[24] When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax went up to Peter and said, “Does your teacher not pay the tax?” [25] He said, “Yes.” And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?” [26] And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free. [27] However, not to give offense to them, 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.” (Matthew 17:24–27, ESV)
There is perhaps no passage in the New Testament that throws more light on Jesus' attitude toward the secular state than the account of the didrachma recorded in Matthew 17:24-27. This didrachma (a half shekel) was an ancient institution, first mentioned in Exodus 30, which required that every adult male in Israel pay a set fee toward the maintenance of the sanctuary. After falling into disuse during the hectic days of the captivity, it was revived at the return from exile (Neh. 10:32). According to the context, its revival then was a part of the large-scale attempt to re-establish a sacral order. There were some irregularities in the handling of these collected moneys (Neh. 13:10). Whether it was the questionable management or the threat this mode of raising moneys carried in itself (it provided a handy and unobtrusive way to gather funds for the support of seditious undertakings) is a question that need not detain us here. The fact is that by Jesus' time the Roman government had adopted the policy of picking up these contributions and then footing the bill for such repairs or improvements as these moneys warranted. We read in Matthew 17 that someone asked Peter whether his master was in the habit of paying the didrachma (literally "the two drams," as the temple tax had come to be called). No doubt what prompted this prying question was the presumption that ardent flat grace religionists (as the questioner took Jesus to be) usually had scruples against paying the tax to an "uncircumcised" agency, which by its very handling of the money rendered it unfit for the "holy place." Peter, somewhat embarrassed by the unexpected question, hesitatingly answered in the affirmative. The matter would no doubt have ended there had not Jesus deliberately reopened it: "What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their sons or from others?" Peter replies that it is "from others," that is, from Jews, whom the Roman government knew as unamalgamated ones, "strangers," or "sojourners." The "sons," that is, the native Romans, were not asked to pay it. Thereupon Jesus summarized that if it was a tax exacted from sojourners, then the children, the native sons, ought not to be billed for it. Then he added, most significantly: "However, not to give offense, 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 [a four-drachma piece]; take that and give it to them for me and for yourself" (Matt. 17:27).
The astounding thing in this incident is that Jesus put himself and his disciples in the category of "sons" rather than "sojourners," indicating that in the matter of his and their relationship to the existing regnum Jesus identified with the Roman citizen rather than the Jew. We see in this identification the mentality of the proselyte members of the synagogue: he had distanced himself from the older element of the synagogue congregation and its negative attitude toward the nonconfessing regnum. In not objecting to identification as a "son" of the secular regnum of his day — a "son" rather than a sacral "sojourner" — Jesus clearly was committed to the theology of progressive grace. What he said in this incident throws an illuminating ray on his statement "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."
—Leonard Verduin, The Anatomy of a Hybrid, p. 62-63 (free online version)