“Then He said to them, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to Go what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

The question is, “What is God’s?” Scripture tells us the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. So everything, literally, is God’s. Obviously, however, Jesus here admits that the coin He has been given, the coin used to pay taxes to Caesar, belongs to Caesar because of his image and inscription on it. That is, Caesar produced it, it bore the mark of the Roman government. Jesus tells this coin belongs to Rome.

What then is it that belongs to God? What is He referring to?

I’ve heard it said recently that He refers here to the tithe. We learn from the book of Malachi that the tithe—or, 10% of a person’s income—belongs to God. To not give it to God is to rob God and short-change His work upon the earth (which, in our day, would be the ministry of the church). While I agree with this, that the tithe belongs to God, I do not believe this is what He refers to here. The key to understanding the lesson here are the words “likeness and inscription.”

The Bible teaches that we have been made in the “image and likeness” of God. That is, we bear His likeness in the qualities of our original specifications, and, frankly, we look like Him. We are, in our physical state, the spitting-image of God who made us.

Having reneged on our relationship with God in the Garden and been cut off from God, the Scripture also teaches we have come under the control of Satan, and are of our ‘father’ the devil. Jesus, in His redemptive work and for those who will accept it, ‘bought’ us back; we were, body, soul, and spirit, purchased by Jesus’ blood. Believers now belong to God.

I believe what Jesus teaches here is that we give the government what is rightfully theirs, our taxes, and to God what is rightfully His, our bodies.

This truth is born out in Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter twelve:

“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual (or, reasonable) service of worship” (verse 1).

The rightful meaning is brought in Kenneth Wuest’s rendering. We are to “Place (our) bodies at the disposal of God.” We are, in effect, to say as Isaiah did when he saw the Lord: “Here I am. Send (or, use) me!”

The thing is, God needs our bodies. It might be said that God does not need anything—He is God! And that would be right. Yet He has chosen to confine Himself to the bodies of His saints for the purpose of living His life in and through them. He has chosen to do His work through people. “I will dwell in them in fellowship with them as in a home and I will live My life in and through them” (2 Corinthians 6:16 Wuest). Jesus has ascended into heaven, yet He continues His ministry in and through submitted men and women. Therefore, we are to give to Caesar (or, in our case, Uncle Sam) what is his, and to God what belongs to Him.

Of course, our bodies may have been purchased by God and are rightfully His, but what Paul refers to as our primary worship is that these need to be yielded to God. So it is that the commentators Jamieson, Faust, and Brown write, “It is through the body that all the gracious principles and affections of believers reveal themselves in the outward life.” That is, we have been redeemed, our souls saved, and the only appropriate response of gratitude for a transformed life is that of a yielded one. We present our “members (the members of our body) as instruments of righteousness to God.”

What is God’s then? Our total person, yet if our bodies are not yielded to His purpose our inner life is of no use. We may be super-spiritual yet of no good to anyone. Therefore I believe with all my heart that, not only is my spirit and soul God’s, but my body too. According to Jesus’ teaching then, I am to give it to God to use however He might wish.