CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 20:19. And they feared the people.—The state of mind in which the attempt to ensnare Jesus was made: “and they did so in fear of the people” (Alford).
Luke 20:20. They watched Him.—Rather, “and having watched for an opportunity.” Spies.—Men “suborned.” Just men.—I.e., honest, ingenuous men, perplexed with a doubt which He might solve. Power and authority of the governor.—I.e., “to the Roman power, and to the authority of the governor.”
Luke 20:22. Tribute.—The word means a poll-tax which had been levied since Judæa became a Roman province. The insurrection of Judas of Galilee had been occasioned by the belief that it was unlawful to pay this tax, since God was the only true ruler of the Jewish people. This belief was held by a large section of the people; if Christ decided against it, He would alienate them; if He agreed with them He would embroil Himself with the Roman authority. The idea that the Herodians who, as St. Matthew says, joined with the Pharisees in putting this question, approved of the tax, is utterly unfounded. It is a mere conjecture of Origen’s. There would be very little craftiness in the plot if two classes, one of them notoriously opposed to the payment of the tax, and the other as notoriously in favour of it, were represented in the same deputation. The Herodians, as clinging to the last fragment of Jewish national independence in the rule of the Herods, would naturally be opposed to complete subjection to Rome.
Luke 20:24. A penny.—The Roman denarius.
Luke 20:25. Render, therefore.—It was a decision of the rabbis that “wherever any king’s money is current, there that king is lord.” By accepting the coinage of Cæsar they had acknowledged his supremacy in temporal things, and consequently his claim to tribute. But the answer goes further. The followers of Judas of Galilee regarded the authority of Cæsar as incompatible with that of God. Our Lord distinguishes between temporal and spiritual sovereignty, and shows that the two are not opposed to each other. God was no longer, as of old, the civil ruler of His people. They had rejected His authority, and He had given them over to a foreign power, who reigned and claimed tribute by His ordinance (cf. Romans 13:1; Romans 13:7). But God was still, and must ever be, the spiritual Ruler of the world, and to Him now, as ever, worship and obedience were due.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 20:19-26
Cæsar and God.—Jesus thus refuses to decide formally a question of politics, just as, on another occasion, He had refused to interfere between the two brothers who were in dispute about an inheritance. It was not for settling questions like these that He came to earth. More than once the people sought to force Him to take up the rôle of a political leader, but in vain. He firmly refused to compromise His cause by associating it with any of the political factions of His time. Yet He did not merely maintain a prudent silence on this occasion, when the question of the lawfulness of paying tribute to Rome was brought to Him for solution. He spoke words which cast a new light upon the whole subject, and which solved the difficulty which these men hypocritically professed to experience, but which really troubled many devout hearts in Israel.
I. It was new to hear that the theocracy was now a thing of the past.—Up to this time the religious ideal of Israel was the subordination of civil society to the priestly order: though the nation was actually subject to a foreign power, it was considered that the normal condition of matters ought to be the direct government of the state by ministers of Jehovah, acting in His name and employing, by His authority, all the resources and powers that are at the disposal of earthly kings and rulers. It was a magnificent dream, but all attempts to realise it had hopelessly failed. Christ now distinguishes between the two spheres of national life: the one is purely civil, and may be an empire, a kingdom, an oligarchy, or a democracy; the other is purely religious and in it God is the supreme Ruler.
II. The duties belonging to both spheres are to be discharged in a religious spirit.—Christ did not represent civil society as a domain which is withdrawn from holy influence, and, as it were, isolated from that in which God rules. One of the most striking characteristics of the gospel is that it ignores the pagan distinction between things sacred and things profane, and that it does not make religion a distinct part of life, but a Divine influence upon every part, which penetrates, pervades, and governs the whole. St. Paul states this fact in very strong terms: “Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” And wherever Christianity exists as a living power it acts upon the consciences of men and directs their conduct, not only in matters of specially religious duty, but also in all that concerns the well-being of the body social. It purifies public opinion, brands as evil all customs and practices of a degrading kind, and spreads its shield over the weak and helpless. None of the spheres of human activity can be sealed against it.
III. Yet there is a profound distinction between religious and civil society, both with regard to the domains they occupy and the modes of action they employ.—The domain of the State is that of the present life and of interests that are purely temporal. The State ought to secure for each individual the free enjoyment of all rights and liberties belonging to him, and to endeavour to increase the sum of happiness of all who are under its care. But it has to do only with man as a citizen. All teaching concerning God, the human soul, religious duties and aspirations, and the hope of immortality, are out of its province. It should stand neutral towards all varying forms of religious belief, as the defender of liberty of conscience, and of the religious rights of all. The Church and the State also differ in the nature of the means which they employ. The arm of the State is force; it has the power and the right to overcome, by material strength, all resistance to its laws. The arm of the Church is persuasion; it has not the power or the right to use force for the establishment or maintenance of any form of religious belief. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2 Corinthians 10:4), said one of the greatest of its champions. Its sword is the Word of God; its instrument of triumph is the cross, which symbolises the submission of its Lord to sufferings and death; and the Spirit which animates it is compared to a dove. Such are the figures under which Holy Scripture represents the power it wields. To the State we owe tribute, obedience to its laws, and the sacrifice of our time and strength for securing the common good. To God we owe ourselves—the homage of mind, will, and heart. The influence of the world and of sin may almost have obliterated the Divine image and superscription upon the soul which proclaim that it belongs to God and should be rendered to Him; but they never wholly disappear.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 20:19-26
Luke 20:19. “The chief priests and scribes sought.”—There is
(1) a bitterness against Christ, which arises from a misunderstanding of Him; but
(2) a still deeper and more intense bitterness is manifested here by men who understood Him far too well, and who were only the more estranged from Him in consequence.
Luke 20:20. “Take hold of His words.”—They could not find Him guilty in any of His actions, but hoped to force Him into some hasty utterance upon a complicated question.
“Just men.”—I.e., they came pretending to be upright persons who were perplexed on a point of duty; but their real intention was to entrap Him into the expression of an opinion which might be used against Him.
Luke 20:21. “We know that Thou,” etc.—It is not hard to see the treachery that lay beneath this praise. The Jews were firmly convinced that it was unlawful to pay tribute to Cæsar, but found it advisable to conceal their feelings of aversion. Those who now approached Christ wished, by flattering His courage and integrity, to force Him to express an opinion of which they might take advantage to put Him to death.
Luke 20:22. “Is it lawful for us?”—The difficulty of the question arose from the contradiction between the condition of subjection in which the nation actually was at the time, and the independence which it should have enjoyed, and which seemed to be anticipated and promised in the writings of the prophets.
The True Way to Follow.—The way to follow in this abnormal position was not that of revolt, which in this case would have been revolt against God, but that of humiliation, repentance, and devout submission to God, who alone could give them deliverance, since it had been national sin that had led to their being subjected to the Gentile yoke. The error which Jesus dissipates, in His reply, consisted in applying to the actual state of the nation the principle laid down by God as governing its normal state. Jesus virtually said to those who interrogated Him, “Become ye again dependent upon God, and He will render you independent of Cæsar; but until He has accomplished that deliverance you are bound to fulfil the duties which belong to your present state.”—Godet.
Luke 20:23. “Perceived their craftiness.”—Neither force nor craft could prevail against the Lord. In an instant He saw through the wiles of His enemies, and escaped the snare they had laid for Him. Thus He exemplified the counsel He gave to His servants and combined the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove.
Luke 20:24. “Show me a penny.”—It was not to gain time that He desired that a denarius should be shown Him: the image and title it bore decided the question that was put to Him.
“Whose image and superscription?”—Christ serenely walks through the cobwebs spun by His enemies, and lays His hand upon the fact. “The currency of the country proclaims the monarch of the country. It is too late to ask questions about your tribute when you pay your bills in his money.” Does not the other side of Christ’s answer—“to God the things that are God’s”—rest upon a similar fact? Does not the parallelism require that we should suppose that the destiny of things to be devoted to God is stamped upon them, whatever they are, at least as plainly as the right of Cæsar to exact tribute was inferred from the fact that his money was the currency of the country?
I. Note the image stamped upon man, and the consequent obligation.—Our spirits show that God is our Lord, since we are made in a true sense in His image, and therefore only in Him can we find rest. We are like God in that we can love; we are like Him in that we can perceive the right, and that the right is supreme; we are like Him in that we have the power to say “I will.”
II. Look, next, at the defacement of the image and the false expenditure of the coin.—Our nature has gone through the stamping-press again, and another likeness has been deeply imprinted upon it. The awful power that is given to men of degrading themselves till, lineament by lineament, the likeness in which they are made vanishes, is the saddest and most tragical thing in the world. Yet every fibre in your nature protests against the prostitution of itself to anything short of God. Only misery and unrest can ensue. Only when we render to God the thing that is God’s—our hearts and ourselves—can we find repose.
III. The restoration and perfecting of the defaced image.—Because Jesus Christ, the God-man, has come, and in our likeness presented to us the very image of God and irradiation of His light, therefore no defacement that it is possible for men or devils to make on this poor humanity of ours need be irrevocable or final, and we may look forward to a time when the coinage shall be called in and re-minted in new forms of nobleness and of likeness.—Maclaren.
Luke 20:25. Cæsar and God.—We owe to kings, as rulers,
(1) Honour;
(2) obedience to the laws;
(3) payment of taxes;
(4) the duty of prayer. We owe to God
(1) ourselves;
(2) our substance;
(3) our time, talents, and influence;
(4) our love.
I. Religion and loyalty should accompany each other.
II. In cases where the commands of earthly rulers interfere with the will of God, they are to be disobeyed, at whatever hazard or loss.
Two Distinct Spheres.—Things civil and things sacred are
(1) essentially distinct from each other, yet
(2) quite harmonious. Neither may overlap or intrude itself into the sphere of the other. In the things of God we may not take law from men (Acts 4:19; Acts 5:29), while in honouring and obeying Cæsar in his own sphere we are rendering obedience to God Himself (Romans 13:1-7).—Brown.
“Render.”—The chief priests and scribes had asked if it were lawful to give tribute to Cæsar, as if tribute were a boon. Christ reminds them that it is not a gift, but a due. Render, therefore, tribute of your coin to Cæsar; and tribute of yourselves, coined in the Divine mint, and stamped with the Divine image and superscription, to God.
“Render unto Cæsar.”—This precept of Jesus is developed in Romans 12:13; in Romans 12, “Render to God,” and in Romans 13 “Render to Cæsar.”
Luke 20:26. “Marvelled at His answer.”—All the synoptical Gospels lay stress upon the astonishment excited by the the reply of Christ, and thus imply that it was expressed in some very visible manner. The statement here made, that His enemies “could not take hold of His words before the people,” gives a hint of the critical position in which He would have been placed if He had failed to silence the questioners.