‘Does your master not pay the half-shekel?
Matthew 17: 22-27
This passage reminds us of Mark 12:17: ‘Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar.’ In today’s passage Matthew shows that Jesus has agreed to pay the tax by asking Peter to get the half-shekel from the mouth of a fish and give it to them, ‘so as not to offend those people.’ In both passages Jesus has given the instruction to be obedient to the civil authorities.
We learn from this that we must be good citizens but this does not hinder us from obeying the laws of God. We know that the laws of the land are not more important than the laws of God but ‘so as not to offend those people,’ we obey the civil authorities.
We pray that the father will give us the wisdom to discern how we are to respond to the laws of the land.
Photo by Ibrahim Rifath on Unsplash