Paying Taxes; The Resurrection
PAYING TAXES; THE RESURRECTION
LUKE 20:19-38
Jesus’ opponents now adopted a different method—flattery—when they sent a group to try to catch him out.
Verses 19-26. Since AD 6 the land had been under procuratorial rule. A procurator was a minor governor directly responsible to Caesar himself, so Roman rule was immediate and clear. The tribute was, however, its clearest and most irksome symbol. The silver denarius, bearing Caesar’s image and superscription, was issued for the purposes of taxation. The legal fiction was that coinage so stamped belonged to the emperor, who, in receiving tribute but recovered his own. It was a subtle point, but not without its usefulness among the legally minded Jews, who avoided in this way some of the impact of direct payment of dues to an alien, and also the reproach of accepting a form of “graven image.” Taxation, however, and the use of the embossed coinage, was a burning problem, and the trap thus set was a deadly one. It would have been fatal to answer either way.
The reply which the Lord gave established an abiding principle. Those versed in the Old Testament could not well ponder the words without realizing that man too bears an image—that of God, in whose likeness he was made. “Give back to Caesar what Caesar owns, but give back to God that which is his—your persons and all that which you are.”
20:27-38. The Sadducees were a worldly sect who controlled the priesthood, and formed the core of collaborating Jewry. They accepted only the five books of Moses, and so among the vital doctrines which they had rejected was that of the resurrection. Their question was an attempt to make both teacher and teaching appear ridiculous, a not uncommon method of attack.
The Lord replied to the absurd question with dignity. A future life must not be crudely regarded as a material continuation of the present life. It is another mode of existence, altogether different but utterly blessed (1 Corinthians 2:9). It is the perennial fault of man to conclude that there can be no reality outside the competence of his five senses to apprehend. In fact he is the prisoner of those senses, and can only break free by faith. The Sadducees applied the limited faculties of sense and mind to spiritual matters, reached absurd conclusions, and rejected truth. Later Pharisees used the argument of 20:37.
Notes 20:19: they resist the plain truth of Christ’s parable, and so are led—as always—to greater wickedness. 20:21: note the flattery. 20:22: “lawful”—by Moses’ law. 20:24: Jewish coins bore agricultural emblems. 20:25: “render”—Gk. “pay what is due.”