In Mt. 22:15-22, the Pharisees plotted how to entangle Jesus in His talk. With cunning hypocrisy, they began by complimenting Jesus and His impartiality. Then they ask Him, "Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" (Mt. 22:17). Immediately, Jesus perceived their wickedness and asked why these hypocrites were testing Him. He had them to produce a coin and inquired of them whose inscription was on it. They answered, "Caesar's" (Mt. 22:21). We recall that His famous reply was, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mt. 22:21).

In other words, "both God and government - render to each their due." With one week left before this year's tax deadline, many of us are especially getting ready to "render to Caesar."

The Day-Timers company has provided some interesting trivia on taxes: Taxes gobble up 38.2% of the average family's income. That's more than the amount for food, clothing and shelter combined! Nearly 300,000 trees are chopped down annually to produce the paper needed to print the IRS's mountains of forms and instructions. The IRS sends out 8 billion pages of forms and instructions every year. Lay them end-to-end and they'd encircle the earth 28 times. That's a 672,000-mile highway of confusion! The Gettysburg address has 269 words the Declaration of Independence, 1,337 words the Bible, 773,000. However, U.S. tax law has ballooned from a relatively "slender" 11,400 words in 1913, to a seam-busting 7 million words today! American taxpayers spend over $200 billion and over 5.3 billion hours to comply with federal taxes each year. That's more than it takes to produce every car, truck, and van in the United States. Is it any surprise that 60% of taxpayers must hire a professional to complete their return?

Someone once asked, "What's the difference between a tax auditor and a Rottweiler? A Rottweiler eventually lets go." Even Albert Einstein admitted, "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

From a scriptural standpoint, it's really not so hard to understand why we have taxes. As citizens of our nation, as well as of our state and local community, our taxes are the financial basis for government to provide such things as police and fire protection, highways, schools, other programs, and to protect us from lawbreakers and foreign aggressors (Rom. 13:1-7). With every government benefit comes the necessity of paying for such benefits.

When you consider Jesus' famous reply regarding "render to Caesarand render to God," two basic lessons are prominent: Since our coins bear the image of government officials, we all should render the proper taxes to our government. And since we bear the image of God (Gen. 1:26), we all should render ourselves to God by conforming to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29).