Here's the question I want to ponder: Did Jesus advocate paying taxes?
The question may seem a little simple at first because we have this very question posed to Jesus during his final week.
Luke 20:20 Then they watched him carefully and sent spies who pretended to be sincere. They wanted to take advantage of what he might say so that they could deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. 20:21 Thus they asked him, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach correctly, and show no partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. 20:22 Is it right for us to pay the tribute tax to Caesar or not?” 20:23 But Jesus perceived their deceit and said to them, 20:24 “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?” They said, “Caesar’s.” 20:25 So he said to them, “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 20:26 Thus they were unable in the presence of the people to trap him with his own words. And stunned by his answer, they fell silent.
At first glance, the passage seem to say that Jesus told them to pay the tribute tax to Caesar. After all, the answer to Jesus' question seems to be that it was Caesar's coin because it had his image on it - therefore, give it back to Caesar when asked. So Jesus advocated paying taxes because the money itself belonged to the government.
But on further inspection this interpretation probably doesn't hold up. We must understand several things about this passage.
First, the tax in question was a very specific tax - the tribute tax levied by the Romans on their subjects. The tax itself was a symbol of Roman rule over Judea; a rule which Jews at the time generally detested.
Second, the image on the coin would have been an image of Tiberius Caesar with an inscription about him being "divine."
The question to Jesus was intended as a trap since either way he answered would have resulted in him "losing" the interaction with his opponents. If he said "yes" and to pay the tribute tax, he likely would have lost the crowds who saw him as the awaited messiah to free them (importantly from Roman rule) and restore the glory of God's kingdom. He couldn't be the messiah if his promised kingdom was subject to the pagan Romans. But if Jesus said, "no" and not to pay the tax, then Jesus is defying Rome, and would stand to be arrested as an insurrectionist.
Jesus' answer involved him asking his opponents to produce a coin with Caesar's image and inscription. This may have been highly controversial since they showed him an image of a pagan god (Caesar) within the confines of the temple, which may have been considered highly blasphemous for the audience who thought Israel's God had no image, and foreign gods in his temple would have been blasphemous.
Jesus' next response would have been even more inciting since he tells them to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and God the things that are God's. Anyone in his audience familiar with the Law of Moses, which would have been most of them, probably couldn't help but think of what the Law said about what belonged to God:
Deut 10:14 The heavens – indeed the highest heavens – belong to the Lord your God, as does the earth and everything in it.
According to the Law of Moses, God owns everything. If that's so, then what belongs to Caesar? Rhetorically, nothing. So what were they to give to Caesar? Nothing.
Jesus had shown his opponents to be carrying images of a foreign god in the temple and had basically answered their question telling them to give nothing to Caesar. Now we know why his opponents were "stunned" by his answer and fell silent. Jesus had no doubt put the crowd firmly on his side by painting his opponents as idolaters and telling the people not to give anything to Caesar.
This would have presented a danger if the crowds were sufficiently in his corner. If Jesus did start an insurrection during Passover, the Romans would have done what the Romans always did to other would be messiahs - crush it and crucify the rebels. Rather than deal with this potentiality, the leadership would have had to preemptively arrest him before he could start real trouble on Passover, but they would have to do it when he wasn't surrounded by the crowds. So they hatched a plan to find him at night and arrest him when he wasn't surrounded with supporters.
Even here though, we have a report of trouble. In Luke 22 Jesus' followers draw swords, and when Jesus is approached for arrest, there is a fight with his supporters. Could it be that the leadership's fears may have been correct? Would arresting Jesus in the temple have resulted in a bigger riot?
At his trial, Jesus' opponents circle back to this incident regarding taxes:
Luke 23:2 They began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man subverting our nation, forbidding us to pay the tribute tax to Caesar...
This indicates that we aren't mistaken; Jesus' audience too heard and understood him to advocate against paying the tribute tax to Caesar.
There is another view that I think merits some attention since it seems plausible to me, and that's the view promoted at a popular level by Reza Aslan. On this view, Jesus the Greek word for "render" is best understood as "give back" or "pay back." Here, Jesus is saying "pay back" what is Caesar's, namely the coin with his image on it, and "pay back" what belongs to God, namely the land of Israel. Jesus is being tested by his opponents to see if he will confront Rome as an insurrectionist and zealot. Jesus' response isn't so much advocating paying or not paying the tribute tax as it's the response of a zealot and an insurrectionist, where Jesus is encouraging a revolt against Roman occupation of the land of Israel. The Jewish leadership should pay back the Romans all of what the Romans have given them and pay back to God the land of Israel and their hearts and minds.
This leaves us with the difficult question of how to make sense of this and apply it to ourselves and our circumstances today, and what I offer will largely be unsatisfying since I don't think it always answers questions about us, taxes and government. Jesus uses his response to confront the Jewish and Roman leadership. He certainly doesn't advocate paying a tribute tax and either directly urges not to pay it or urges his followers to rise up against the Roman occupation. Jesus answers to specific issues to a specific audience that doesn't always carry over to a one-to-one correspondence to the circumstance we find ourselves. We don't live in the land of Israel under Roman occupation.
But, Jesus absolutely confronts the rulers of his time for their corruption and failure in the management of God's people and God's land.
