cutting the gordian knot

Watching for their opportunity, the leaders sent spies pretending to be honest men. They tried to get Jesus to say something that could be reported to the Roman governor so he would arrest Jesus. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you speak and teach what is right and are not influenced by what others think. You teach the way of God truthfully. Now tell us—is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” He saw through their trickery and said, “Show me a Roman coin. Whose picture and title are stamped on it?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. “Well then,” he said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” So they failed to trap him by what he said in front of the people. Instead, they were amazed by his answer, and they became silent. (Luke 20:20-26)

When you are not getting what you want, and getting what you want is the most important thing to you, you will stoop to anything. Including pretending to be honest.

Some people have to pretend to be honest because they are not honest naturally. They have done things on the sly for so long that they have lost the ability to just be honest.

The problem is that they couldn’t get what they want by being honest. What they want is power and control. And they can’t come right out and say that. “I want power and control over you.” If they did that, everybody would turn away from them immediately because they could see their greed.

So they pretend to be honest. They pretend to be concerned for other things. They pretend to be concerned with health, or politics and leadership, for the welfare of others.

But underneath, it is just the plain old greed for power and control over others.

In this case, they wanted Jesus to trick himself and be shown as either a revolutionary against the Roman government or a puppet of the Roman government.

Now these people hated the Roman government because they were an occupation force. But still, any port in a storm. So they brought up taxation.

If Jesus said, yes, we should pay taxes, he would make all of the conservatives mad because they hated taxation by an oppressive government. If he said no, the government would step in and arrest him as a troublemaker.

As far as they were concerned, he was stuck.

But, Jesus did something they hated. He went a third way. Show me a coin and tell me whose picture is on it. Well, Caesar’s, of course. Then give what is Caesar’s back to him and give what is God’s to him.

What it did, was scare them. It amazed them. In fact, it was such a good answer that it shut them up for a while. They even had trouble discussing it among themselves because it was so masterful. Jesus just cut the Gordian knot and said something that even they couldn’t disagree with.

Man, they hated him.