What is God's

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

WHAT IS GOD’S

Matt 22:15-22

15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" 18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"  21 "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."  22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

NIV

First, Jesus did not say that it was not right to pay the tax, as we know that he did. In fact, we remember the time that he told Peter to go catch a fish, and the first fish he catch would have enough coin to pay the tax for both Jesus and Peter. However, the tax is not so much the issue here, for we all have to pay taxes in one way or another. The whole of the truth which Jesus is telling them and us is that we need to give to God that which is God’s. Now, we should know what belongs to God. That is simple enough to know that we belong to God. Therefore, we should give ourselves to God. It would also be right to give God praise, glory, and honor, for he deserves all that. We do make a fairly big deal about giving God some part of the coin with the inscription of the government on it. That would be in our tithes and offerings. We also work day in and day out for that coin. Still, all that belongs to God must be given to God and that is all of who we are and what we do for we are to labor as onto the Lord, and love Him with all our soul, spirit, mind, and strength. What is difficult is to labor in our daily lives and not get too invested in that daily life. Sometimes we can become so distracted with life itself that we may not be totally invested in giving ourselves to God. We might even get too busy in the doing of “Good deeds” that we look too much at them and not enough at offering ourselves to God. The point Jesus is making is that nothing is more important than giving to God what is God’s. There is no question that praise, honor, glory, faith, and obedience are due to God, but we also are due to God. The question is, how do we give all of ourselves to God and still live in this world with all its requirements? There are so many of the ordinary things of life that are needed to survive, some source of income, a place to live, food, clothing, transportation, and all those comforts we are so used to having, that would be in the soft goods category. Our daily lives can become so complex, we wonder how we do all that and still continually offer ourselves to God, as a living sacrifice which is our reasonable act of worship. We can do all those right things, but it still comes down to setting ourselves aside and picking up our cross, and following Jesus. But the question remains as to how we do that in the midst of our daily lives. Yet the fact is that all we are, all we have, and all we do should belong to God.