Jesus was once challenged by a group of Pharisees who hoped to trap him in a conundrum. They asked him whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. If Jesus were to say no, he would be advocating rebellion against Rome, thereby endangering his fellow Jews. If he were to say yes, he would be acknowledging Roman dominion over lands that were promised by God to the people of Israel.
But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” They answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
(Matthew 22:18-21, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)
Jesus said that not only is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, but it is essential.
When Jesus was arrested, one of those present was the high priest, who brought with him his slave:
Suddenly one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
(Matthew 26:47, NRSVue)
Here we have evidence that there were Jews living in the time of Jesus who owned slaves. Rome itself was a slave state. Did Jesus ever advocate for the abolition of slavery? No, he did not. In fact he thought of slaves as an integral part of society:
“A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master.”
(Matthew 10:24, NRSVue)
The Old Testament has rules about how Israelites were expected to treat their slaves.
“If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and works for you six years, in the seventh year you shall set that person free. And when you send a male slave out from you a free person, you shall not send him out empty-handed. Provide for him liberally out of your flock, your threshing floor, and your winepress, thus giving to him some of the bounty with which the Lord your God has blessed you.
(Deuteronomy 15:12-14, NRSVue)
Slavery was perfectly legal, according to the law given by Yahweh to Moses, and Jesus did nothing whatsoever to free the the slaves. He didn’t even speak out against the practice.
Why was Jesus so accepting of the social conditions of his time? Consider this well known quotation:
“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.”
(Matthew 7:1-2, NRSVue)
If you can’t judge other people, then you can’t punish them for violations of the law.
Here’s another well known passage from the New Testament:
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
(Matthew 18:21-22, NRSVue)
(Note: Some translations render the seventy seven times as seventy times seven times, or 490.)
So Jesus expected his followers to forgive sins 77 times, and that appears to be per sin.
In fact, Jesus expected that his followers would be as perfect and as forgiving as Yahweh:
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
(Matthew 5:48, NRSVue)
And just how forgiving is Yahweh?
Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
(Matthew 12:31-32, NRSVue)
Yahweh will forgive murder, rape, incest, sodomy, assault, battery, robbery, fraud, slander, libel, and every other sin– except the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And Jesus expected his followers to do the same.
In one well known example, a group of Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. They said that the law of Moses required that she should be stoned to death. But instead of agreeing to see her punished, Jesus asked that they consider their own sins:
“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
(John 8:7, NRSVue)
(Note: The provenance of this passage is disputed.)
And as each of them had to admit to having sinned, each of them turned away and left the woman behind. And then Jesus forgave her:
Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
(John 8:11, NRSVue)
This story perfectly illustrates the type of behavior that Jesus advocated. Do not condemn other people– not even those who violate the law. Convince them to do the right thing by confronting them with their own sins– and then forgive them of those sins. Forgiveness, Jesus taught, is more powerful than punishment.
But is that really possible in a society of millions of people? It’s a heartwarming morality. If people really could be convinced to do the right thing simply by being forced to reflect on their own sins, society as a whole could readily ascend to ever higher levels of harmony and peace.
Unfortunately that’s just not how societies work. Yes, many people are susceptible to the kind of inner reflection that Jesus expected. But some are not. And it only takes an incorrigible few to disrupt entire communities.
Every society needs laws, judges to administer the laws, and law enforcement agencies to enforce the laws. Without these basic constructs society would quickly devolve into chaos, disorder, and a violent scramble for self preservation. Jesus was advocating a moral code that demanded forgiveness and perfection, but it just isn’t practical in any society or in any time.
Why didn’t Jesus speak out against slavery? Or gladiatorial combat? Why did he think that sins should be forgiven, rather than punished? Why didn’t he oppose the brutal treatment of the nations the Romans conquered?
In the following passage the disciples asked Jesus when the new age would arrive:
When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
(Matthew 24:3, NRSVue)
Jesus answered the second part of the question first by listing a number of events that he says will happen before the return of the Son of Man:
“Immediately after the suffering of those days
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from heaven,
and the powers of heaven will be shaken.“Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
(Matthew 24:29-31, NRSVue)
And then he provided an answer to the first part of the question:
Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.
(Matthew 24:34, NRSVue)
(Note: This idea is repeated in Mark 13. There is a similar narrative in Luke 17:20 – 37 and Luke 21:20 – 32, though Luke’s version has several differences. There is no comparable passage in the book of John.)
Jesus expected that the new age would arrive before his own generation had died out. That’s why he wasn’t concerned about the state of the world. He believed that the world order would be overturned by Yahweh sometime around the end of the first century CE. There was no point in worrying about slaves, or the brutality of the empire, or lawbreakers. It would all be swept away in just a few years with the advent of the new era that Yahweh had ordained. Jesus wasn’t trying to make the world a better place in which to live. He was only interested in preparing his perfect followers for an eternity in paradise.
In one sense Jesus was right to avoid condemning slavery. Everyone who had rebelled against the Roman empire had been crushed: the Carthaginians, the Sabines, Spartacus and his rebelling gladiators, the Maccabees… No one could withstand the might of Rome. Jesus advised his followers to pay Caesar’s taxes and to avoid confronting the empire. If you try to combat Rome, you will be annihilated.
Later centuries have proved that resistance against powerful empires can work. Mahatma Gandhi led non-violent opposition to the British empire and succeeded in winning the end of British colonial rule. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s forced the United States government to enact the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, also through non-violent resistance. Jesus may have been right about the Roman empire, but he was wrong in the context of the broad sweep of history. Resistance is not always futile.
In Arabic the word Islam means “surrender,” or “submission.” Followers of Islam are called upon to surrender themselves to the will of Allah.
To surrender to the will of Allah, or of Yahweh, is to trust that God will guide the world toward righteousness. And it is further to absolve oneself of having to do anything about the brutality and corruption of the world. It is to accept the conditions of human society as they are, to believe that God directs the affairs of humans and that he will inevitably lead the world to peace and prosperity for all. But which God enabled the Mongol conquests, the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Russian Gulag, Mao’s Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution, or the Vietnam War? To surrender to the terror and destruction of such events is to assume that there is nothing that humans can do to prevent them, or even to diminish their impact.
Resistance can work. But resistance requires human agency, human advocacy, human will. And human agency is at the heart of the very notion of democracy. It is predicated on the belief that not only can humans solve their own social problems, but that humans alone can solve them.
If you live under totalitarian rule, surrender to the divine will amounts to acceptance of that rule. It is an abdication of the human responsibility to work with others to resolve conflict and improve the conditions of life. Only through the exercise of human agency can the world truly become a better place in which to live.
Copyright (c) 2026 by David S. Moore
All rights reserved
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