Matthew 22:15-22–Whose Likeness Is On This Coin?

Matthew 22:15-22
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. 16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” 21 They said, “Caesar's.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” 22 When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.

This is one of the most famous passages in the Gospels.  And we remember it, we know what it says.  Most of us can understand that Jesus is answering the questions of people more interested in catching Jesus make a mistake than hearing what He actually has to say about it.  We can also understand that Jesus' response is both clever and convicting.  However, while the question that the Pharisees do ask is a valid question, even if it does betray the hearts of the askers, it is the question that they don't ask that is the most striking feature.

Jesus answers the Pharisees with a question, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?"  To which they reply, "Caesar's."  Jesus then says: "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

Jesus assesses the coin by the inscription upon it; in fact, it is the image on the coin that defines the coin's ownership.  When Jesus replies to give to Caesar what is Caesar's, the pertinent responding questions should have been this:

What belongs to God?  Where is God's inscription?

Answering these questions are essential to the life of a believer/human being, therefore, I suggest spending some time considering these questions for yourselves.  I suggest checking out Genesis 1:27-29...

Genesis 1:27–Bearing His Image

Genesis 1:27–So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

This is one if not the most important verse in all of Scripture.  It is the very essence of humanity distilled.  It says everything we need to know about our origins, about life's meaning, and about who we are.  I have written essays about this passage of Scripture and its importance to our lives and to how we do Christianity.  But for now all I have to say is this:

Human life is precious.  We have been gifted the unique pleasure and undeniable joy of glorifying God in our very nature.  He made us as bearers of His image; as beings that glorify His name through our lives.  This is our design and our purpose.  This is the value of the human: that we actually bear His image!  There is no greater joy, no more wondrous a proposition than that.

Let us, then, strive to bear His image appropriately and with the dignity it deserves.

Amen.

Eph. 2:10–We Are His Workmanship

Ephesians 2:10: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Identity and purpose are two of the most significant journeys that humans embark upon in their lives.  And there is a veritable deluge of possibilities vying to be the source and vision that we would adhere to, that which might define our identity and our purpose.  But this verse, along with many other verses is a solid and sobering reminder that our identity is and will always be found in God and in God alone.  The precursor to this verse is the famous: "For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing so that no man may boast."  But this statement about workmanship speaks primarily into identity.

I want this to be clear and unequivocal: there is no source of identity and purpose to be found anywhere but in Christ.  Image bearing is our identity and our purpose.  We should not ever forget this simple but profound truth.  It is who we are and it is what who are to be.  Let us keep this before us.

Low View of God = Low View of Humanity

The most important thing about humanity is God, both our constitution as being created in His image and our thoughts of who He is.  The lower the thoughts of God then, by association, the lower the thoughts of humanity.  It is no wonder that those who diminish God would also be those that diminish humanity by that same right.

For if the worth and value of a human is determined by the fact that we are created by God in His image.  This is the very definition of man.  Therefore, whenever we reduce our thoughts of God we equally reduce our thoughts of humanity.  We cannot, nor shall we be able to, separate this connection. Let us then never forget this reality that the low view of God is the culprit of the low view of humans, while a high view of God will have an equal but opposite result.

Who Assesses Value? Where Does Worth Come From?

In every faction of life, there are entire careers and swaths of experts dedicated to the task of appraisal.  From serving to industry, and health to finance, perhaps there is no stream of human life that is not quantified and evaluated.  Through all of this, humans have grown accustomed to criticism and competition.  And in our ever-increasing digital world, the evaluations have become more personal while simultaneously shifting to be more anonymous.  The old adage, "every man's a critic" has perhaps never rang more clearly than in a world in which every person values his/her own voice to the discredit of every one else's.

The issue at hand, however, is one that is far deeper: the quest for value.  It is an entirely human trait to search for value, to claim value, and to extol value.  It is our fervent search for value and worth that supports nearly every realm of human life, from clothing to cars and everything in between.  And it is the person's innate, seemingly-insatiable pursuit of self-worth that has attached the current cultural moorings with many a variety of barnacles of lust, greed, pride, idolatry, and a whole host of other counterfeit human valuations.

All in all, the enigma that compels our own scouring for self-worth is one of the grave realities of life.  And we should not think that we can accept a neutrality in this arena, for there can be no surrenders whilst squatting on the field in a firefight.  Every worldview must grip this question and offer an answer.  The validity of the response is the very weight of truth.  If atheism could offer a valid answer to this question then the whole system may be tenable; yet, as it is, humanity can have no real worth if it is comprised of millennial-long chaotic genetic reproduction in the mindless and purposeless void of evolutionary processes.  Another answer must be given.

Humanity has always possessed a deeply innate sense that we are, after all, valuable.  We truly feel that our lives have actual worth.  But this worth is not an extrinsic one.  It cannot be based on what a person can do or does, who they are in a societal sense, what resources they possess and in what great measure; none of this is an accurate attestation of true value and actual worth.  If we were to hold to any of these sources of value, then it would be no wonder that we don't consider unborn babies worthy of birth and why wouldn't we euthanize other ethnicities or birth deformities for they could never ascend to satisfactory levels of comparative worth.

Clearly, this is unacceptable.  Another rubric must be used, a different source of intrinsic value must be asserted.  It is at this point that only Christianity holds sway in presenting a reasonable and thorough answer to the dilemma of human worth.  Christianity holds that every single human being is valuable.  This value is not based upon race, gender, age, culture, intellect, strength, money, clothing, or any other man-made criterion for evaluation.  Christianity asserts that every single human being is valuable solely because they are made by God Almighty Himself and that they bear His image.

This means that the mute, the dumb, the deaf, the disabled, the strong, the smart, the funny, the awkward, the shy, the gregarious, the likable, and the repellent are all worthy for they all possess an equal measure of intrinsic value by virtue of their nature: they are God's creatures, made by Him, and made in His image.  This is the only true, intrinsic, non-partial source of human value.  Any other source is but a shadowy counterfeit of the real.

It is inescapable that the individual (you and me) will have to make a decision about where his/her value arises from and will it be the same rating system used for every person or not.  For instance, I play guitar and I value that part of myself.  If I only valued other people who shared that value, then I would not value very many people.  But on the other hand, if I affirm that my value and worth comes not from myself but from the God that made me, then I will value everyone by that very same standard, that God made them too.  It stems from this fact, that all humans were created equally in the image of God, that humans are made capable of living the life that created-ness affords and desires.  Let us then never lose sight of our true nature, for in it is the source of our truth self-worth.

Dignity of Man

Much of human life is a matter dignity.  From from income to recreation and all the spots in between, we humans spend must of our lives dealing either with the maintenance or exaltation of human dignity; more specifically, our own dignity.  We have an innate sense, an underlying recognition that we possess a certain level of dignity.  To posit that all humanity possess this same sort of dignity is an extension of that thought.

When the attempt is made, however, to trace that dignity to its source is when we run into all sorts of different and competing ideas.  Some feel that dignity is based on action, as in, someone becomes dignified when it does some action or obtains some vague status/position.  Others assume this dignity to be a feature of one or more of our components (intellect, emotion, spirituality, talent, et al).

The Christian, though, understands that the dignity of humanity is an inherent thing, the vital part of our God-given constitution actually.  The reality of mankind's dignity is reckoned, simply, in the simple assertion that man is made in the image of God.  It is the fact that we bear the image of God that warrants the entirety of man's dignity.  It is found no where else.  Once we recognize this basic truth, we will be much more equipped to handle the multifaceted challenges to the dignity of man in our world today by seeking after God in whose image we bear!

Bearing the Image of God

The image of God is one of the most important but misunderstood theological doctrines of the Bible.  It is the fundamental characteristic and trait of humanity.  Only mankind is made in the image of God and only man, used generically to mean both male and female, reflect the image of God.  Thus, the image of God is a necessary affirmation of the essential component of humanity.  But what does it mean?

Genesis 1:26-27 states, "Then God said, 'let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

What is remarkable about these passages, among many things, is that God does not say, "let's put our image into man," or, "let's put parts of our character into man," or, "let's put some of our image into man."  No.  God says, explicitly, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."  In a very real way, every bit of the human is the image of God.  

This is important.  There is no bit or component of man that was not made in the image of God.  Therefore, any attempt to compartmentalize the image of God to suit what humanity deems virtuous or godly is not only incorrect in methodology, it does not actually adhere to the biblical account.

The image of God is not a parsed element of God's intellect or a segment of His creativity or a portion of His righteousness.  No.  Comprehensively, in every respect, man is an image of God.  This is a feature that is utterly unique to one of God's creatures, man.  No other creation of God is deemed to be made in this image.  Nor is any other creature given this lofty and royal dignity to be so esteemed over all of creation as to be made, wholly in the image of God.

To be sure, to state that man, comprehensively, is the image of God does not diminish the Creator-creature distinction.  Rather, the image of God that is humanity is as much a reflective distinction of God as is the image that I see in the mirror is not actually the fulness of me but it, in its totality is an utter reflection.  Or, think of a photo copy.  The photo copy is wholly reliant on its source document for its existence, but it is not the totality of the book that it has been taken from--it is but an image, a reflection.

Fast forward: Adam and Eve sin, and the image is tainted.  Now every human, though still image bearers of God, bear that image through Adam and the marring of his sin.  But in Christ mankind is reborn in faith, and the image of God that is through Adam and sin is redeemed and replaced with the perfect and intended image of God in Christ Jesus.  Praise be to God for this reality!