14-Cesar and God

XIV. CESAR AND GOD.

Mat 22:21. “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

I HAVE protested in a recent sermon 1 against a current and plausible misinterpretation of this saying. But I am induced to ask your attention to a fuller exposition of the true meaning of it, because the public interest is especially engaged at the present moment by controversies in which this saying is adduced as an authoritative text, and the sense put upon the precept is, I may say, a demonstrably erroneous one. It is worth while, I feel assured, to try even by repetition to guard ourselves against this misapprehension, and to fasten to our minds the true sense of our Lord’s profoundly edifying admonition. The saying is supposed to refer to the provinces of the State and the Church, or of the civil authority and the religious authority, respectively, and to lay down the principle that these provinces should be kept carefully distinct. In this sense the text is invoked equally by the Roman Catholic and by the Protestant Dissenter, by Archbishop Manning and by Mr Miall. The Romanist alleges that when the State interferes with the province of the Church, this direct command of Christ is violated. “ The province of the Church is that of faith and morals; within that province the Church ought to be supreme; it is sacrilege and blasphemy for the civil power to make regulations, except as the obedient servant of the Church, which have anything to do with faith and morals.” Considering, as Mr Gladstone 1 is pointing out to us, that our whole life belongs in some sense to the sphere of faith and morals, we can only see in this doctrine a claim on the part of the Church, as distinct from the State, to rule the whole of human life. If we demur to what seems to involve such consequences, we are reminded that our Lord bade us render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. The interference of the State with the Church is named “Caesarism”; it is the presumption of a Caesar taking to himself the things that belong to God.

1 This sermon was preached on the Sunday after the publication of the “ Vatican Decrees.” With a very different understanding of what “ the Church “ is, English voluntaryism equally appeals to this saying as affirming the separate independence of the civil power and of religion. It declares the sphere of the conscience to be one, and the sphere of the law to be another. In maintaining a State-Church, we render, it complains, to Caesar things which belong to God only. In our own Church, established as it is by law, this command of Christ is continually quoted as guarding in some way the independence of the Church and of religion, though the interpretation put upon it by Romanist and by Dissenter may be thought too extreme. The Parliament, say not a few, must not pass any law affecting the Church or religion without the consent of the Church as represented by the Convocations of Clergy, because our Lord has solemnly said, “Render to Cassar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Now it only requires a careful reading of the narrative to see that when our Lord spoke these words he was not intending to make any distinction at all between the secular and the ecclesiastical provinces, between the claims of the State and the claims of the Church. The ecclesiastical organization of his country, or of any other country, was not in our Lord’s mind, any more than it was in the minds of his questioners. When the words are used to prove that the Church has rights with which the State ought not to interfere, they are applied to a purpose with which they really have nothing to do. So we lose, on the one hand, the benefit of the true meaning of an important lesson; whilst on the other hand Christ’s sanction is given to an arbitrary and impracticable theory.

I need hardly remind you of the condition of Judaea in our Lord’s day. The country had lost its independence. It was a part of the great dominion of Rome. The imperial authority of the Roman Caesar was represented in the land of Israel by vassal princes and governors and garrisons and tribute-collectors. The land had gone through many vicissitudes since the times best known to us, those of the kings and the prophets. But the national idea cherished by devout Jews in every generation was that of a “theocracy.” This means a system of government in which the God of the national worship was regarded as ruling the nation through his appointed ministers. It is the very principle of a theocracy, that the civil and the ecclesiastical organizations are not kept distinct from one another. When you read the Prophets, is it religion or politics that you find in the pages of Isaiah or Jeremiah? One just as much as the other. It is all religion; it is all politics. The people of Israel are addressed as the people of their God Jehovah by prophets claiming to speak in his name; they are addressed with reference to their national faults, their national dangers, the national glory that was promised them. This entire blending of politics and religion in the life of the ancient Jews must be evident to all who read the Old Testament. When the people of Jehovah fell under the yoke of a heathen emperor, it seems hardly reasonable to assume that this degradation produced a happy separation of the temporal and the spiritual functions. Csesar was a foreign despot, under whose sway it was impossible for Jews who cherished the traditions of Israel to live contented.

It was however a peculiar baseness in the Jews who persecuted the Lord Jesus and his followers, that they tried to bring them into collision with the Roman authorities. They would pay a homage of which they were bitterly ashamed, for ’the sake of destroying those whom they hated. They denounced Jesus to Pontius Pilate as a pretender inciting the people to insurrection; they afterwards denounced the preachers of the Gospel to the Roman authorities throughout the Empire as promoters of sedition. The Pharisees took counsel, we are told, how they might entangle Jesus in his talk. They wanted to get him into a difficulty. So they sent emissaries to him, charging them to compliment him on his courage and his truthfulness, and then to propose to him a perplexing question. They addressed him thus; “Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man; for thou regard est not the person of men. Tell us therefore, what thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not?” Their object was to force Jesus into a dilemma. If he said, partly persuaded by their flattery, that it was not lawful, then they might accuse him to the Roman government. If he answered that it was lawful, they hoped to bring him into discredit with the people. For they regarded him as a man who wanted to make a party and gain a following, and who was seeking to accomplish these ends like other popular leaders by appealing to the old religious patriotism of his countrymen. And if Jesus had been what they supposed him to be, their plan would have been a very promising one. But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and instead of having recourse to any conciliatory evasion in his reply, he made them wince under his righteous indignation. “Why tempt ye me” that is, Why are you making your experiments upon me “ye hypocrites?” There was no honest purpose in their inquiry, he knew.

Still, they should have their answer, and know that he was not afraid to answer them plainly. “Shew me the tribute-money.” “Whose” he asked, when they brought him a coin “Whose is this image and superscription?” “ Caesar’s.” It was the Imperial coinage. And what did the currency of this coin imply? It implied that Caesar was the actual accepted ruler of the land, a foreign conqueror, it was true, but still, keeping the peace, administering justice, exercising the necessary functions of government. The ruler of the land might claim tribute. Our Lord leaves here untouched, I think, the questions, whether it was right that the Caesar should have become the ruler of the land, whether the people would in any circumstances be justified in rising against him, how far they might plan resistance or indulge discontent.

He knew, we may venture to say, that there was not the mind, the faith, in the people, certainly not in these hypocritical questioners, that would justify an appeal to arms in behalf of national independence. It was from the first the fixed resolution of the Lord Jesus, not to encourage any insurrectionary movement. In that day, and for the population of that land, it was needful and right to submit to the Roman government. There could be no question, if this were so, about the lawfulness of paying tribute. The Caesar who was God’s minister for keeping order and repressing crime and faction could claim the tribute as his due. “ Render therefore to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” But there are other dues to render. Mark this, ye hypocrites, who are seeking to slay God’s prophet because he speaks the truth to you. “Render to God what belongs to God.” And what then were those Pharisees and Herodians to think of as belonging to God?

You will perceive that at all events the claims of ecclesiastical as distinct from civil authority are foreign to the occasion. There is no question here about the authority of the priests or of the council. The one question had been, Ought we children of Abraham to pay tribute to a heathen conqueror?

Yes, pay it, said Jesus, so long as it is God’s just judgment on your fathers and you that you should be his conquered subjects. Render to Csesar his dues; and render to God his dues..

Primarily, perhaps, this last command should be associated with our Lord’s rebuke to the treacherous falseness of his questioners. They knew in their consciences that in cherishing this mind they were defrauding the God of truth and righteousness of the homage which was his due. He required truth in the inward parts. He required of them to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with him. The demand, Render to God what belongs to God, was well aimed at the conscience of the Pharisee. As soon as he began to ask himself, What then does God require of us? answers would not be wanting. He could not stop till he had confessed that he had himself to render to God, his possessions, his powers, his heart. And then perhaps it might occur to him there was an apt symbolism in the coin and its image and superscription. Was there anything in himself answering to that coin? Yes, he too bore an image stamped upon him. It was the faith handed down to him, that God made man in his own image. If Caesar claimed the coin with his image upon it, so God claimed the man with his image upon him. Nay, the children of the covenant bore a superscription also, in the sign of the covenant, which legibly declared them to belong to their God. Render to God his dues, you that have given yourselves to be children of the spirit of lies and hatred: render to the righteous God what bears his image and superscription, your own nature, made in the Divine image, having the Divine name and the call of the covenant written upon it.

It may be open to question whether this symbolism was in our Lord’s primary meaning. It is enough to say that Jesus, penetrating with his Divine indignation to the conscience of the Pharisees, bade them consider what they owed to God, and how they were paying the debt. Most certainly it was not a part of themselves, not one province of life, which they owed to God, whilst the rest was reserved for Caesar. If God could claim anything, he claimed the whole man, body, soul, and spirit. In paying tribute to Caesar, they were rendering to God himself a part of his claim.

This, as you will remember, is St Paul’s doctrine. “ For this cause ye pay tribute also; for rulers are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.” So that loyalty to rulers is comprehended in duty to God, and servants of God must be loyal subjects for conscience’s sake.

Let us, Christian brethren, find a lesson in the rebuke and warning addressed to those hypocrites. The truth of it is not for them only. It turns the payment of earthly dues into a witness to our heavenly obligation. As you pay your tax loyally to the earthly government which, however imperfect, gives you benefits worth far more than your contribution, consider also the heavenly government under which you live, and what it requires of you. Render to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, what he claims of you. Are you not his? Were you not bought with a price? Have you not been sealed in your baptism with his Name? You bear God’s image and superscription, you have no right to withhold yourselves from God.

Render yourselves up to him, in sincerity, in trust, in loving obedience.

You will not allow, I hope, this acted parable to be displaced in your minds by that unfortunate misapprehension which takes Caesar, the name of an alien despot, to represent civil government, which assumes that God is another name for an ecclesiastical assembly, and which implies that the civil ruler and God are two coordinate and independent powers. But when the relations of Church and State are occupying our minds, and troubling them, perhaps, as a perplexing problem, you may go on to ask, “ If there is nothing in this passage which lays down any law about those relations, in what other parts of the New Testament shall we find maxims that will guide us either in making claims for the State or in asserting the independence of the Church?” I believe we should look in vain for such maxims. Precepts are given in the New Testament with reference to the actual circumstances of those to whom they are addressed; and the circumstances of the New Testament Christians were extremely different from ours.

They formed little new aggressive communities in the midst of a vast pagan empire; they were happy if they could escape persecution; their policy was to be as submissive and loyal as it was possible for them to be without denying Christ, and to avoid every needless occasion of offence, whilst they lived a secret life of their own, in which those around them could have no part. The wonder is that the Roman authorities are treated with so much respect in the Epistles, that St Paul, with a Caligula and a Nero in his mind, could say, “ the powers that be are ordained of God.” But it is obvious that the rules of conduct adjusted to the circumstances of the Christian Church in the first century could hardly suit our circumstances in the Christian England of to-day. Indeed it must soon become clear to any who look back to history or abroad upon the world, that the relations between the Church and the State must vary with the circumstances of each time and country. At one extreme you may see one Christian Communion comprehending all the inhabitants of a country; at the other you may see a nation split up into a number of separate religious bodies of which none can claim undisputed precedence. In either of these cases the policy to be adopted would be comparatively simple, determined without controversy by the facts themselves. We in England have a much more complex state of things to deal with, and we have great need to ask for wisdom and grace to guide us in right action. We cannot, shut our eyes to the fact that the majority of the people in Scotland are Presbyterians, in Ireland are Roman Catholics, and that in England and Wales we have a most powerful minority of Nonconformists. The two questions will inevitably arise, Is it fair that the Church of England should be preserved as the public Church of so mixed a population? Is it fair that the Church of England should be regulated by a Parliament representing that mixed population? On the one hand there is the possibility of injustice to the people; on the other hand there is the possibility of injustice to the Church. I repeat it, there are no propositions in the New Testament which can be made to serve, without forcing, as answers to these questions. We can only look for guidance to God himself teaching us through the facts of history and through the inspirations of his justice and love. But the God to whom we look is the God of the New Testament, he who spoke to mankind in his Son Jesus Christ, he who began the building of the Church upon his Son through his holy Apostles and Prophets. We know that this our God claims earth for himself as well as heaven, that he leaves out no province of secular life from his dominion, that he taught the faithful to look forward to the future glory when the kingdoms of this world should become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. We know that there is nothing ungodly in civil government, no necessary godliness in religious assemblies. After Jesus had justified the payment of tribute to Caesar, Caesar through his officer put the Lord of glory to an unjust and cruel death. But those that delivered Jesus to Pilate had the greater sin, and they were God’s priests, who offered God’s sacrifices in God’s Temple. The State may be in the wrong, and the Church may be in the wrong; and both are likely to miss the more excellent way when their representatives boast of their rights and substitute arrogance for docility. Above the State and above the Church there is the one God over all, by whom kings reign and Parliaments legislate, by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified. In looking to him we shall see light, in surrendering ourselves to him, Church and nation, societies and individuals, we shall find safety and blessedness.