Sermon on Luke 19–20: Giving to God what bears God's image
Reverend Harry Newton delivers a Sunday sermon at SumRed Church on the question of taxes, identity, and what it means to belong to God.
Summary
In this sermon, Rev Harry Newton of SumRed Church works through two passages from Luke's Gospel — Jesus's entry into Jerusalem and the encounter with spies sent to trap him with a question about paying taxes to Caesar. Newton argues that Jesus's famous reply, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's," is not merely a clever political dodge but a profound theological claim: that human beings, made in the image of God, belong entirely to God. He connects this to Paul's call in Romans 12 to offer oneself as a "living sacrifice," and argues that this means giving God not just religious observance but one's whole self — time, money, relationships, politics, and identity. Newton challenges the congregation to resist the tribalism and polarisation of contemporary politics, and to live in a way that reflects the image of God imprinted on every person.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to the Series and Context
Rev Harry Newton: We're back into the final leg of our series looking at the Gospel of Luke. What we've been doing over the last 18 months is going through the Gospel of Luke in bite-sized chunks. The Gospel of Luke is one of four accounts of the Jesus story, written by a man called Luke. Luke never met Jesus. He spends a lot of time researching, interviewing people, writing it all down, sifting through all the tall stories and the not-so-tall stories, and putting it all together to make what we have as a book called the Gospel of Luke. With me so far? Cool.
He then goes on to write another book. Anyone know what it's called? Acts — the Acts of the Apostles. The Gospel of Luke essentially tells the Jesus story in narrative form, and then the Acts of the Apostles tells the history of the early church in narrative form. Luke actually joins in the story about halfway through. It's all very cool. They kind of dovetail together, and that's where we're going next.
The Entry into Jerusalem
But for today, we find ourselves with Jesus in the temple courts of Jerusalem, the holy city of the Israelites. In the previous chapter, where we paused — not so long ago, so I don't expect you to remember — something happened. Jesus rode into the city on the back of a donkey on something called Palm Sunday. If you don't know what that is, that's absolutely fine.
Essentially what happened was Jesus entered the city on the back of a donkey in the manner of an ancient king of old. It was incredibly dramatic. It was sort of like the crescendo of what the previous 18 chapters had all been building up to. And part of what made it so dramatic was the inherent danger.
The Romans had a reputation for being incredibly cruel. Who has watched Monty Python? The Life of Brian, more specifically — "What have the Romans ever done for us?" If you know this skit, they list all the things the Romans have done for them, and the whole thing is: the Romans are cruel, we don't want them as our overseers.
The Romans were horrifically effective at suppressing dissent. In 4 BC, when Jesus was still quite young, within a stone's throw of where he grew up, there was a small city — I've forgotten the name off the top of my head, sorry, it starts with S — but the local populace rose up against the governor, ransacked the barracks, took the arms, and said, "We are now free of the Roman tyranny." Guess what the Romans did? They laid siege, razed the entire thing, slaughtered every person they could lay their hands on. The few who managed to survive, they caught and sold into slavery. They were known to brutally repress anyone who pushed back against them.
And so the Jewish leaders of Jesus' time were really worried that the rumours and the excitement about Jesus might spark a violent response from the occupying Roman garrison in Jerusalem.
The Plot Against Jesus
Why? Just before Jesus arrives on the back of a donkey, he raises a man back from the dead — a man called Lazarus. That's very public. Lots of people see it happen. Word gets out that he's done this amazing thing. Crowds start to flock to him. And so in another account of the Jesus story, written by a man called John, there is an emergency meeting amongst the Jewish leadership to discuss how to respond to this man Jesus, and the fact that people are coming to him.
One religious leader stands and says, "If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him" — because that's apparently the worst thing in the world — "and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation." In other words, this is an existential threat.
To which Caiaphas, who is the Jewish high priest, stands and replies, "It is better that one man die for the people than the whole nation perish." And we're told that night they agreed to kill Jesus. Why? In order to protect their people from the existential threat that is the Romans.
And so they sent out spies to find Jesus. We're told that Jesus was warned, and he goes and hides for six days before arriving in a town called Bethany. He then has — if you know the Bible, you might know the story — quite an emotional evening. A woman comes to him and douses him in perfume and washes his feet with her hair. There's this beautiful interaction between him and his host.
And the next morning, he marches into Jerusalem. He sends his disciples ahead of him to grab a donkey — a colt, never been ridden. They bring it to him. He sits on it. He comes into the city. And you might remember that there was a large crowd there for the Jewish Passover festival. Josephus, the ancient historian, tells us there are a million people in Jerusalem — probably a bit of hyperbole, probably take off a zero, but still quite a lot of people.
As he's coming in, these people see this man Jesus — many of whom had either heard of the things he'd done or had seen him raise Lazarus from the dead. They flock to the roadside. They take off their cloaks and lay them on the ground like a red carpet. They get palm fronds and wave them in the air. Why does that matter? Because palm fronds were used as a symbol of peace when kings returned from war.
And they welcome him. They yell out, "Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is the king!" And who do they do it in front of? They do it in front of the Romans.
And so the Jewish leaders race up to Jesus. They say, "Go, make these people be quiet. Hush. Don't you see this is dangerous?" To which he responds, "How can I? Because even if they were quiet, even the stones would cry out."
And right there, for the briefest of moments, Jesus was recognised as who he truly is.
The Trap in the Temple
Now, that is the context for our reading this morning. Because after he arrives, Jesus goes and spends some time in the temple, where we're told he teaches the people and proclaims the good news. And while he's in the temple teaching, we're told in today's story that keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the governor.
"They" — that is the same Jewish leaders who have just plotted to kill Jesus, to try and murder him to avoid a confrontation with the Romans. At this point, though, they can't murder Jesus without causing a scene, because he's no longer out in the countryside in the middle of back-of-beyond nowhere. Instead, he's in a civilised city full of people, under the rule of Roman law and order. And he's increasingly popular among the people. So the religious leaders know they can't go at him directly. So they send these spies to try and entrap Jesus in a question.
And they say to him, "Teacher, is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"
Now, that sounds like a really simple question. It doesn't sound that clever. Who here, when they were 15, thought they were the cleverest person in the world? I thought I was pretty clever. And I remember Mrs. Bocock taking me aside and saying, "Harry, you are not as clever as you like to think you are." However, Jesus, on the other hand, is clever. And this is a really interesting question from them aimed at him — two very clever parties having a war of words.
The tax in question is what's called a poll tax. It means that you pay a set amount regardless of your wealth and income, which means if you're poor, it's actually quite unfair — it's unjustly oppressive on you. And the amount they paid was a denarius, which was the equivalent of a day's wages for a labourer. So you work for ten, twelve hours in the day, and then you get this one coin, and on your way back, the tax collector says, "Uh-uh, give it to me." So it's not very popular. Who likes taxes? Good.
So everyone knows it's not popular. And if Jesus, knowing that it's not popular, says in response, "Well, you shouldn't pay the tax" — all the people are going to go, "Yeah, absolutely, it's terrible!" And the religious leaders will report him to the Romans. He'll be arrested and executed, because they executed you for next to nothing. They'll get him for being a troublemaker and undermining the authority of the emperor.
If, though, Jesus isn't dumb — which he's not — and knows that's a danger, and says, "Well, yeah, you have to pay the tax" — what's going to happen? The people are going to desert him. And why is that a good thing for the religious leaders? Because part of what's keeping Jesus safe is the crowd. So if you think about it, it really is a clever question at one level.
"Give to Caesar What Is Caesar's"
But we're told Jesus saw through their duplicity and said to them, "Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?" "Caesar's," they replied. And so he said to them, "Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
In the old English version, it says, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God's."
I personally love the beauty of this response. The coin had an image imprinted upon it of Tiberius Caesar. And so when Jesus asks whose image is on the coin, he knows the answer. And they have to say, "Well, it's Caesar's." And his natural response is, "Well, then give to Caesar what is Caesar's. It has his image on it. It belongs to him. But give to God what is God's."
His point being: if it's appropriate to give to Caesar the things that have his image on them, then similarly, it's appropriate to give to God whatever bears his image. Which begs the question — what bears God's image?
The Image of God in Creation and in Humanity
At one level, everything. Justin Martyr — anyone heard of him? He wrote back in the second century. He's one of what are called the church fathers, and he wrote about something called the natural revelation of God. It's a doctrine that is woven into the fabric of the church to this day.
Have you ever met someone — or experienced it yourself — who says, "I feel most spiritual and connected with God when I'm out in nature"? I'm a little bit like that, if I'm honest. The beach is my happy place. Out in the mountains is Amy's happy place. A lot of people say this. Why? It's because there's this idea that the created order reflects the glory of God — almost like holding up a mirror to the glory of God, and it's reflected back to us. Creation is imbued with a divine fingerprint that reveals something of the nature, beauty, complexity, and provision of God. So there's a degree to which everything belongs to God, which is why whenever we have an offering in church, I always pray, "Thank you, Lord, for what you have so generously lent us in this life. We now give back to you a small portion of what you have so generously lent us." Because nothing you have truly belongs to you. You will die and it will belong to someone else. Or to quote Omar, my favourite character from The Wire: money ain't got owners, it's only got spenders.
But there's a deeper level to this, because we humans are unique. One of the great climate-change-based critiques since the 1960s — Lynn White Jr. wrote down her hypothesis — is this idea that humans, Western civilisation, is incredibly anthropocentric. It's all about us, and we are the centre of everything, because the Protestant Reformation stated that humans are central to everything. And therefore, the climate issue we face today is, in this argument, the fault of the church, particularly the Protestants. Now, that completely falls apart when you push back against it — but that's a question for another day. To a degree, though, there's an element of truth to the anthropocentric claim. Because we do state that we humans are very important. You think you're important. I think I'm important. We all, to a degree, think we're important. Why? Because we literally bear the image of God.
We hear this right back at the beginning of Scripture, in Genesis chapter 1, about how we humans are made in the image of God. And that statement in Genesis 1:26–27 carries immense significance for us this morning in light of our reading, because it tells us that every single person — you and me, the person next to you, even that really annoying neighbour who never cuts their hedge properly — all of those people are made in the image of God.
Just as the coin bore Caesar's image, so while we owe Caesar — or in New Zealand, the state — while we owe the state what belongs to the state, we owe God what belongs to God. And what belongs to God? You belong to God.
Paul's Call to a Living Sacrifice
Now, this is actually quite a radical idea if you think about it. This radical idea of belonging to God because you bear his image is exactly what a man named Paul picks up on later in the Bible. Just as Jesus distinguished between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, Paul helps us see what it truly means to live as people who belong to God — by offering our whole selves. It's what he calls a living sacrifice.
If you don't know who Paul was, don't worry. He's a bit of a twit. He's also very influential and the author of many of the books we have in the New Testament of the Bible. And he picked up on this idea of living as a people who belong to God in his letter called Romans — written to the church in Rome.
He wrote this at the beginning of chapter 12. This verse is like a turning point in his book. Up until this point, for the previous eleven chapters, Paul had been busy laying out the breathtaking beauty and complexity and logic of the good news of Jesus — namely, that you are saved through God's mercy, love, and grace, and that God's grace and love and acceptance is made freely available to you in Jesus Christ, and you do nothing to earn it. It's simply given as a gift. The entire letter up to this point is essentially a deep dive into the heart of the Christian faith. And if you've ever tried reading Romans and don't understand it, it's okay, because most of us don't at first glance. It's hard.
But when he hits chapter 12, the tone shifts. Paul moves from unpacking what God has done in Jesus to the next natural question: how then should we live? And the answer is actually kind of stunning. He says: offer yourselves as a living sacrifice.
We should pause and look at that for a second. He says, "Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice." That doesn't mean just bringing your physical self to God. I was at the gym the other day, and there's this young fellow, and every time he did one exercise, he pulled out his phone and took a selfie of that muscle group. I kid you not. He worked out his left arm, took a photo of his left arm. Worked out his right arm, took a photo of his right arm. Then he's doing squats, and I kid you not, took one of his backside. In the military, we call those guys gym queens. This guy was really into his physical self.
This is not saying you need to go to the gym and take a bunch of selfies in front of the mirror and send them to Jesus in the cloud. That's not what it's about. In the biblical sense, "your body" means your whole self. It's shorthand for your time, your energy, your priorities, your relationships, your sex life, your money, your career, your parenting, your decisions, your schooling — every nuanced part of who you are and your very being. All of it.
And his phrase, "living sacrifice," is a complete paradox. What does a sacrifice usually do? It dies. When I was a child in Egypt, at the end of Ramadan, we lived in this apartment block on the edge of what by our standards would have been a ghetto. At the end of Ramadan, everyone sacrifices animals so they can have a feast, and they would do it in their bathtubs. And what do they do with all the congealed grossness? They try to flush it down the sink or down the drain. And what happens? The drains get blocked. And what happens then? It comes through the wall and goes down the stairwell, and the whole place stank. Funnily enough, Mum and Dad took us away on holiday around that same time.
But my point is that sacrifices die. There is literally a sacrifice of life. Death is involved. And once an animal is killed and offered up, it's offered up once — one and done. But right here, Paul flips the script. Instead of dying for God, he says you are called to live for him — on the daily, with intentionality and sacrifice. Not just in grand gestures, but in the quiet, unseen, ordinary parts of your life.
What a Living Sacrifice Looks Like in 2025
Which sounds lovely and theological — but what does it actually look like in 2025? What does it look like to be a living sacrifice?
Well, for one thing, it's not about being uber spiritual. It's not about being part of some spiritual glee club. It's much more subversive, much more ordinary than that. Because offering your whole self as a living sacrifice to God looks like, in the first instance, obedience in the ordinary. It means choosing integrity when cutting corners would be easier. It means choosing kindness when sarcasm feels more satisfying. It means being honest when you know you can get away with your tax evasion and no one will find you out. And it means choosing to be faithful when selfishness is more alluring.
Offering yourself as a living sacrifice to God also looks like allegiance to Jesus over your tribe. It means refusing to let your politics — and this is a really key one at the moment, isn't it? Regardless of where you consider yourself — left, right, or somewhere in the middle — politics is becoming an increasingly polarising point in our Western society. Yes, it's flying out of the States, but it's not just there. Across Europe, across Australia, even New Zealand, people say terrible things about other human beings who are also made in the image of God, simply because we disagree with them, because they're not in our tribe.
Offering yourself as a living sacrifice to God means your allegiance is to Christ over your tribal affiliations. It means refusing to let your politics, your culture, your ethnicity, your career, your sexuality, your gender identity, your social standing — anything — from becoming more ultimate than Jesus Christ. It means saying, "I follow Jesus," even when it puts you at odds with the people you admire most in life. And that can be hard.
And finally, offering your whole life as a living sacrifice to God looks like living for God's glory. It looks like making decisions not based on cultural approval or what's going to gain you personally, but asking: does this honour Jesus? Does this help others — particularly the poor, the least, the last, and the lost — flourish?
Offering yourself as a living sacrifice to God is not an encouragement to withdraw from the world. That's what you hear in some Christian circles — that you need to withdraw and be holier than thou in your own little huddle. But actually, this is quite the opposite. It's about offering the world something different. It's a call to be distinct, to be different. Not so that people say, "Wow, isn't Harry so spiritual or cool or ridiculously handsome?" — sure, all true — but so that the world might glimpse a better way. The way of Jesus.
Because the world does not need more noise. It definitely doesn't need more religion. It needs more people who live quietly and consistently as though Jesus is actually alive, and as though his teachings really do make a difference. And that starts in your daily, ordinary, faithful choices to live as someone who is made in the image of God.
Conclusion: Give God What Is His
So when Jesus said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's," he was making it clear that just as the coin bore Caesar's image and was rightly given to Caesar, you bear God's image. And as such, you owe God what is his. Your whole self.
Not just one element. Not just going to church on a Sunday morning, or going to a home group, or your ten minutes of quiet time in the morning. Hey, those are all good things. But we are Westerners. We're quite reductionist when it comes to spirituality, particularly those of us who are Pākehā. We are very quick to reduce the faith down to ticking the boxes. That's not what he's calling for here. He wants your whole self.
Those of us who call ourselves Jesus followers — and if you don't, that's absolutely fine, genuinely it is — but if you're here today and you call yourself a Jesus follower, you are being called and challenged to offer your whole self as a living sacrifice to the living God, to Jesus Christ. Because if God's image is imprinted on you — and it is, regardless of whether you recognise it or not — then you don't belong to the things that we so often let define us. Our politics, our gender, our career, and this is really key, even your past. It does not matter what is in your past. Your identity is still rooted in Christ. You belong to him. You belong to Jesus.
So give him what is his. Give him your whole self. That's what today's reading is all about.
And then we're told that they were astounded, and they walked away in silence, because they didn't know how else to push back.