The Limits of Caesar Copy link

Have you noticed? Every sheriff's car in this county carries the same four words. Every fire truck. Every police cruiser, every county vehicle. "In God We Trust."
And open your wallet. Every U.S. bill in there has those words on the back of it.
Even many of our license plates.
But stop on the last word for a second.
Trust.
Not "In God We Acknowledge." Not "In God We Take a Passing Interest." Trust. That word is a pretty strong claim. It says this county, this nation, leans its whole weight on God. That our confidence rests in him.
So … is that true?
Does the nation that prints those words actually trust God? Or have we done something very old and very dangerous — stamped God's name on our own power, and then quietly trusted that power instead?
Because that is not new. Every empire in history has carried a god into battle. Every one of them said the god was on their side. And nearly every one of them was really trusting its own strength.
That’s an ancient move. It has a name. And we'll get to it in a minute.
But here is where we are going this morning. Eric was right: we are to submit. The authority of government is real, and it is God-given, and the Bible really does tell us to honor it. But that authority is not unlimited. It has an edge, a boundary, a place where it stops. And that boundary was not drawn by a constitution or an election. It was drawn on a Roman cross — where Jesus put every Caesar, forever, in his place.
The government is God's servant. It is not God.
Romans 13:1-7
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
1. God's Good Gift — Under the Shadow of Babylon
Let's start where Paul starts, verse 1: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God."
Right off the bat, Paul says civil government is God's idea. Not a human invention. It is not a necessary evil that happened on its own. It is God's provision for a fallen world — His gift to restrain evil and protect life until Christ returns.
Verse 4 says the ruler "is God's servant for your good." A servant. Put here on purpose, for a purpose: to be a terror to bad conduct. To punish evil. To protect the weak. To make it possible for you to raise your children in peace.
Now. Some of you hear "government is God's gift" and something in you tightens up. I understand why.
Because you have watched the gift betray its purpose. You have watched a nation sanction the murder of tens of millions of unborn children and call it healthcare. You have watched the sexual revolution redefine marriage and families and call it progress. You have watched schools press gender ideology on children too young to spell it.
And it gets to you. It makes you angry. It wears on you. You’re tired of it, fed up, and worried, and you have been for years.
Hear me: underneath that anger is grief. And that grief is righteous. It is exactly the right response when God's servants betray the job God gave them. You grieve because you know what government was supposed to be. If you didn't care about God's design, the betrayal wouldn't hurt.
We all understand that government goes wrong because sinful men run it – that’s truth, and we all know it. But let’s look even closer together, because there’s something more underneath that. Something more behind the sinful men.
Scripture tells us that the thrones of this world are not only fought over by flesh and blood. Behind them stand spiritual powers – real, unseen, and in rebellion against God. Paul calls them “rulers and authorities.” They are not the men in office. They are something older and darker, and they have always had one aim: to pull every human throne away from God and turn it against Him.
That is the corruption underneath the corruption.
The men in power are the ones who do it. They pass the laws. They sign the orders. They choose the evil, and God will hold them accountable for it – make no mistake. But they are not the whole story. Behind their choices, those unseen powers are always at work. Whispering to every ruler the oldest lie there is – the same lie the serpent told in the garden: you can be like God. You can decide good and evil for yourself. You can answer to no one.
The power does not force the ruler. It does not have to. It only has to whisper – the sinful heart already wants to believe it.
And that lie, believed and built into a kingdom, has a name. Scripture calls it Babylon.
From the tower at Babel to the empire in Revelations, Babylon is the Bible’s picture of a kingdom that sets itself up as God. And it always looks the same. It demands the loyalty that belongs to God. It calls good evil and evil good, because it has appointed itself the judge of both. It promises the security and the salvation that only God can give. And it insists that you trust it – not God, it – with your whole life.
That is Babylon. And the pull to become it runs through every earthly power, in every age. Egypt felt it. Assyria felt it. And so does every nation since – including our own.
That’s why, when the book of Revelation wants to describe Rome – the empire of Paul's day – it doesn't call it Rome. It calls it Babylon. Because Rome was doing the Babylon thing.
Every throne in history feels that pull. The pull away from the purpose ordained by God. The pull to stop serving God and to start playing God. And that is the pull on our nation now.
That is what we are grieving. Not just bad policy. Not just the wrong party winning. We are watching the shadow of Babylon fall across our nation.
So our grief is right. But grief needs somewhere to go. And to know what to do with it, we need to see what Paul saw — something that happened on the Cross that put every Caesar, forever, in his place.
2. The Cross Is Where Caesar Was Put in His Place

Think about Paul writing this letter to the Romans.
He wrote it to the Christians in Rome. And the man on the throne in Rome at that time was Nero. Nero. The emperor who taxed them mercilessly to fund his palaces. Who would soon blame Christians for a fire that burned the city – and answer it with slaughter. Nero who wrapped believers in bloody skins and threw them to dogs. He covered them in pitch tar, set them alight, and used them as torches to light his garden parties.
That is the government Paul is writing about. That is the “governing authority” he says has been instituted by God.
And Paul knew it. He was not naive. This wasn’t theory to him – he was living under Nero, and one day he would die under Nero. He knew exactly what Rome was — the empire Revelation would come to call Babylon.
So how could he write it? How could he look at Nero's Rome — at Babylon — and tell the church to submit?
Because Paul knew something Nero didn't.
Let’s look at Colossians 2. First, he warns us not to become captive to empty philosophies and traditions and the elemental spirits of the world. He’s warning about the powers, and he’s warning about the pull of Babylon.
But immediately he shifts. Christ is head of all rulers and authorities. Every power, every throne, every Babylon that ever was – Christ is over it.
And then Paul says how. He tells us what happened when Jesus died. Verse 15: "He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him."
Do you hear what that says? Disarmed. Put to open shame. Triumphed.
Paul uses an image straight out of Roman life. When a general won a great victory, Rome threw him a triumph, a parade through the streets of the city. The conquering general rode in front in his chariot. And behind him, stripped of their weapons and their crowns, came the kings he had defeated – marched through the streets in public, shamed before the whole city.
Rome paraded the kings it had conquered. And Paul says, the cross is where Christ paraded the powers He had conquered.
At Calvary – at the very moment the empire thought it was executing another failed rebel – Jesus was stripping the spiritual powers behind every Babylon and marching them through the streets in open shame. The dark powers that whisper to every throne, "You can be like God" — Christ dragged them through the streets in chains!
And notice how he did it. Babylon tries to claw its way up — reaching for a throne that isn't its own. Christ went the other way. He was God — he already had the throne — and He let it go. He emptied himself. He went down, all the way down, all the way to death on a cross.
That is how the powers fell. Not to force — to faith. Not to a clenched fist — to open hands nailed to a tree. The whole grasping kingdom of Babylon was undone by one man who would not grasp, because he trusted his Father completely.
That is why Paul could write Romans 13 under Nero. Not because he was an optimist. Because he was a witness to a victory.
And if Christ has disarmed the powers, then no ruler holds anything but borrowed authority. Then the throne is not God. It never was. It’s a servant.
The magistrate is God's servant, not God.
That is why Jesus could hold up a coin and say, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Whose face is stamped on the coin? Caesar's. Then give Caesar his coin. Pay the tax. Honor the office.
But then there is the deeper question. Whose image is stamped on you? You are not Caesar's. You never were. You bear the image of God. So Caesar can have your taxes. He can have your obedience in a thousand daily things. But he cannot have your worship. He cannot have your conscience. He cannot have your children's souls. Those bear God's image. They belong to God alone.
Now — before we get too comfortable pointing at Washington, there is one more throne that wants what belongs to God.
It is the one in your own chest.
That same pull is in you and me — the quiet certainty that I know best. That I should get the last word. That deep down, I would rather answer to no one. It doesn’t seem like wanting to be God. It just seems like being right. But it is the same root: the self, quietly climbing onto a throne that was never ours. Babylon is not only out there in the empire. Babylon has a seat in the human heart.
And here is what makes it so dangerous: it hardly ever looks to us like rebellion. It looks like principle. It looks like standing firm. I can be defending something true — something truly worth defending — and underneath it, quietly, I am not submitting to God at all. I am just getting my own way and calling it obedience.
And do not think being “on God's side” protects you. Scripture shows us differently. Israel — God's own people, the nation set apart to be the not-Babylon … became Babylon. The throne that was meant to serve God started grabbing, and calling good evil and evil good, until it was hard to tell Israel apart from the empires it was supposed to stand against. Being “God's people” did not make them safe. It just gave them holier words for the same old grasping.
And that is a warning for us. The ones most certain they could never become Babylon are often the closest to it. Sometimes they are the most exposed to it — because no one guards against a sin he is certain he could never commit.
So what do we do with that? Stand in front of the mirror and pick our own hearts apart until they come out clean?
They will not come out clean. Not this side of glory. You know that.
No — you take your heart somewhere better than a mirror. Because the heart that wants to crown itself is the heart Christ died for. The grasping in you was nailed to the same cross that disarmed the grasping powers. So you don’t clean yourself up first. You bring it – Babylon and all – to the One who has already defeated Babylon. And he does not parade you through the streets. He forgives you. He remakes you.
The cross doesn't just put Caesar in his place. It rescues you.
... That pride, the self-will – the little Babylon you have built in your own heart – Christ took it to the cross and dealt with it. You don't have to scrub it clean. You don't have to pretend it isn't there. It is forgiven.
On that cross He put your sin to death – and left it in the grave. But death could not hold Him. Death could not hold him!
3. Citizens of a Kingdom That Cannot Fall

He rose.
He walked out of the tomb, and forty days later he ascended — not into retirement, but onto a throne. And now he is seated far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, not only in this age but in the one to come. Right now, this morning, the man Rome nailed to a cross rules over every government on earth!
There is a throne above every throne – and Christ is on it. Every ruler, every court, every congress and every king — they are all under the feet of the risen Christ, whether they acknowledge it or not.
The news will never show you that throne. It shows you who seems to be in charge — who has power this week, who grabbed it, who makes the most noise. But that’s all surface – smoke and mirrors. Above all of it, unshaken, Christ is reigning – and every power the cameras are chasing is already under His feet.
And if Christ is on the throne, over every ruler, then no earthly ruler is anything more than a servant. God did not hand out authority and walk away. He sets rulers under Himself, to do His good work in the world. That is their place - under the King.
The magistrate is God’s servant, not God.
So when a ruler grasps — when a government sets itself up as god, claiming the right to name good and evil for itself, demanding the trust that belongs to God alone — it is not overturning that order. It can't. It is only rebelling against an order that still stands, unshaken. The ruler struts on his own throne, down here where God set him — but he has not climbed one inch higher. He is only pretending there is no throne above his. And the King who sits on it is still there, still reigning, unmoved.
And one day it will be finished. Every eye will see him. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess that he is Lord.
Every ruler who ever grasped, every power that ever whispered, every Babylon that ever strutted across the earth — all of it, brought low before the throne it defied. Every wrong put right. Every tear wiped away. Every crooked thing made straight.
That is where history is going. Not into the hands of whoever wins in November. Into the hands of the One who is already reigning — and always will.
But he is not only King at the end. He is King now. And that changes who we are, right now, this morning.
We are not just passing through, waiting to be taken home. We are not spectators, watching the news and wringing our hands. We are citizens of his kingdom — the kingdom that cannot fall — and he has stationed us right here, in this town, in this nation, in this moment, to live like we belong to him.
So we pray the way he taught us — "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" — and then we get up off our knees and live like we mean what we just prayed!
So we do not despise the world he put us in. We love our neighbors. We work for what is true and just and good — we protect the unborn, we tell the truth, we serve our country and our community — because the King we serve is true and just and good, and we want our corner of his world to look a little more like the kingdom that is coming. But we work like people who already know how the story ends. The world was never ours to save. The King is already on his throne.
And that means we can work without fear. Some of us have lived and died by every election — high when our side wins, sick with dread when it loses, as though the throne of heaven were on the ballot. It never was. If your hope crashed on election night, your hope was in the wrong place. Christ was reigning the next morning, exactly as he had been the night before.
And we can work without grasping. Because here is the trap for people like us — people who love this country and grieve over it. We love God, and we love our country. But those two loves are not equal, and they must stay in their proper order. The day we start treating our nation as the kingdom, our party as the church, our cause as the gospel — we have put our country where God belongs. We are doing the Babylon thing ourselves — handing Caesar what belongs to God.
Keep those loves in the right order — God first, country under him — and you can love them both. Let them get swapped around, and you will lose them both.
So here is a test. What is your politics doing to you? Is it making you more like Christ, or less? More hopeful, or more bitter? More free, or more afraid? A faith that leaves you angrier every year, more frightened every election, more contemptuous of your neighbor — that is not the fruit of the Spirit. That is the fruit of Babylon.
And now — go back with me to where we started. Romans 13, verse 1. "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God."
Do you hear it differently now?
Last Sunday, this verse may have sounded like a flat command — just submit, just comply. It is not. It is the voice of the King who has already won, telling his people how free men and women live under empires that are already defeated.
So yes — we submit. Paul knew exactly who sat on Rome's throne when he wrote those words, and he knew exactly what stood behind it. And he still said submit. Not because Caesar deserved it. Because Christ reigns over Caesar. So we pay the tax. We honor the office. We obey the law. Not because Caesar is God — but because our God ordained the office Caesar sits in, and rules over the man who holds it.
But when Caesar oversteps — when he reaches past his office and grasps for what belongs to God alone — we do not hand it over. Our worship. Our conscience. Our children. Our first allegiance. Those were never his, and no law can make them his.
The world only knows two ways to stand before power: worship it, or burn it down. Christ has given us a third. Honor without worship. Submission without surrender.
And do not mistake that for weakness. That is warfare. Every time the church honors the ruler without bowing to Babylon, the powers behind the throne are reminded that they lost. A Christian who cannot be bought and cannot be frightened is the freest person in any empire.
We live between two mornings. The morning he walked out of the grave. And the morning every knee will bow.
Between those two mornings, thrones will rise. Thrones will grasp. Thrones will fall. Babylon always falls. Christ always reigns.
So go, live like people who already know how this ends. Pay the tax. Honor the office. Love your neighbor. Tell the truth.
Give Caesar his coin — and give God what bears his image.
Let’s pray.