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Minted in God’s Image

Minted in God’s Image

Last updated on: October 16, 2026 at 5:11 pm by Billy Kangas

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Minted in God’s Image 2026-10-16T17:11:56-04:00 Billy Kangas

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Nearly every morning, I make the drive to Detroit with my high-school-age son.

Many of the roads we travel are ones I have been driving for years, some of them for a lifetime.

It never ceases to amaze me how neighborhoods change. Some fade a house at a time until entire blocks have disappeared. But the reverse is sometimes true too. A neighborhood can change dramatically when an investor with significant capital decides to show up and become part of the community by investing in it. Empty storefronts open, houses are restored, and new ones are built. It has been amazing to watch this happen, particularly in Detroit. But none of that change is free. The investor has to put up money and take a risk.

I want you to hold on to that image as we look to this Sunday’s Gospel. In Matthew 22, the Pharisees and the Herodians, an unlikely pair of co-conspirators, set what they consider a perfect trap for Jesus (Matthew 22:15–21). They ask Him whether it is lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar. Jesus is left with two difficult options. If He says yes, the crowds will turn on Him. If He says no, He can be arrested by the Romans as a rebel and an agitator.

Jesus’ response is remarkable. He asks them to show Him a denarius and asks whose image is inscribed on it. Everyone around Him would have known immediately where He was going. They had all handled these coins. The denarius bore the image of Tiberius, with an inscription naming him the son of the divine Augustus: a claim of divinity, power, and authority that would have stirred the hearts of a Jewish audience with anger and fear.

There are many sermons we could preach on this text, but this week I have been thinking about an aspect we don’t often consider. Jesus says, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Matthew 22:21). St. Augustine, preaching on this passage, highlights the second half. We are called to give to God what is God’s, and we ourselves, he says, are “God’s money.” Caesar’s coin bears Caesar’s image, and we bear God’s.

In many cases, sin has worn down that image in our lives. But we are called to live faithfully as a kind of heavenly currency. Part of the power of the Incarnation is that the very character of God has been imprinted on our human nature in Jesus Christ. Jesus tells Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), and St. Paul tells the Colossians that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). In His flesh and in His life, Jesus shows us what it looks like to give to God what is God’s. We bear God’s image by virtue of being made in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26–27), and we are united to His life in a particular way by being joined to that perfect Image, Jesus Christ.

But I want to bring your attention to one last point. A coin exists to circulate, to change hands, to be spent on something. The New Testament describes our redemption in Christ in remarkably commercial language. St. Paul tells the Corinthians, “You have been purchased at a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20). The Greek verb is ἀγοράζω (agorazō), which has its roots in ἀγορά (agora), the word for marketplace. The Book of Revelation sings of the Lamb who purchased for God “those from every tribe and tongue, people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). Jesus Himself says He came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The word He uses, λύτρον (lytron), refers to the price paid to free a prisoner of war or a slave from bondage. In its biblical understanding, salvation has an economic dimension. Christ has reconciled us. He has paid the price.

And yet St. Paul makes a claim in 2 Corinthians that should change how we view our own lives. God, he says, has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and given us “the ministry of reconciliation,” so that we are now “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:18–20). The Greek word for reconciliation is καταλλαγή (katallagē), and long before it meant reconciliation between people, its root belonged to the language of exchange, including the exchange of money. That is the ministry we have been entrusted with. Our lives do not pay the price of our redemption. But in a certain sense, we are the currency of the Redeemer, now being spent in His work.

We are coins stamped with the very image of God and put into circulation in exactly the places that need freedom, where captives are still waiting for a Redeemer. Think about what St. Paul says: “I will most gladly spend and be utterly spent for your sakes” (2 Corinthians 12:15). He understood that his own life was a kind of money God was laying out, coin by coin, for the freedom of others.

You have been minted in God’s image for a purpose. So I return to where I began, with my drives through Detroit. Think about how strategic capital can turn a neighborhood around in just a few years. Now imagine what God is doing with the capital He has invested in us. In Jesus, we are part of the most transformative restoration project in history. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

If that project were measured against our own resources, the budget would fall far short. But we do not have an earthly renovator. We have One who has already paid the price, and His account will never show insufficient funds. St. Paul speaks of “the inscrutable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8) and promises that “God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). We have a limitless budget. You have been sealed with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13), the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead (Romans 8:11).

So as you go out this week, I leave you with one final question. Are you willing to spend yourself with Him?

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