NOTES for Mat 22:15-22
The long, ornate preface poorly conceals the spite with which the Pharisees ask their provocative question. Therefore Christ's rebuke of the questioners for hypocrisy, with which He introduced His answer, looks completely natural. In answering, He did not even take the coin into His hands, but only asked them to show it to Him from a distance. Under Jewish law Jesus was not required to take into His hands a coin bearing a pagan image; afterward one was supposed to perform a washing. But it seems that here He is not only observing the law, but also demonstrating His noninvolvement with Caesar's world, while nevertheless not calling for resistance to it. In calling people to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, He calls them to give the state what necessarily follows from the reality of earthly life, but He rejects the deification of the state and its rulers. And here we see the basis for the principle of the separation of Church and state as different organized structures. They can cooperate successfully, but they must not replace each other.
The Pharisees were amazed when they heard His answer, but at what more? That He had reduced their provocation to nothing, or that He had opened new horizons for them? What if, at that moment, He managed to jolt at least some one of them out of the familiar rut of self-confidence?..