By Davis Carlton
I was reading through the Gospels with my family as we approached Holy Week in order to teach about the very important things that Jesus said and did between Palm Sunday and Easter. One of the most misunderstood teachings of Jesus is His confrontation with the Pharisees and Herodians about paying tribute to Caesar, as recorded in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:12-17, Luke 20:19-26). The account is well-known to many Christians because of Jesus’ enigmatic response: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.”
I remember hearing this exchange taught to me when I was younger and the gist of how this was understood is that Jesus did indeed affirm the propriety of paying taxes, but also insisted that his disciples “render unto God” by remembering to give to the church and being generous to the needy. This shallow understanding of Jesus’ exchange at such a critical point in His ministry continues to dominate the popular Christian understanding. Christians often appeal to this passage to defend the Enlightenment principle of “separation of church and state.”
Jeffrey Barr provides an excellent commentary on this passage so I don’t have to re-state everything that he has already said. To briefly summarize: the Pharisees and Herodians are attempting to entrap Jesus in the immediate aftermath of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. They pose a question to Jesus in an attempt to impale Him on the horns of a dilemma. Jesus is asked about whether or not it is lawful to pay tribute unto Caesar. The question isn’t merely about paying taxes. Everyone would have agreed in the concept of some kind of civil government with the ability to levy taxes. Anarcho-capitalism simply wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Asking Jesus a question about abstract political philosophy wouldn’t have served the purposes of those seeking to discredit Him.
Theoretically, the Pharisees and the Herodians should have hated each other. The Pharisees were the seemingly conservative religious class who resented Roman occupation and at least superficially called the people of Israel to repentance and faithfulness to God as a means of eventual deliverance. Early Rabbinic commentaries anticipate a Messiah which obviously looks like what is ultimately revealed in Jesus. However instead of enthusiastically embracing Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah, the Pharisees instead decide to join forces with the Herodians; those Judeans who had made their peace with King Herod and by extension Roman occupation.
If Jesus endorses the tribute, then He will lose credibility with the masses who have just greeted Him as their rightful king and deliverer. If Jesus renounces the tribute and Roman occupation, the Herodians can make sure to notify the Roman authorities that they have an insurrectionist on their hands and insure that Jesus is dealt with in a swift and brutal manner. Jesus’ response exposes His enemies in their hypocrisy and malice.
Jesus’ counter-question is significant. Jesus asks to see a denarius and inquires about whose inscription was on it. This question forces His opponents to acknowledge that it belongs to Caesar, and as Barr points out, the inscription claimed divine status for Caesar: “Tiberius Caesar, Worshipful Son of the God, Augustus.” Jesus’ enemies had brought the image of a pagan emperor to the hallowed ground of the Temple. This is essential to understanding Jesus’ final conclusion, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
Jesus is most certainly not claiming that there is a category of things that belong to Caesar which do not ultimately belong to God. The very gold and silver used to mint the coins issued by Caesar belonged to God: “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:8). Jesus is tacitly pitting the divine claims of Caesar against the exclusive claims of the God of Israel. A major theme of the Old Testament prophets was that the people of Israel were subject to pagan rulers because of their continual disobedience and covenantal unfaithfulness. The subjection of the Israelites to the Romans in Jesus’ day was no exception. Jesus’ response throws down the gauntlet to His interlocutors but also to everyone else present. In essence Jesus is asking, “Who is your God?”
Barr aptly refers to Jesus’ response to the question about paying tribute to Caesar as an act of “subtle sedition.” This understanding of Jesus’ response is further supported by Luke’s account when it informs us that the chief priests and scribes “sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor” (Luke 20:19-20). Later Luke records that Jesus is accused of “forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King” (Luke 23:2).
When Jesus is questioned by Pilate as to whether or not He is a king, Jesus’ answer indicates that He is which prompts a violent reaction from Jesus’ enemies, who swear loyalty to Caesar and renounce any loyalty to any other king: “[T]he Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.” (John 19:12). The tragic irony is clear and the implications are horrifying. Those who should have been first to enthusiastically receive the long-anticipated Son of David who would finally deliver Israel from their enemies end up rejecting Him while begging to be all the more enslaved to their pagan overlord who was oppressing them.
I have recently been struck by the many parallels of the events of Holy Week to our current situation. It’s easy to identify our modern day Herodians. Mainline liberal apostates who cooperate with modern secularized institutions in once-Christian Europe and North America are enthusiastic participants in the globalist order that emerged in the 20th century. No one is surprised when the apostate mainline supports sodomy, abortion, the abolition of traditional standards of justice, and the mass migration of non-whites into white homelands. This is simply the natural consequence of rejecting divine revelation as your ultimate standard.
It is particularly interesting to witness the emergence of a new cooperation between the Herodians and Pharisees in our modern context; the Pharisees being those who outwardly adhere to traditional confessional standards while collaborating with their natural enemies. Ligon Duncan has counter-signaled theonomy in a recent interview in which he was asked to comment on Kevin DeYoung’s concerns with Doug Wilson and “the Moscow mood.” Duncan appears hypocritical as he whines about mean theonomists while viciously slandering his opponents as those who probably aren’t even genuine Christians. Duncan went so far as to say that there is “no possible world” in which God’s Law could be implemented. The recent controversy over the expression “Christ is King” in the wake of the firing of Candace Owens by the Daily Wire has also revealed the thoughts of many hearts. Andrew Klavan, a Jewish convert to Christianity has claimed that Owens and those supporting her are using the phrase, “Christ is King” as an “anti-Semitic dog whistle.”
There is no question that Christians are becoming more divided on politics. The issues surrounding the COVID lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 revealed the mindset of many ostensibly conservative Christians. Many pastors took the position of Jonathan Leeman of 9Marks when he stated that he didn’t want to expend any “cultural capital” on fighting mask mandates or other lockdowns. The SBC and PCA have taken increasingly liberal stances and have distanced themselves from their conservative past on issues like race with new resolutions passed almost every year. Even concerns like abortion, gender identity, and sexuality are no longer issues around which supposedly orthodox Christians are united. Celebrity pastors like J.D. Greear, David Platt, and John Piper have gone out of their way to defend church members for supporting candidates who promote sodomy and abortion.
Hypocrites like Ligon Duncan have already been adequately refuted by our friend Adi at the Pactum Institute. Pastor Bret has repeatedly dismantled the incoherence of “two kingdom theology” which tries to mitigate the force of Christ’s kingship by assenting to Christ being kind of king in a qualified sense. The Pharisees’ cooperation with the Herodians is surprising on the surface, just like modern day Christians who reject the totality of Christ’s kingship. Why would those who were outwardly orthodox side with a pagan occupation?
The Apostle John writes that the Jewish authorities became concerned when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead because of how many it converted to His cause. They believed that Christ’s Messianic pretensions would draw the ire of their Roman overlords who would respond with brute force in their destruction of a newly Christianized Judea and Galilee trying to crawl out from underneath the Roman boot (John 11:45-54). If we take their word for it, the Jewish leaders were simply trying to sacrifice an innocent man to save their people. It was the welfare of others that motivated their treachery! But there are good reasons not to take their word for it.
The righteous don’t do evil that good may come (Rom. 3:8), for starters. It isn’t that hard to see the collaboration of the scribes and Pharisees with the Romans as an act of self-preservation. Jesus’ choice words for the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23 and elsewhere bear this out. The Pharisees were outwardly religious and orthodox while in actuality seeking fame, fortune, and prestige. They were hypocrites who had carved out a niche for themselves in a society dominated by hostile pagan foreigners. When push came to shove, the Pharisees were willing to betray their own professed principles in order to maintain their status. Given the choice between the long-awaited Messiah and Caesar, the Pharisees and their disciples chose to cry out, “We have no king but Caesar!” (John 19:15).
So it is with many of today’s leaders in the church. They profess to defend Christian principles but withdraw from the field of battle because they don’t want to spend their “cultural capital” on issues that they deem non-essential. They then turn around and surrender on the essential issues as well. These same Christian leaders defend those who call themselves Christians on the wrong side of essential issues like abortion, the family, and sexuality, while calling for Christian unity when actual Christians protest. Our leaders have spent their children’s inheritance living at ease while failing to move society in a positive direction by any single metric. Those who reject true Christian nationalism and plead for nuance when “Christ is King” is proclaimed are like their fathers the Pharisees who collaborated with pagans in order to maintain their relative peace and prosperity within the regime. It won’t end any better for them than it did the Pharisees, who in spite of their best efforts at maintaining their effeminate peace, lived to see the pagan Romans take away their place and nation after all.