Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.
Our obligations to God and man
The spirit of the passage requires us to regard the rights of all beings as sacred, and to give to them all that is theirs.
I. What is due to God? Or what are the things, the property of God, which our Saviour here requires us to render to Him? “The earth is the Lord’s,” etc. Of course we, and all that we possess, are God’s property. More particularly-
1. Our souls with all their faculties.
2. Our bodies.
3. Our time.
4. All our knowledge and literary acquisitions.
5. Our temporal possessions.
6. Our influence.
He, then, who withholds from God any of these things, or any part of them, does not comply with the precept in the text.
II. What things are due from us to men?
1. All men have a right to our love.
2. To all whom God has made our superiors we owe obedience, submission and respect.
3. To our inferiors we owe kindness, gentleness and condescension.
4. Those of us who are members of Christ’s visible church, owe to each other the performance of all the duties which result from our connection.
5. There are some things which we owe our families and connexions. As husbands and wives.
Improvement:
1. How great, how inconceivable is the debt which we have contracted both to God and to men!
2. Our need of an interest in the Saviour, and the impossibility of being saved without Him. We evidently cannot discharge our past debts. In Christ is there help. He becomes surety for all who believe in Him. And do not reason, conscience, and a regard to our own happiness, combine with Scripture in urging us to accept the offers of this Divine benefactor, and, constrained by His love, to live henceforth to Him, and not to ourselves? (Dr. Payson.)
God before Caesar
Frederic, the Elector of Saxony, who, being prisoner to Charles V, was promised enlargement and restitution of dignity, if he would come to mass. “Summum in terris dominum, agnosco Caesarem, in caelis Deum.”-“In all civil accommodations I am ready to yield unto Caesar, but for heavenly things I have but one Master, and therefore I dare not serve two: Christ is more welcome to me in bonds, than the honours of Caesar without Christ.” (Dictionary of Illustrations.)
An offence against Caesar
A boy about nine years of age, who attended a Sabbath school at Sunderland, requested his mother not to allow his brother to bring home anything that was smuggled when he went to sea. “Why do you wish that, my child?” said the mother. He answered, “Because my catechism says it is wrong.” The mother replied) “But that is only the word of a man.” He said, “Mother, is it the word of a man which said, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s?’” This reply entirely silenced the mother; but his father, still attempting to defend the practice of smuggling, the boy said to him, “Father, whether is it worse to rob one or to rob many?” By these questions and answers, the boy silenced both his parents on the subject of smuggling. (Biblical Museum.)