I don't know if you've considered this story in the book of Matthew but of all the miracles in the gospels, there's one that seems almost like a bit of showmanship to wow the fans. In Matthew 17:24-27. A tax is due. Matthew, being a tax collector, noted a tax situation. Peter is asked, “Does Jesus pay this tax?” Peter replies, “of course!” He tells Jesus and Jesus has Peter do something quite strange.

Jesus privately tells Peter go down to the lake and catch a fish, pull up the first fish you catch and you'll find a coin in his mouth. Exactly the right amount we need to pay the tax for yourself and for me. The story ends there. It doesn't tell us if Peter caught the fish, if he paid the tax or anything else, we hear Jesus' instructions, then Matthew moves on to the next thing.

We might skip over this story or consider it an example of how Jesus provides or meets our physical needs or just another example that he's God. But there's more going on here. When we review this vignette we find a deeper insight into why Jesus came in the first place.

Jesus could've paid the tax 100 ordinary ways. Someone in the crowd had money. He could've had Judas the purse keeper pay the tax! Instead, he arranges the most elaborate, least necessary method imaginable. A specific coin in a specific fish caught by a specific man. Nothing about that is convenience, its theater, deliberate staged theater.

Consider the tax. An official comes to Peter and asks:

"Does your teacher pay the temple tax?"

This was a particular tax obligation of two drachmas or one half shekel every Jew was to pay. This was not a Roman tax. It was not Caesar's tribute. The men asking aren't imperial agents. This is the temple tax, the annual half shekel every Jewish man paid toward the upkeep of the temple, the house of God. It goes back to Exodus 30. When Israel is counted, God tells Moses every man 20 and over must give the same amount, half a shekel. God calls it a ransom for a life, atonement money. This tax was what every Jew was to pay every year, rich and poor pay the identical sum because a soul is a soul. No one's worth more or less at the altar. A token showing your life was covered. A small coin standing in for the ransom of a life that God in mercy did not require in full.

The question asked does your master pay the soul redeeming tax? Jesus doesn't wait for Peter to ask him, he asks Peter a question first. What do you think, Simon?

"From whom do the kings of the earth collect tolls and taxes? From their own sons or from others?"

A king funds his kingdom by taxing his subjects. The king's own children don't get taxed. No monarch in history has ever built his own palace with his kid's money. The prince doesn't pay rent to live in his father's house. He's not a subject of the kingdom, He's the heir of it. Peter says a King would receive taxes from others not his kids.

Jesus lands the point with five words, then the sons are free. Whose house is the temple? God's. Whose tax is this? God's. Who pays the tax? Every Jew born except God's direct children! Who is God's direct son? Jesus. Do the sons pay the tax? No! The men at the door ask whether Jesus pays the tax on his father's house. They walked up to the heir of the house and asked him to pay rent on his own home. The son is free. Not free because he's above the law, but free the way a prince is free because it's his father's house, he's not a stranger in it. He's the only one at the whole table who's never been ruled over by the King.

Every male in Israel paid the ransom token because their lives needed covering. The son did not, He belonged. He establishes for Peter in private that he owes nothing to the house because it's his house! Then having said that, he pays it anyway. Jesus says:

"However, so that we do not give offense to them, go and get the coin."

Jesus says, I am free but I'll not use my freedom in a way that trips these people, giving them a reason to reject something true about God because of something small.

His freedom is real his yielding is voluntary. He doesn't stand on his rights, he has every right not to pay. His exemption was genuine, the payment was grace. He pays a debt he's proven he doesn't owe. Jesus tells Peter go take the first fish you catch and pull a stadter coin, a coin worth four drachmas or one full shekel, out of its mouth. The coin's enough to pay the temple tax for two people. Jesus says give it to them for me and for you. The free son who owed nothing doesn't just cover his own token. In the same coin, he covers Peter's ransom also. Peter an ordinary man of Israel, someone who's life the ransom tax genuinely represented. Peter owed the half shekel, Jesus did not. The one coin in the fish paid for both. Jesus' non debt and Peter's required debt paid in a single coin.

In this moment we realize this is the Gospel. The one who was exempt pays not only what he doesn't owe, but what someone else does. He covers in one payment the person standing next to him who could never have generated that payment himself. A free man settling the ransom of a man who wasn't free with resources only he could reach, the mouth of a fish. A few chapters later Matthew records Jesus saying:

"The son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

A ransom, the price paid to free someone who cannot free himself.

The coin in the fish is the small staged rehearsal of the real thing. A ransom paid by the free son for people who owed a debt they couldn't cover. First in silver from a fish for one disciple, then in blood from a cross for the world. Matthew deliberately uses specific words. He didn't write generic tax, he wrote drachma, the Exodus 30 tax, the ransom of the soul standing behind it. He told how Jesus drew a precise line between sons and strangers concluding the sons are free. He didn't write a coin, he wrote a stadter the exact value of two temple taxes and recorded Jesus saying for me and for you. Matthew speaks Gospel truth in specific words.

Why a fish? Why, the strangest possible delivery for a coin. Notice he sent Peter a fisherman to get it! This is his trade, his lake, his hook, the exact motion his hands had made 10,000 times before he ever met Jesus. The provision doesn't arrive by some means foreign to him. It comes up out of the water on a line, the way his living had always come up. Jesus meets him inside the thing he already knew how to do and turns an ordinary cast, the most familiar act of Peter's old life, into a picture of the whole gospel. The first fish, not the tenth. After a long empty morning, the first immediate, precise fish waiting. The whole event is engineered down to the sequence: the first fish, the exact coin, the exact amount for exactly two.

Step back from the lake, this is where it stops being a strange story and starts being about you. The tax was ransom money. Every ordinary person in Israel paid it because every ordinary person needed it. Contemplate this in the story: you're Peter. You're the one at the water's edge who could never have produced what you owe. Whatever the true ransom of a human life is, you don't have it. Nobody does. It's not the kind of debt you settle by trying harder or paying installments. The son who didn't owe it paid it for you and me. That's the good news. He was free. He could've stood on his freedom, kept his exemption, let the strangers pay their own way. Instead, he reached into the one place only he could reach. He brought up a payment that covered both his token and your debt together in a single coin. You didn't fund your standing with God. You never could. The son covered it with something you couldn't have caught yourself. Which means you can stop fishing for it. A lot of sincere people spend their whole lives at the water's edge, casting and casting, trying to haul up enough goodness, enough discipline, enough religious effort to pay a ransom settled centuries ago:

"First in a coin from a fish then in blood from a cross."

This fishy story seems more important now doesn't it... stop fishing for your ransom and trust in the ransom Jesus has already provided for you!