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Render Unto Caesar

Render Unto Caesar

Last updated on: October 14, 2026 at 10:54 am by Herb Montgomery

Render Unto Caesar 2026-10-14T10:54:09-04:00 Herb Montgomery

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Render Unto Caesar

Photo Credit: Tolga deniz Aran

Our reading this week is from the Gospel of Matthew:

Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”

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This is Part 1 of the series Render Unto Caesar

But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away. (Matthew 22:15-22)

In our reading this week, Jesus is confronted by people who are trying to trap him with a politically dangerous question about taxation. They ask whether it is lawful to pay the imperial tax. Jesus responds by asking for a denarius. Once one has been handed to him, next Jesus asks, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” The question about the coin becomes more than a question about money. It exposes the relationship between power, ownership, identity, and economic obligation. Let’s unpack this a bit.

The coin bears the image of the emperor. In the Roman world, an emperor’s image was not merely decorative. It communicated the authority and power of the empire. Coins circulated that authority into everyday economic life. Every transaction could become a reminder that people lived within an imperial system that claimed political and economic control over them.

So Jesus doesn’t answer the question with a merely political slogan. Instead, he makes his questioners look directly at the symbol of imperial power: “Whose image is this?” Before deciding what people owe to a political or economic system, Jesus invites them to recognize what that system represents.

This has important implications. Economic systems are never entirely neutral. Money, taxation, property, labor, and political authority are connected to questions of who possesses power and who carries burdens. The people asking Jesus about tax are attempting to reduce a complicated question of justice to a simple question of compliance. Jesus refuses to keep the conversation that simple.

There is also a striking contrast between the image on the coin and the biblical conviction that human beings bear the image of God. The emperor’s image is stamped onto currency, but the image of the Divine is stamped into human beings. The Hebrews were forbidden from making any graven images of the Divine because we are those images. If coins belong to the economic system that produces them, then regardless of the image stamped on their surface, human beings who bear a radically different image from coins cannot be treated as possessions of the imperial system.

People are not fundamentally commodities, statistics, taxpayers, workers, consumers, or economic units. Fundamentally, they are people whose dignity precedes their economic usefulness. This becomes especially significant when economic systems demand sacrifices from those who have the least power. We are meant to ask, “Who is bearing the cost of this system? Who benefits from it? Who has the power to shape its rules? Who is being treated as expendable?” Justice cannot be reduced to whether everyone technically follows the same laws when those laws produce profoundly unequal circumstances.

Jesus’ response also challenges the assumption that political authority deserves unlimited allegiance. The coin carries Caesar’s image, but human beings carry the Divine image, and that distinction limits every empire, government, economy, corporation, and institution. Political and economic systems may exercise legitimate authority, but they do not ultimately own human life. The question “Whose image is this?” can therefore become a question for every age. Before asking what people owe an institution, we should ask what that institution owes the people who live under its power. And before treating anyone as a resource within an economic system, we should remember whose image they bear.

Jesus next response calls us to ask a more deeply pervasive question. We’ll pick up here in Part 2.

Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, justice and action. Free.

General Christian

Politics and Religion

About Herb Montgomery

Herb Montgomery, director of Renewed Heart Ministries, is an author and adult religious educator helping Christians explore the intersection of their faith with love, compassion, action, and societal justice. You can read more about the author here.

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