At first sight, the question put to Jesus about taxes may seem somewhat strange. Of course, in every age taxpayers have not been very willing to fulfil their obligations to the state and have tried to minimize their payments. But to ask a question about taxes and at the same time add something about...
At first sight, the question put to Jesus about taxes may seem somewhat strange. Of course, in every age taxpayers have not been very willing to fulfil their obligations to the state and have tried to minimize their payments. But to ask a question about taxes and at the same time add something about “God's way,” that is, the way of righteousness? Such a formulation might seem strange to us, but it did not seem strange to Jesus' contemporaries. Indeed, by that time Judea had long since lost the independence it had once gained after the Maccabean wars: it was under the rule of the Roman Empire, and most taxes went to the Roman authorities.
It is hardly surprising that tax collectors were regarded as collaborators and accomplices of the enemy. And the Romans really were seen as enemies. This was not only a matter of national sentiment, but of religious sentiment as well, for messianic expectations among Jews in Gospel times were very intense, and the Messiah was regarded first and foremost as the One Who would restore an independent Jewish state and establish in it laws corresponding to the Torah. Anyone who aided Roman rule in any way was considered a traitor not only to his people, but also to the faith of his fathers. In such a religious and political context, the question of taxes became a question not only of political but also of religious life.
Representatives of the extreme movements in the Judaism of that time, who were called “zealots,” opposed paying taxes to the Romans. In general, they supported an immediate armed struggle against Roman rule, in the form of an uprising or terrorism according to the circumstances. Others, less radical like the Pharisees, tried to avoid the question of taxes. In theory they acknowledged that the zealots were right, but they did not wish to enter into conflict with the authorities. Yet the Synagogue apparently always supported the extremists unofficially, or at least stood on their side, and the zealots did not publicly put awkward questions to the Pharisees, considering them in a certain sense their own.
Jesus was a different matter. The public question about taxes put to Him was clearly intended to entrap Him, for with either answer He would become an enemy either of the extremists, from whom in that case anything might be expected, even the murder of a popular Preacher who displeased them, or of the Roman authorities, who regarded a call to refuse payment of taxes as a call to revolt, with all the consequences that followed from such a call.
Jesus, however, apparently gave an answer that was completely unexpected by those questioning Him, but entirely logical in the context of His own testimony: the Kingdom has nothing to do with taxes, just as it has nothing to do with any of the laws of the untransformed world. Neither paying nor refusing to pay taxes means anything in spiritual life. Each person decides these matters for himself, and if someone wishes to pay a tax, he is merely giving earthly authority what already belongs to it.
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22:20 The tribute money - A Roman coin, stamped with the head of Cesar, which was usually paid in tribute.
22:21 They say to him, Cesar's - Plainly acknowledging, by their having received his coin, that they were under his government.And indeed this is a standing rule. The current coin of every nation shows who is the supreme governor of it. Render therefore, ye Pharisees, to Cesar the things which ye yourselves acknowledge to be Cesar's: and, ye Herodians, while ye are zealous for Cesar, see that ye render to God the things that are God's.