard to preserve. We can gain everything we think we need and still lose ourselves in the pursuit.
But the promise is already there, before we’ve given anything. We bear God’s image. We don’t have to earn it, and our failures don’t erase it. The Christ speaking in the temple will go to the cross for the very world that resists him. Our hope rests in that love, which continues to claim us even when we hold back.
Jesus also promised that those who lose their life for his sake will find it. The one who calls us to give ourselves to God is already on his way to giving himself for us. We can entrust our lives to him, including the parts we’re afraid to surrender. In Christ, there is life beyond what we can secure for ourselves.
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