NOTES for Mat 17:22-27

So what does God want from us? That we should live, that we should live in love and not be stiff-necked (what an apt word for all of us). Yet we keep searching for a “good life”—in the sense of material prosperity... It appears that after Jesus began His preaching ministry, He never even held money in His hands. But He lives in love, and for the sake of that love He is prepared to do something senseless—to pay a tax to His own Father. And yet He uses even this as a prophetic action: the Father sends Him the money for the Temple tax.