Is It Lawful To Pay Taxes? (Daily Devotional)

Hello and welcome to Living supernaturally. We are so glad that you could join. We’ve been studying God’s word and doing an interesting series where we are looking at some of the questions that the Lord Jesus was asked and the responses of Jesus to these questions and we have been learning how to apply the truth that the Lord Jesus has shared based on these questions.

Today we are going to look at one such question in Mathew chapter 22 and verse 17 onwards which says, ‘Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” There were these people who were around Jesus, and they wanted to corner Him, they were testing Him, and they wanted to catch Him in His own words. That was their intention, its not that they wanted to know the answer, but only to test Him and corner Him. This was the Lord’s response in verse 18, ‘But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? Show me the tax money.” So, they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this? “They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” So, His response was simple; He immediately knew they were testing Him and what was behind that question, that they were not being honest about it, they were pretending to be someone else, and they were saying something else.

So, He called them out and said ‘why do you test me you hypocrites’. He asked for a money and saw that coin and asked them whose inscription/ image is this? They said, ‘it is Caesar’. Jesus said, ‘Give to Caesar the things that belong to him and to God the things that belong to Him.’ In other words, He was saying obey the law of the land. Many times, we think, when we come to the Lord, we don’t have to obey the rules of the place and nation that we live in and sometimes that comes as second priority but in God’s eyes it is very clear that we need to obey the rules of the land and go with the law of the land.

We see this in Romans chapter 13 and verse 1 which says, ‘Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.’ So, we see that God appoints authority structures, He creates divine order and structure and authority which comes from Him. He is not against rules and the law of the land. As long as the law of the land doesn’t contradict the truth in God’s word, now that’s something that we need to understand. So, when the Lord leads us, He leads us in righteousness. Psalms chapter 23 and verse 3, ‘He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.’

The Lord is not against rulers or leaders or the law of the land. 1 Timothy chapter 2, verses 1 to 2 says, ‘Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority.’ So, the Lord’s desire for us is to obey, uphold people in prayer because such leaders or people, the Lord wants them to be saved as well. So, let’s remember this even as we pray right now.

Father God, we thank you that you’re the one who appoints authorities, you’re the one who lifts up kings and pulls down the others. We thank you that you are not against the law of the land and we thank you that your word clearly declares that we are called to uphold in prayer those who are rulers and those governing our land in our nation and in the nations and so we remember those and we pray that you will give them wisdom and we pray that even as your heart is that they may be saved, draw them close to you that they may know you and may be saved. We thank you, in Jesus’s precious name we pray, Amen.

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