“And they came and said to Him, ‘Teacher, we know that You are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For You are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God….’” (Mark 12:14a)
During Jesus’ ministry on earth, He had many rivals. Among these were the Pharisees, who were the Jewish religious leaders at the time. The Pharisees hated Jesus because His teachings undermined their power. People who followed Jesus were no longer bound to the Pharisees’ legalistic teachings. So they hatched a plan. In order to ruin Jesus’ credibility with the people, they would ask Him a hard question and trip Him up in His words. When the opportunity arose, the Pharisees came to Jesus and reminded Him that He always spoke the truth. In light of this, they had a difficult question for Him: did God’s Law allow the Jews to pay taxes to Caesar?
The Pharisees must have thought they had Jesus when they asked this question. But He knew exactly what they were thinking. Instead of answering in the way they had hoped, which would lead to Him incriminating Himself, He instead replied that since the coins for the tax bore Caesar’s image, they belonged to Caesar. It was indeed lawful to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s. No one was able to argue with His statement.
Jesus’ answer was so effective because, as the Pharisees had rightly noted, He was true. He knew the truth and spoke it plainly. Because of that, no one was ever able to trap Him in His words. No matter how many tricky questions they cooked up, Jesus always had a simple, truthful answer to counter them.
Truth is a powerful weapon. Nothing can beat it, because it is right. Truth always has been and always will be the same. It is an absolute, unchangeable entity. Just as Jesus always countered the Pharisees with truth, so too can we fight against false beliefs. We must know the truth of God’s Word if we are to have any effect on the darkness of the world.
This week, what is one way you can learn more about God’s truth? What is one way you can use His truth for His glory?
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