Christ's View of Tax Collectors

Mat 5:46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you get? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

The term, telones, translated as "tax collector" or "publican" is a little different that our idea of a government worker. These "tax collectors" collected rent on land from farmers that were essentially share-croppers. In Christ's time, the owners were all the aristocracy, the nobility. So in a sense, the government owned the land and these tax-collectors worked for the government, but the government wasn't about serving the people in general, but the interests of the elites. Historically, these tax-collectors or rent collectors were notoriously corrupt. As middlemen and managers, the elites trusted them to know who should pay what, but these tax-collectors readily took bribes from farmer for setting the "appropriate" rents on property.

But notice that Christ doesn't suggest that we love others out of the goodness of our hearts. He says specifically that we do this for a reward. The Greek word for reward is misthos, which literally means "wages" or "payment." So we love our neighbors, not out of some selflessness but because we expect a payment from God for doing it. This is important! All kinds of social moralizers go on and on about how we should be selfless and sacrifice ourselves for the "common good." This is not what Christ was teaching. He taught that we should do what is difficult but because doing what is difficult is more rewarding, in the long run, than doing what is easy, what everyone does.

However, Christ contrasts the kind of payment we expect from God with the kind of payment a corrupt officials expect. What is the difference? The reward that we get from God isn't a bribe because it isn't immediate and we don't know exactly what to expect. A bribe is, by its nature, quid pro quo, this for that. But God's reward for loving our enemies is taken on trust. We don't know either what that reward is or when we will get it.

Perhaps, loving our enemies is its own reward because it makes us happier than hating our enemies. Perhaps we are rewarded by creating a better world for us and our children. Perhaps we are rewarded in the afterlife when the scales of justice are truly balanced. Perhpas all of these are true, but it is the "perhaps," the fact that we take it all on trust that makes all the difference.