Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man
and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion.
They absolutely did not believe these complements, but made them in order that the crowd would believe that they actually meant well, or so that Jesus himself would lower his defenses and say something unguarded and objectionable. Yet it was they and not Jesus who were not interested in the truth but instead concerned with the opinions of others. They sought to decrease the standing of Jesus before the crowds while increasing their own. They were not particularly interested in the correct answer to the question, that is, in the truth about this particular case, as long as the answer of Jesus provided fodder to use against him.
Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?
Should we pay or should we not pay?
In theory it was a clever trap. Either Jesus would endorse the tax and be branded as a Roman sympathizer by the common people or he would oppose it and be branded as a potentially dangerous revolutionary by the government. At first the answer of Jesus seemed like a compromise; this for Caesar, that for God, separate, non-overlapping spheres of life, the political on the one hand, the religious on the other. But his answer was not that compromise it might seem to us at first.
Bring me a denarius to look at.
They brought one to him
It was noteworthy that they had a denarius ready and available, that they were already participants in the Roman system, implicitly accepting its legitimacy to some degree. The very image of the emperor, basically in itself idolatrous, since he claimed to be divine, was already present in their moneybags. The crowds of common people must have noticed this point. And yet, Jesus did not condemn them for having such currency. Governments might not be perfect, as the history of Israel's subjugation had taught, but they could still be supported for the sake of the goods they did provide to society (see Jeremiah 29:4-7). Yet, Jesus did not imply that the economy was an isolated sphere in which one could participate without reference to God.
“Whose image and inscription is this?”
They replied to him, “Caesar’s.”
So Jesus said to them,
“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God.”
Jesus did not say that it was basically OK to collude with the Romans as long people maintained virtue in the separate arena of private faith. Rather, he insisted that although the coin may have been made in the image of Caesar and with his inscription, Caesar himself was made in the image of God. There was therefore nothing exempt, nothing that did not belong to God, nothing that was not due to him as payment. The important element of this response was how it portrayed the fact that Caesar was not absolute, was not in any sense divine. One could therefore order one's business and interaction with even a state that was hostile to the truth to a higher end than the state itself intended, to the common good of the people, and the glory of God most high.
We know with certainty that the political order will never be perfected, and that the Kingdom while never arrive merely as the progress of nations. We remember that our true citizenship is never in any earthly city, however good or corrupt that city might be, but is rather in heaven (see Philippians 3:20). And because we remember this we have patience, patience like that of the Lord, which is meant to lead to salvation. But all of the imperfection does make us eager for the day when even the heavens will dissolve and the elements themselves will be melted by fire. The mass is always a prayer of "Maranatha!" in which we not only wait for but even "hasten the coming of the day of God". We do this because we look forward to a Kingdom not made with hands (see Second Corinthians 5:1), new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness, properly speaking, God himself, will dwell.
David Crowder Band - Here Is Our King
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