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16th February 2026
MondayReflection
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'Clayton Croy'
a United Methodist lay person, teaches
New Testament
Posting under "Working Preacher"
"Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?"
Mark 12:13-17 is a true interrogation story: the well-known episode about paying the tribute to Caesar.
Certain Pharisees and Herodians attempt to trap Jesus.
They approach him and address him with a fourfold, but utterly disingenuous commendation.
They are buttering him up like a croissant before posing a seemingly unanswerable query.
"Is it lawful" - probably in the sense of permissible vis-à-vis Jewish law - "to pay taxes to Caesar?"
The tribute in question is a poll tax, i.e., a flat fee assessed per person.
It was a loathsome reminder that Judea was subjugated to Rome.
A negative response by Jesus would cast him as a seditious enemy of Rome; a positive response would undermine his popularity with the people, who generally detested the tribute.
Jesus asks to see a denarius.
"Jerry Maguire," the 1996 Tom Cruise romantic comedy and sports film, spawned the catchphrase: "Show me the money!"
That could be a title for this story.
The requested coin is produced, and Jesus asks,
"Whose image and inscription are these?"
The response is straightforward: "Caesar's."
Jesus then replies with a simple antithesis, as pithy as it is probing:
"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."
The response is amazement because Jesus has slipped out of their trap.
The questioners must be thinking, "How did he do that?
We put him on horns of a dilemma, and he walked away without being skewered by either horn!
He answered neither as an anti-Roman zealot nor as a pro-Roman toady."
Then came more studied reflection by all in the audience - both the hostile and the sympathetic - "What does Jesus' answer mean?"
Some scholars have wondered if Jesus' answer to the initial question was actually, "No, the tax is not lawful."
These interpreters would argue that all things belong to God not to Caesar, so Jesus' reply must mean, "Give Caesar nothing!"
But this removes the words from their narrative context.
Jesus requests a coin; he secures the coin; he inquires about the coin's image and inscription; and the inquisitors respond by identifying the coin with Caesar.
In the context of these actions the meaning of Jesus' statement can scarcely be, "Render nothing to Caesar."
Jesus' response - both words and actions - acknowledge but severely limit what is owed to Caesar.
He is probably holding the denarius when he delivers the famous words.
Jesus thus implies that this detestable coin with its idolatrous inscription is the sum total of "the things that are Caesar's."
So what is to be rendered (in effect, "given back") to Caesar is strictly circumscribed.
What is owed to God, however, is a wide open question, and Jesus' answer demands reflection on that half of the saying.
Some commentators are quick to say that no social or economic policy can be derived from this saying of Jesus, and they are right in the strict sense.
But Jesus does articulate a broad principle that has continuing relevance.
In harmony with Paul's teaching in Romans 13, Jesus affirms, in principle, the basic legitimacy of human government,
while insisting that one's obligation to God is always greater and severely limits what is owed to the State.
In a world of megalomaniacal regimes (e.g., North Korea) and even democratic states that sometimes overreach, that is surely relevant.
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This is an edited version.
The full article is avaiable on request
'Clayton Croy'
a United Methodist lay person,
teaches New Testament at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.
Among his publications are A Primer of Biblical Greek (Eerdmans, 1999)
and The Mutilation of Mark's Gospel (Abingdon, 2003).
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