Parties, Taxes, and the Coinless Christ

Jesus's enemies knew that one way to kill his influence was to make him publicly answer a hot-button "gotcha" question. In their day there were few hotter than the question of whether or not Jews should pay the poll tax to their Roman oppressors. In Jesus's inspired, full-of-divine-wisdom kind of answer, He models how kingdom people should think about package-deal partisan politics, the taxes we owe our governments, and, ultimately, what we owe God Himself.