Romans 13:5-7 “Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience' sake. (6) For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. (7) Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”
Because governors are God’s ministers that are raised up by Him, God has ordained that they are to receive payment from their citizens in the form of taxes, for the purposes of conducting government affairs. The above quoted passage of scripture clearly reveals that particular truth to us. The Lord Jesus Himself also paid taxes when He was on the earth, although He taught the disciples that our motivation for paying taxes is different to the people of this life. For our Lord taught us that although the citizens of this world are required to pay taxes, the saints on the other hand as sons of God, are exempt from paying taxes to His ministers. Nevertheless, our Lord went on to say that we still pay taxes but the reason we do so is so that we do not offend the people of this world (Matthew 17:24-27). Obviously word got out about what our Lord taught His disciples on the subject, but because those in the world did not understand His teaching they erroneously assumed that He was encouraging people to not pay tax. Therefore they thought that if they could get Him to make that statement in public that they would then have grounds to accuse Him before the Roman Governor of encouraging the Jews to not pay taxes to Caesar. And so, they tried to entrap Him by publicly asking Him if it was lawful for Jews to pay tax to Caesar or not. Jesus obviously knew their hypocrisy and answered them by telling them to render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s (Matthew 22:15-22). Nevertheless the Jews continued to believe the lie that Jesus encouraged people to not pay tax, and so when they finally handed Him over to Pilot to be crucified, one of their accusations against Him was that He was trying to pervert the nation by forbidding the Jews to pay taxes to Caesar (Luke 23:2).
Michael E.B. Maher
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