The tenants in Jesus’ preceding parable wanted the vineyard without rendering its fruit to the owner. Now, still in the temple and moving toward the Cross, Jesus is questioned about what is owed to Caesar and what happens to those who belong to God when they die. The first question is a trap; the second is a carefully arranged impossibility. Christ brings both before the living God.
The sequence leads from a coin that can be handed back toward bodies that will rise. Earthly obligations have limits. Death cannot cancel God’s faithfulness. Neither Caesar’s inscription nor the grave can take the human person out of the Creator’s claim.
Render to Caesar and to God (Mark 12:13-17)
13 Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. 14 When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? 15 Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” 16 So they brought it. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” 17 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at Him.
Mark tells us the purpose before reporting the words: they have come “to catch Him.” Their praise is accurate: Jesus is true and teaches God’s way without bending before status. Yet they use truth as bait. The demanded yes or no is meant to leave Him exposed on either side. Refusal can be reported to Roman authority; consent can be portrayed as surrender to an occupying power. The presence of Pharisees and Herodians shows coordinated opposition; it does not make every Pharisee a hypocrite.
Jesus does not accept the trap’s narrow terms. He asks for a denarius, and His question makes the questioners look at what they already possess: “Whose image and inscription is this?” They must name Caesar themselves. The coin bears the public mark of the authority under which it circulates. Christ then acknowledges a real civil due while denying that civil power can define the whole human person. “And to God” is not an afterthought. It places Caesar’s limited claim beneath the limitless lordship of God.
“Render” means to return what is due. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on Matthew’s account, hears that distinction in Christ’s command: “this is not to give but to render”.1 The coin has already shown whose public claim it bears. But a coin is not a person, and Caesar’s mark cannot determine the measure of a human life.
Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that the human person bears God’s image. Money may be returned to Caesar; the self belongs to God. St. Cyril of Alexandria, explaining Luke’s account, names what God seeks: willing obedience, faith, love, and the good works that flow from them.2 We cannot divide ourselves into a religious portion for God and a remainder governed by fear, ambition, appetite, or public approval.
This reading guards the verse from opposite distortions. Christ neither turns tax payment into worship nor makes civil obligation meaningless. Money, work, law, and citizenship retain their proper place, but none may command sin or receive the devotion owed to God. The decisive spiritual question is therefore larger than a political slogan. When speech, spending, anger, and conscience are governed chiefly by the need to belong to a camp, Caesar’s inscription has begun to reach where it has no right. The person marked by God is restored through repentance to the One whose image he or she bears.
The God of the living (Mark 12:18-27)
18 Then some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him; and they asked Him, saying: 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies, and leaves his wife behind, and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife; and dying, he left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and he died; nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise. 22 So the seven had her and left no offspring. Last of all the woman died also. 23 Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife.” 24 Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken.”
Mark identifies the Sadducees by the conviction driving their question: they “say there is no resurrection.” They appeal to the Mosaic duty by which a dead man’s brother would marry his widow to continue the family line (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). Then they stretch it into a seven-brother case so that resurrection will appear absurd. Their imagined future is only the present age prolonged, complete with death, inheritance, and the need for descendants.
The woman disappears inside their argument. She is passed from brother to brother and finally treated as a problem of possession: “whose wife will she be?” Jesus does not continue that dehumanizing calculation. He speaks of risen persons before God. The verse warrants neither mockery of the woman nor confident speculation about every relationship in the age to come. It reveals that resurrection life cannot be organized by the conditions death imposed upon this one.
Jesus names two roots of error: “you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Their reasoning can quote Moses and still fail to receive what Scripture reveals. It can also speak of resurrection while imagining that God must work only within arrangements already known. These failures feed each other. Scripture read without openness to God’s power becomes material for defending a settled conclusion; talk of power detached from Scripture becomes fantasy. Christ joins the two.
Jesus returns to the diagnosis at the end: “You are therefore greatly mistaken.” The error is not a missing piece of information. They have reduced both the text and God: Scripture to a weapon in an argument, and God to the limits of mortal experience. Familiarity with verses becomes dangerous when it only makes refusal more articulate.
“When they rise,” marriage as an institution of mortal succession no longer orders life. Christ says the risen are “like angels in heaven” in this respect; He does not say that human beings become angels. Nor does He belittle marriage. Marriage belongs to God’s good care for embodied human life in this age. The resurrection fulfills the body in incorruptible life, where death no longer requires the succession that the Sadducees’ case assumes. The same persons rise, but life is transformed by the power of God.
St. Irenaeus sees Christ’s answer as revealing both the resurrection and the identity of God. The One who spoke from the bush is the God of the living, and His Word is the One who now answers the Sadducees and bestows resurrection.3 The hope of resurrection rests upon the same faithful God who spoke to Moses and has always known His people.
Jesus’ proof begins at the burning bush. God continues to identify Himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” In Exodus 3:6 the Septuagint includes “I am”.4 Chrysostom presses the living force of that confession: God does not describe an expired relation.1 His covenant communion with the patriarchs has not been erased by death, and Mark introduces the citation as being “concerning the dead, that they rise.” The living God is faithful to the persons He has named.
St. Cyril makes the promise explicit: the patriarchs will rise when God’s almighty hand raises them, and so will the dead throughout the earth.5 Christ Himself is approaching death as He gives this answer. Soon His Body will be laid in a tomb, and the Gospel will announce that Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified One, has risen (Mark 16:6). His Resurrection is the answer made flesh: death is real, yet it cannot sever the Son from life or make the Father faithless. Christian hope is therefore bodily without being a return to decay, personal without being possession, and confident without pretending that grief is painless. At a grave, the Church may lament honestly and still entrust the departed to the God who does not abandon His own.
The Church’s Voice in Worship
On Mesra 28, the commemoration of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Liturgy Gospel is Mark 12:18-27. The day surrounds Christ’s answer with their story. Matins reads Luke 16:19-31, Lazarus received into Abraham’s bosom. Hebrews 11:1-10 recalls Abraham’s faith; James 2:14-23 joins his faith to works; Acts 7:20-34 brings us to the bush where God names Himself the God of Abraham.6 The Church keeps the patriarchs’ memory by proclaiming that they live to God. Their names belong within His continuing faithfulness, not merely within a finished past.
The same Gospel is read on Thursday of the seventh week of Great Lent. Its Pauline Epistle, 2 Corinthians 4:5-18, confesses that the One who raised Jesus will raise us also with Him.7 As the Passion approaches, the Church does not look away from the grave. She approaches it with the Lord who has promised resurrection.
Spiritual Fruit
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Render what is due without surrendering the person. Work, citizenship, and money make real demands, but none may rule conscience in God’s place. Name one pressure that governs speech or mercy through fear of losing approval. Fulfill what is honestly due, refuse what requires sin, and offer the whole self again to the God whose image you bear.
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Let Scripture correct a settled impossibility. The Sadducees quote Moses while assuming that God can only repeat present conditions. Read Christ’s answer slowly. Bring Him a hardened habit, weariness in repentance, or fear of death without declaring beforehand what His power can and cannot do. Hope receives His promise and then undertakes the obedience already given.
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Grieve before the God who keeps His people’s names. Jesus does not ask the bereaved to pretend death is harmless. Speak the names of the departed before Him and join the Church’s prayers for them. Tears may stand beside resurrection hope. The God who names Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has not forgotten the persons you mourn.
Teaching Notes
The coin and the person
- Read the trap before discussing political applications. What answer do the questioners think they have made unavoidable?
- Place the coin’s image beside Genesis 1:26-27. Civil obligations are real; they are not absolute.
- Ask: Where does a limited claim begin to govern the conscience as though it were God?
Scripture, power, and resurrection
- Notice what the seven-brother question assumes about risen life. Humans do not become angels, and marriage is not being mocked.
- Read Exodus 3:1-6. Join God’s present self-naming to His faithfulness toward the whole person.
- Ask: What changes at a grave when grief is spoken before the God of the living?
- Close by naming the departed in prayer and asking for hope through Christ’s Resurrection.
Sources and Further Reading
Scripture is from NKJV.
Footnotes
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St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Homily LXX, Matthew 22:15-33, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200170.htm. ↩ ↩2
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St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Sermon CXXXV, Luke 20:19-26, p. 633, https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_luke_13_sermons_135_145.htm. ↩
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St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies IV.5.2-3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103405.htm. ↩
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Exodus 3:6, Brenton’s English Septuagint, https://biblehub.com/sep/exodus/3.htm. ↩
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St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Sermon CXXXVI, Luke 20:27-38, pp. 638-639, https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_luke_13_sermons_135_145.htm. ↩
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Coptic daily readings, 2026-09-03. ↩
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Coptic daily readings, 2026-04-02. ↩