Death and Taxes

 

Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believ'd  --Daniel Defoe The Political History of the Devil, 1726

Daniel Defoe was an English writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy.  You may have read his most famous work, Robinson Crusoe.  He was a Presbyterian Dissenter, who spent time in prison because he lived in a time in which the English government persecuted those who chose to worship outside the Church of England.  He wrote of the certainty of death and taxes over 50 years before Ben Franklin made his famous quote.

In his book The Political History of the Devil, he wrote:

What a World do we inhabit! where there is not only with us a great Roaring-Lyon-Devil daily seeking whom of us he may devour, and innumerable Millions of lesser Devils hovering in the whole Atmosphere over us, nay, and for ought we know, other Millions always invisibly moving about us, and perhaps in us, or at least in many of us; but that have, besides all these, a vast many counterfeit Hocus Pocus Devils; human Devils, who are visible among us, of our own Species and Fraternity, conversing with us upon all Occasions; who like Mountebanks set up their Stages in every Town, chat with us at every Tea-Table, converse with us in every Coffee-House, and impudently tell us to our Faces that they are Devils, boast of it, and use a thousand Tricks and Arts to make us believe it too, and that too often with Success.

In Jesus' time, what Defoe called "counterfeit devils, human devils" were more commonly called Pharisees and Scribes.  In our passage today, we see that they had set their minds toward silencing Jesus--to violently kill the Prince of Peace.  Luke 20:20 says, "So they watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on His words, in order to deliver Him to the power and the authority of the governor."

And they sought to lay hands on Him, but feared the multitudes, for they knew He had spoken the parables against them.  So they left Him and went away.  Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words.  When they had come, they said to Him, "Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?  Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?"  But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, "Why do you test Me?  Bring Me a denarius that I may see it."  So they brought it.  And He said to them, "Whose image and inscription is this?"  They said to Him, "Caesar's."  And Jesus answered and said to them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."  And they marveled at Him.  --Mark 12:12-17

Here is the confluence of death and taxes: the Pharisees wanted to put Jesus to death, so they asked Him about taxes.  Notice that they brought with them the Herodians, Jews who had formed a political party in favor of the Roman governor, Herod Antipas.  The Romans levied taxes on all of the conquered territories, and the Pharisees hated them; nevertheless, they were there in case Jesus advised them not to pay the taxes.  This would have been seen as an act of treason and insurrection against the Roman government, and they were there to detain Jesus and bring Him before Herod if he spoke out against taxes.  Eventually Jesus would be arrested and stand before Herod, but there was nothing that Herod could do to Him.

The Pharisees were well-versed in the law of Moses.  When Israel first became a nation, they were to be a theocracy, with God as their sovereign.  This law had set up tithes and Temple taxes within the authority of the Priests and Levites, who had no inheritance given to them (see Deuteronomy 18:1-2).  In fact, when the people of Israel begged God for a king to rule over them, the prophet Samuel warned them against naming anyone as their king, and one of the reasons was that a king would levy taxes on them (see 1 Samuel 8:10-18).  As time went on, the Pharisaical tradition was to keep up the tithes and Temple tax payments as a show of piety; any governmental taxes paid on top of that was not only a strain on their budget, but also acknowledging a power over them other than the Lord God.

Here comes Jesus, who not only ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners (see Mark 2:13-17), but He even had a tax collector (Matthew) as one of His disciples.  Did He acknowledge a power or authority other than God?  Here, then, is the test: either denounce the tax and declare independence from Rome and fealty to God (and be arrested by the Romans), or support the tax, and stir up the people of Israel, who chafed under Roman rule (so that in the riot that would surely follow, the Pharisees could take Jesus into custody).

Jesus saw through their plot, and called them hypocrites.  He asked for a coin (which all of the Jews would have carried with them, because that's how they engaged in commerce.)  A day's wage was called a denarius, and the coin bore the image of Caesar.  Jesus asked them whose image was on the coins that they, themselves, used in their daily commerce.  Wasn't that acknowledging an authority other than God?  Didn't they remember the part of the law of Moses (Genesis 1:26-27) saying, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness....'  So God created Man in His own image; in the image of God He created Him; male and female He created them."?  Therefore Jesus said, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; but give to God what belongs to God."  This was not just a wise way for Jesus to sidestep being arrested that day, for the time was not right.  He was making a point that they bore the image of God, the imago Dei, and that therefore they should surrender themselves to God and obey Him as Lord.

Whoever makes a claim on our money, be it government or commerce or charity or whatever, is not as important as who has a claim over us.  We, who are made in the image of God--should we not give ourselves to Him?  I'm not saying that what we spend our money on is not important--it is, and it sometimes defines who we are or what we cherish most.  What I'm saying, and I think the point that Jesus was making here, is that every breath we take is by the grace of God.  Our abilities (as defined by the marketplace) to earn a living were given to us by God.  If we realize that, and respond by giving ourselves totally and completely to Him, then we will in turn spend our money in accordance with His will.  More than that, if we lose all our money through poor investment choices, or by theft, or by taxes, we still belong to God.  "It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves." (Psalm 100:3).  

As I researched the life of Daniel Defoe, I learned that he tried to be a successful trader.  By some accounts, he was successful--he owned an estate, and a ship with which to trade with other countries.  However, he was never without debt, and for some time found himself in debtor's prison.  This did not define him in God's eyes, however.  His lasting legacy is as a Christian writer and novelist.  In Robinson Crusoe he wrote, "Redemption from sin is greater than redemption from affliction."  Much like the apostle Paul, God used Defoe's experience of persecution for the sake of the Gospel.  May we always proclaim God's truth to power, like Defoe, like Paul, like Jesus.  For, as Defoe wrote:

Wherever God erects a house of prayer

The Devil always builds a chapel there;

And 'twill be found, upon examination,

The latter has the largest congregation.