(2) Next comes the case of the woman taken in adultery (see p. [370]). In the criminal jurisdiction of Moses the leading thought was to “put away evil;” but men had grown less cruel, and pity for the offender and hope of his reformation were coming into play. If the Lord had given judgment either in one way or the other we should have been landed in endless perplexity. The difficult questions of the distinction between a sin and a crime, and whether it is advisable for a state to enforce morality, would have been complicated by a Divine decision in a case of which the relation would not, unless the account were fuller than the Gospel notices usually are, contain all the particulars that are material.
The two cases that remain refer to polity rather than to law.
(3) The “didrachma” were levied apparently as a tax for the Temple service, enforced by custom, if not by positive law. Those who collected it ask Peter if our Lord does not pay this annual sum, and Peter at once declares that He does. But our Lord will not leave the matter so. The money shall be paid, because to refuse the payment would waken ill feeling and give an impression altogether false; but our Lord will not sanction such a payment with His authority, without protest and explanation. It might have been made the ground of supporting many kinds of religious impost if He had. He puts the question in such a light that His practice can never be quoted in support of any such demand.
(4) Those who came asking whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar, like those who brought the woman taken in adultery, had a hostile intent. They asked with a view only to entangle, not with a desire to learn. Our Lord always baffles those who address Him in this spirit. In dealing with the question of the tribute, He avoids each horn of the dilemma and teaches a grand lesson to the people who heard. For they were to render to God “the things that were God's,” that is to say, not a man's money, but the whole man himself, for he is made in God's image and carries the likeness of it in his personality, just as the [pg 407] coin carries on its face the name and the impress of Cæsar. Thus, in these words, the whole man is claimed as God's own by Christ.
If our Lord had either enforced or forbidden these two payments, His authority, appealed to on this side or that, would have further embittered questions which are bitter enough of themselves. Men have often pored over Scripture to extract an authority for what they wanted to do, and the case of the tribute money, notwithstanding our Lord's answer, has been pressed into the service of the upholders of imperial power.
Dr Bryce speaking of the Mediæval Empire says:—
“From the New Testament the authority and eternity of Rome herself was established. Every passage was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined, every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by paying tribute to Cæsar, by saying to Pilate, ‘Thou couldest have no power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.’ ”
In finishing this notice I must remark that there is one social institution about which our Lord does not shun to speak; this is marriage. He upholds the sanctity and inviolability of the marriage tie more stringently than did the Jewish Law. The [pg 408] scribe who came “making trial” of our Lord is confounded—not by being put off without an answer—as usually happens in these cases, but by the singular positiveness of the reply.
“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery.”[306]
This exception is not inconsistent with the principles governing our Lord's acts. Christ's teaching was meant for all mankind, and Christianity would have been less adapted for universal use if it had been bound up with particular institutions. But marriage is not a particular institution, it is declared to be as universal as the human race; it goes down deeper than all divisions, it belongs to the stock below the point where the branches sprout. Thus Christ's recognition of the sanctity of marriage does not hamper human legislation, or prevent the growth of Humanity in any manner consistent with its health.