Jesus' Miracle
We begin at the end. (I promise you I will not always go backwards in my tracts.) That ending reads, “[Peter], go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself’ (v. 27).
I’ll give the context quickly, and then less quickly I’ll give two observations about the oddity of this “miracle.” The context is this: Jesus and Peter (and assuming also the Twelve) journey back to Capernaum, the town Peter is from, and which Jesus also calls home (4:13). When they arrive, the tax collectors are there to say, “Hello, welcome home.” Capernaum is on the Sea of Galilee, so perhaps the collectors collected for this tax when people came to shore. Perhaps this is what Matthew once did, and perhaps that is why he alone records this event.
Whatever the specifics, these “collectors of the two-drachma tax” are there, and they ask Peter, “Does your teacher not pay the tax?” referring to the half-shekel or temple tax. With their question they assume Jesus does pay the tax. They assume this because every pious Jewish man would attend the synagogue on the Sabbath (Jesus did that), keep the yearly feasts (Jesus did that), pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Jesus did that), and pay the temple tax (as Peter says, Jesus did that too, v. 25). So they say, “Does he pay?” Peter says, “He does.” And then Jesus affirms Peter’s affirmation by saying, “Peter, go fish.”
Now we come to the miracle. There are two oddities about it. First, no miracle is recorded. The story ends with the command, "Peter, go fish,” and then three assumptions—(a) that Peter did fish, (b) that Peter caught that one fish with that one coin, and (c) that Peter used that coin to pay the tax. But Matthew doesn’t record what we assume. And this is different than any of the other miracles in Matthew thus far. Here there is no “And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, be clean.’ And immediately his [the man’s] leprosy was cleansed” (8:3), or “Then he [Jesus] rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm” (8:26), or “And he [Jesus] said to the man [with the withered hand] ‘Stretch out your hand,’ ...and it [the hand] was restored” (12:13), or “And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out” (17:18). Here we just get what Jesus commanded, but we don't get what follows. We wonder, did it all work?
The second oddity is that if it did work, it sure sounds like a tall tale. There is this folklore feel to this assumed miracle. Jesus produced what (a coin?) from what (a fish?)? That sounds too much like a Greek or Roman myth to be credible. What is this, the coin to pay Charon to ferry the soul across the River Styx?
These two oddities might lead you to think that (a) no miracle occurred or (b) if it did, it mattered little to Matthew—his focus is on the message, not the miracle. But I disagree with both thoughts. I think a miracle occurred and that it mattered much to Matthew.
I see the faulty logic (held by some notable scholars) behind the notion that since no miracle is recorded, no miracle occurred. Let’s say I told you that the Bears played the Seahawks, and the Packers played the Falcons, and then said that the winners of those two games will play each other today. Then I said, “Today the Bears play the Falcons,” and that’s all I said. Wouldn’t you make the connection that the Bears must have beaten the Seahawks and the Falcons must have beaten the Packers? You wouldn’t say, “Well, unless you tell me the Bears and Packers won, they must not have won.”
The miracle is assumed, and that’s okay. That’s enough. It should be enough. Do we have any reason, after reading Matthew 4—16, to think that Jesus doesn’t possess the power to do something like this? What’s a shekel in a grey mullet’s mouth compared to curing a leper, raising the dead, or giving sight to the blind? And do we have any reason to doubt the power and truthfulness of Jesus’ word? Is he teasing Peter or lying to him? And does it make any sense to say what Jesus said about paying the tax if he didn’t pay the tax? His whole message in verses 25, 26 is based on the assumption that the command in verse 27 will work—that Peter will pay the tax by these miraculous means.
Matthew simply omits the obvious. I think he omits the obvious for obvious reasons. Two plus two makes four; if you have four at the end and two at the beginning, you do the math. But I also think he omits the obvious (the actual coin was in the fish’s mouth) because he understood the folklore feel to this miracle, and thus he was careful in his description of it (or lack thereof) not to put it in that category. If he wanted to, he would have not only recorded the details of it but embellished upon them.
Have you ever read medieval hagiography—like The Lives of the Saints? (I grew up on the stuff.) Matthew could have done it up like those stories are done up. He could have added twenty verses after verse 27.
And St. Peter dropped his hook into the sea. It was the Dead Sea. (Fish don’t swim in the Dead Sea!) A large fish was immediately caught. It was a king salmon. (Salmon don't swim in Palestinian waters!) Peter grabbed it with his bare hand, took the hook out, opened its mouth, and forced that fish to cough up the coin. The coin was silver, and the silver shone in his holy hand. A dove flew overhead and winked. Peter gave the coin to Jesus. The moment our Lord touched it the imprint of Caesar’s head melted and molded into a picture of the Ark of the Covenant. And as Jesus gave it to the tax collectors, their bodies were immediately plagued with tumors.
That is not how Matthew does it. Rather, he is careful here to separate history from legend. In speaking of this miracle—knowing its truth sounds stranger than fiction—he wants to separate it from a facetious telling of it. The best way to do that is the way he did it. And to that I say, “Well done, brother Mathew. I appreciate your modesty.”
This is an odd miracle. I acknowledge that, as perhaps does Matthew. But odd does not equal inauthentic. The oddities argue for its authenticity.
So I think a real miracle occurred—precisely as Jesus outlined in verse 27, and I also think this miracle mattered much to Matthew. Listen, the whole story hangs on it. As I just said, if there is no miracle there is no message.
Jesus ends by saying, “Take that [shekel | and give it to them for me and for yourself.” If there is no miracle—take what and give what? The message hangs on the miracle.
Thus, take the miracle seriously. Look at it with neither a critical nor a cautious eye. Believe it. See it as authentic and see it as awesome!
In the last two chapters I have hit on the theme that Jesus is the divine Son of God. And this miracle, this “very remarkable... providence,” this act of “unutterable power”—what sovereign control of the sea (think of the parting of the Red Sea; think of Jonah and the big fish)—falls under the category that I label in very technical terms, “Hey, this guy is the son of God!” Think about what needs to happen in this miracle for it to work. Jesus needs divine power, and Jesus needs divine foreknowledge. He needs to know there is a coin in the sea. He needs to know that some fish swallowed it or is actually holding it in its mouth (hasn’t swallowed it). He needs to know that this fish is near the shore. He needs to know that it will be the first fish Peter catches. He needs to know it will have a shekel in its mouth, which is precisely the amount of the tax for two people.
This miracle is awesome! Transferred to the person of Jesus, we see that this man is awesome! What then is this message about taxes?
The miracle, like the transfiguration, is designed to make you listen up. “This is my beloved Son... listen to him” (17:5). Listen to him as he speaks about his death. Listen to him as he talks about taxes. Death and taxes—there you have it. There’s my chapter title. But that chapter title is not as contrived as you might first think.
Jesus' Message
The message here is very simple and very Jesus, we might say. The message is, you are free to love. You are free (from the temple tax) to love (so pay the tax). This apparent paradox comes at the end of verse 26 and the beginning of verse 27. At the end of verse 26 Jesus says, “Then the sons are free” (from the tax). At the beginning of verse 27 he continues, “However, not to give offense,” please pay it.
You Are Free
Let me divide these concepts (freedom and love), explain them separately, and then bring them back together. First we have freedom. The tax collectors ask their tax question, “Jesus pays taxes, right?” Peter assures them, “Yes, he does.” Then Jesus and the Twelve go into “the house” (v. 25)—likely Peter’s house since they are in Peter’s hometown (see 8:14). Maybe it’s the tax booth. It doesn’t matter. What matters is Jesus’ lesson.
Singling out Simon Peter as representative of the Twelve, Jesus says: “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?” And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free.” (vv. 25b, 26)
“Peter, you are free from such temple taxes due to the fact that you are a son of the kingdom, a child of the King.” Here I don’t think Jesus is rebuking Peter, saying, “You were a bit hasty with your quick ‘yes, Jesus pays the tax,’ because I don’t and neither should you” (see v. 27). They will pay the tax. Rather, I think Jesus is quite comforting here. With his analogy Jesus places Peter in the “son” camp, which I’m sure was reassuring to Peter. Jesus had called him “Satan” in 16:23—“Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me.” And here our Lord calls him “son.” Going from Satan to son must have been reassuring to him. I know that is reassuring to me. I don’t always think rightly or act rightly (my mind is sometimes set on the things of man and not of God), but God doesn’t disown his sons. Our sometimes satanic behavior is covered by our sonship. God be praised!
But back to the point: Peter, as a son of the King, doesn’t have to pay the tax. Why? First, what king collects taxes from his children? Part of a king’s taxes is taken to provide for the royal family. It would make no sense to take taxes from a king’s son only to give the same money back to that son. Peter gets the royal family’s exemption.
The other reason Peter need not pay is because Jesus paid it all. I don’t mean that lightly, and I’m not importing the theology of an old hymn title into our ancient text. But Jesus alludes to his death here. There is indeed death and taxes. No joke. I'll explain.
My explanation begins with the tax itself. This half-shekel tax was called the temple tax. It was based on the command in Exodus 30:12-14—“each shall give a ransom for his life” by giving “half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary [tabernacle/temple] ... as an offering to the Lord.” This tax, which was only collected once a year, usually in one’s hometown, would cost every Jewish man over the age of twenty two day’s wages. One shekel equals four drachmas. A drachma was nearly equivalent to a Roman denarius, which was “the standard wage for a day laborer.” And this temple tax was, naturally, for the temple. That didn’t mean that the tax collectors—in the exchange of currency—didn’t make a profit (they did), but it did mean that most of the money went for the upkeep of Herod’s temple, the temple in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day. Included in that upkeep, in fact central to it, was the support of the sacrificial system. It went to pay for the priests (their salaries and sacred attire) and for their sacrificial materials (wood, wine, oil, flour, knives, and so on). Put more succinctly, it went to pay for their sins. So you see paying this tax was more than supporting Herod's good standing with Rome. It was paying for the life and blood (literally) of the Jewish faith—the temple and the sacrificial system.
Can you start to see how this passage is loaded with tension? What does Jesus think of Judaism? What does Jesus think of the Torah—the command from Exodus 30? What does Jesus, the one who predicts the destruction of the temple (24:2), the one who cleanses the temple (21:12, 13), and the one who claims to be “greater than the temple” (12:6), think about the temple? What does “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (see John 1:29) through his blood sacrifice, think of paying for all those priests to sacrifice all those Iambs in the temple?
Our Lord gives two answers. Publicly to the tax collectors he says in essence, “Sure, I support the temple. Here’s the money. Have a nice day.” Privately to Peter, however, he hints at a time when the tax will be null and void. He speaks of a time when there will be no taxation due to representation. That is, he as our representative will pay the price. Not the price of the temple tax, but the price of all the temple sacrifices from day one to the day he dies. His death will cut the temple curtain in two. It will push down stone upon stone until no stone stands. He will become (of course, he is now for us) the very temple of the living God—Immanuel —“the divinely authorized meeting place” between God and man. He will become (of course, he has become for us) the last and final sacrifice for sin.
Who needs a temple when “Jesus is God’s temple in person,” and who needs a temple tax when Jesus paid the temple tax “with his own blood”?
Death and taxes.
His death; no taxes. His death means no more temple taxes for me and you, and even for Peter. But there’s a timing issue here, isn’t there? History is about to change, to dramatically shift, to move not from bc to ad, but from bcd to acd—from Before Christ’s Death to After Christ’s Death.
But that shill hasn’t happened yet for the characters in Matthew 17. And so, while free—free as sons, freed by the Son of God—they are free to love. And love here means paying taxes. That’s how you would define love, isn’t it? Yes, they are free (from such temple taxes) to love (so pay those taxes).
You Are Free to Love
But why pay the tax? Is it because Jesus supports the tax collectors’ union? No. Is it because he is fully on board with Herod and all he has done for Judaism? No. Is it because he thinks the high priest and chief priests are holy men and he is worried that their families will starve? No. Is it because he’s an old-school dispensationalist and he thinks the Ecclesia should start raising money for the next temple in Jerusalem? Sorry to offend some, but no. He tells us why we should pay the tax—“not to give offense to them.” To whom? Well, to the tax collectors, but also everyone involved in the whole system—from the high priest to the guy who just turned twenty and gets to write his first check.
Jesus is not anti-Torah, and he is not anti-temple. But the Torah has its place (to point to him), and the temple has its place (also to point to him). Jesus is pro-Judaism, the Judaism that points to him as true Israel, the Messiah, the fulfillment of Torah and temple. But he knows for such profound and revolutionary and shocking truths to be heard, he needs to pay his temple tax. He wasn’t about to die on this hill (that less than 2 percent tax hill in Capernaum) when he knew he was soon to die on that other hill (the hill outside Jerusalem), where he would give 100 percent of himself to set us free—free from the temple tax, free from sin, free from the grave and eternal damnation. Peter, you are free to love.
Our Text for This Study
That is what is going on here. But how do we bridge the gap between their time and our time? How do we apply this text for today? What first came to my mind, and perhaps yours as well (as we live in just as politically charged a time as Jesus did), was the application to American politics. Some of our taxes will go to people and programs that we think unnecessary or even anti-Christian, but we pay our taxes anyway because (a) we know God rules over all the rulers of the earth, and (b) our leaders would be more open to accepting and promoting, or at least not suppressing, the gospel if Christians were known for praying and giving. Some Christians (the Religious Right?) are known for protesting and griping. How much better for the spread of the gospel if Christians gained a reputation for prayer—“Those Christians are always praying for our President, our Senate, our House, our governor, our state and town officials.” And how much better for the spread of the gospel if we were always the first to rush in time of trouble to give our government our time, treasures, and talents.
But with this controversial point aired, I retract it. I’m not sure that is a perfect application of this text because the tax here is religious, not secular. It was a tax for the priests in the temple, not for Caesar in his palace.
So then I thought perhaps the application is something more like this: you tithe to your Ecclesia even though you don't fully support each and every program or even each and every person on staff. You do so because (a) you trust that God’s hand is on your Ecclesia—despite its leaders' inadequacies and sins, and (b) you have committed to support your Ecclesia through thick and thin.
The problem with that application is that it doesn't fit with this idea of not offending outsiders. That is so much of the thrust of Jesus’ message here. If you want to get outsiders in, don’t offend them in trivial matters.
So here is what I have arrived at: there is not a direct proposition to take from this passage but rather an indirect principle. And the principle is this: be willing to compromise for the sake of conversion. Compromise is not a dirty word, and it’s not a dirty deed. In politics, law, business, marriage, and any number of relationships at times one has to compromise for a greater good. And that’s what Jesus does here and teaches his disciples to do. The greater good is the gospel. He refuses to put a little stumbling stone—like the temple tax—in front of the cross, the great stumbling stone.
We conservative Christians often fail to apply this principle. Sometimes we would rather stand up for our personal rights than see the wrong person get right with God. Sometimes we would rather have a young man dress appropriately in church than come to church at all. Sometimes we would rather that our neighbor stop drinking alcohol than come in faith to the table of our Lord. Yes, sometimes, I fear, we still snicker outside the door to Matthew’s house, whispering to one another, “What’s Jesus doing with those people?”
Listen, as children of God we have been freed, freed to love. And love means paying your taxes. Love means sacrificing the small for the greater good. Love means removing every unnecessary barrier to our friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, high and low government officials hearing and responding to the good news of Jesus Christ, the good news that Jesus is now the only place/person where we can find the forgiveness of sins.
Martin Luther, in his excellent treatise The Freedom of a Christian, phrased it this way: A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.’
Precisely. Later in that treatise Luther writes:
Who then can comprehend the riches and the glory of the Christian life? It can do all things and has all things and lacks nothing. It is lord over sin, death, and hell, and yet at the same time it serves, ministers to, and benefits all men.
Having been given “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21), we freely serve all in the hope that people from all nations and all walks of life will be drawn to our all-loving Lord. Be willing to compromise for the sake of conversion.
This principle Jesus laid out in Matthew 17 was the foundation of Paul’s entire evangelistic efforts. Think about how he preached differently to Jews versus Gentiles, to those in the marketplace and those on Mars Hill. Before Paul brought the offense of the gospel—he always brought that, and the cross is offensive to those who are perishing—he first tried not to offend. He quoted their poets. He bowed before their authorities. He conceded to their traditions. He spoke in their native tongue. He was, in his own words, “all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” That’s what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 9:22. And here’s what he wrote before that. In verse 12 he writes, “We endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.” (Isn’t that a perfect summary of our passage?) Then in verses 19-22 he writes:
For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all. that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law [he’s free!]) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ [the law of love]) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.
You see, there is the delicate balance between Christian compromise and Christian noncompliance. We are not to comply when our government or our Ecclesia (God forbid) or our best friend tells us to stop preaching that Jesus is the only way to God (see, e.g., Acts 4:8-12, 18-20). It is okay to offend with the stumbling stone of the cross. But we are to compromise—to not give “unnecessary offense on secondary issues”—if those little stumbling stones make a person stumble on their way to the cross. Does that make sense? We are become all things to all people so by all means we might save some, and we are to preach Christ and him crucified. We are to balance both. We are to “owe no one anything, except to love each other” (Romans 13:8), but love means “Pay... taxes to whom taxes are owed" (Romans 13:7).
There you have it—death and taxes. Christ’s death has freed us to love. And love means putting up with trivial matters and pushing aside any and every obstacle to get people to the gospel, the lifesaving message of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013; edited Carl Hinton., 2020)