“They say unto him, Cæsar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21). It is so tempting to identify ourselves with the things of this world and to begin to feel like they belong to us. This is especially true when we’ve worked hard and have earned the things that we have. But we are all merely sojourners and visitors to this world. It is not our final destination. One of Satan’s temptations to Christ while He was in the desert was, essentially, that if Jesus wanted all of the kingdoms of the Earth, all of the coins that belonged to Caesar or to anyone else, then they were His for the taking. All He had to do was forget His eternal destiny and give up on the idea of Celestial Glory, and just take all of the things of this world for His very own. Jesus walked without purse or script, had nowhere to lay His head, and died without a single of Caesar’s pennies to His name. Whatever material things that came into His possession, He simply rendered them right back to Caesar. That left Him free to also render to God the things that are God’s. He had the ability to worship God with all His heart, might, mind, and strength, even His whole soul, because not a single piece of Him was fixated on or attached to the things which are Caesar’s. Nothing that the world gave to Him, good or bad, had a hold on Him. Jesus was able to endure the taunts and the jeers, the unfounded accusations of sedition and blasphemy, aspersions on His character and His parentage, and all of the cruelest and most evil insults and blasphemies imaginable because He would not accept any of these things into His mind or His heart. All of those who wanted to set Him up as a king or a devil or a traitor or a false prophet were trying to pin Him down to the things of this world. But Christ knew that His Kingdom was not of this world. None of the titles or epithets that pertained to this world applied to Him because He was not of this world. Whenever anyone wants to heap upon us fame or infamy, virtue or villainy, praise or calumny, it is our choice if we will accept and hold onto these things of Caesar’s that are foisted upon us, or if we will instead render them back to Caesar. If we will give unto God our hearts, then it doesn’t matter what the world thinks of us, or how it chooses to reward us. Neither wealth nor poverty will have any hold on us, because we know we are only visiting. If we are rich to the things of this world, then there will be a variety of reasons that our lives are both harder and easier because of those riches. And if we are poor to the things of this world, then there will be a different set of reasons why our lives are both harder and easier because of our poverty. But we will be able to walk confidently from rags to riches or riches to rags and everything in between because we know that our kingdom and our glory and our treasures are not of this world. I hope we will strive every day for the wisdom to give back to Caesar all of the things which are Caesar’s so that we can free up our time and talents and energy to rendering our whole souls to God and the fulfillment of His work.
