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“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” One could easily hear Jesus’ teaching and think, “Alright, I have to pay my taxes to Caesar and my tithes to God. There, I have fulfilled my duty. That wasn’t too hard.” But if you walk away thinking that, you have not yet begun to understand Our Lord’s teaching in this passage.

Before delivering that line, Jesus first asks his interlocuters to show him the coin that pays the census tax. When they do, he asks them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They answer, “Caesar’s.” Therefore, he tells us to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.

If the coin bears the image of Caesar, it belongs to Caesar, and we ought to repay it to Caesar. The command to repay to God what belongs to God ought to leave us wondering, “But what belongs to God?”

And the answer, according to Our Lord’s logic here, is that whatever bears the image of God belongs to God and ought to be repaid to God. You are created in the image and likeness of God. Since you bear his image, you belong to him. If you owe taxes to Caesar, you owe your entire being to God, not merely your tithes.

It is a profound truth that the human person is made in the image and likeness of God. On the most basic level, this means that we have a capacity for God that no other creature in the material world has. Every human person is endowed with the spiritual faculties of intellect and will, which make us resemble God in a unique way and make us capable of knowing and loving God. Not everyone knows and loves God, but we all have that capacity. This natural capacity alone gives every human life an inherent dignity.

This becomes more profound on the level of grace. When we enter into friendship with God, we come to know and love him actually, not just as a potential or capacity. As we grow deeper in this knowledge and love of God, we grow deeper in being his image and likeness.

Ultimately, this is meant to reach perfection in glory. The saints in heaven know and love God perfectly. They enjoy his friendship in its fullness as they see him face to face, and so they are living as God’s image and likeness in the fullest sense.

Hence, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the image of God is seen in man in three ways: according to nature, grace and glory. The first is common to all, the second only to those who possess sanctifying grace and the third to the blessed in heaven (“Summa Theologiae I,” q. 93, a. 4) A Trappist monk, Father Simeon Leiva-Merikakis, writes, “The living image of God within us signifies, not only that we belong by right to him who made us (as the image on the coin signifies that it belongs to Caesar). In addition, and because we are transcendent, spiritual beings, that divine reflection within us means that, in a certain sense, we may and must aspire to a relationship of intimacy with God, as friend relates to friend and as lover relates to lover. God’s desire and whole purpose in creating us ‘in his own image’ is that we should relate to him as did Moses, when the Lord said to him: ‘This very thing that you have spoken I will do; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name’ (Ex 33:17). Lest there be any ambiguity about what it means for God to know us ‘by name,’ one version of this verse says ‘because you have found favor with me and you are my intimate friend.’”  As living images of God, we are made for communion with God. To repay to God what belongs to him means to know, love and serve him with our whole being. And precisely in this is our greatest happiness.