The tribute-money in the fish's mouth is one of the most beautiful and perfect of the New-Testament incidents. Christ had just been opening to His disciples the closing of His career of ministry among the Jews, had forbidden them to speak of His being the Christ to them, for He was going to suffer as Son of man; they must suffer with Him. Then, to three who were to be pillars, He shows His glory as Son of man, to encourage their faith in seeing Him rejected by Israel and all the religious authorities, and in taking up their cross. Just after this, Peter is questioned in a way which amounted to asking whether Jesus was really a good Jew. When he enters, Christ anticipates him by showing His divine knowledge of what passed; but while assuming the place of the Son of Jehovah of the temple, so as to be free from the tribute, which kings did not take of their own children, He, with infinite grace, puts Peter, and in him all of us in principle, in the same place as Himself, (just what He has done by redemption, when rejected as Messiah.) “Then are the children free; nevertheless that we offend not.” And this He does, just when He had shown his divine knowledge of Peter's thoughts, and what had passed. He then shows, in a way particularly intelligible to Peter from his occupation, that far from being a mere Jew, debtor to the temple, He disposes of creation, though subject in grace to men. And having shown divine power and title over creation, as previously divine knowledge, He again associates His poor disciple with Him, saying, “That give for me and for thee.”
Besides the touching grace of this communication to Peter, see what is brought out: His real character relative to the temple, the setting aside thereby though submitting to the relation in which as a Jew He stood to it—the divine glory of His person in wisdom and power—and yet the power of the redemption He was just going to accomplish to be such (and this was, as we have seen, precisely the topic in hand) that, viewed as Son of the Lord of the temple, He would set His disciples in the same relationship with God as Himself. What a touching, tender, and yet glorious way, of rebuking the unbelief of Peter, and what a mass of truth is brought out exactly on the point treated of in this part of the Gospels, the transition from the old things to the new! It may be clearly seen in Matthew where the establishment of the church and the kingdom are connected with His being Son of the living God, and then His glory as Son of man brought out. Then, about to leave the faithless and perverse nation, He opens out, in the passage objected to, the full new relationship into which He was bringing them that trusted in Him through the glory of His person and work. There is not a more beautiful and striking passage in every way than this, which is here caviled at. It affords the reader an example of the capacity of infidelity to judge of the bearing and importance of Scripture facts, and the moral proofs which a believer has which infidelity cannot touch, and which prove that it is ignorant of the elements of judgment.