A parable of Jesus

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants

God sent his messengers and at last his own Son, and this parable quietly foretells how he would be rejected, and vindicated.

Where and to whom Jesus told it

Still in the temple in his last week, still answering the chief priests and Pharisees who had challenged his authority, Jesus tells this parable, and it is his most direct and daring. It is the second of the vineyard parables, and by the end his opponents perceive that he speaks of them. The very ground on which they stood, the temple, the leadership of Israel, is what the parable puts on trial.

The imagery would have rung in every Jewish ear. The vineyard was Israel's own picture of herself before God, drawn from the prophet Isaiah's song of the vineyard, in which God looked for good grapes and found wild ones. Jesus takes up that familiar image and turns it into an indictment of the tenants, the leaders entrusted with God's vineyard.

The parable

A householder planted a vineyard, hedged it, dug a winepress, built a tower, let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. At harvest he sent his servants to receive the fruit, but the tenants beat one, killed another, stoned a third. He sent more servants, and they did the same. Last of all he sent his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the tenants saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.

Jesus asks what the lord of the vineyard will do to those tenants, and his hearers answer their own condemnation: He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and let out his vineyard to other husbandmen who will render him the fruits in their seasons. Then Jesus presses it home with Scripture: Did ye never read, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? The kingdom of God, he tells them, shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. The servants are the prophets long rejected; the son is Jesus himself, about to be killed outside the city.

What it means, and how it has been misread and rightly read

This parable has at times been wrenched into a charter for contempt toward the Jewish people, a reading that is both a distortion and a tragedy. Its target is not a people but a leadership, the specific chief priests and Pharisees who were rejecting God's messengers and were about to kill his Son. The apostles who carried the gospel to the world were themselves Jewish; the parable indicts unfaithful stewardship, not ethnicity.

Read rightly, it is a searching word about the responsibility of those entrusted with God's things. The vineyard was let out; the fruit was owed; the tenants treated their stewardship as ownership and killed to keep it. It is a prophecy of Jesus' own death, spoken openly to the men who would arrange it, and a warning that a place in God's kingdom is not a possession to be seized and hoarded but a trust that can be forfeited by those who reject the Lord of the vineyard and refuse to bear his fruit.

The heart of God and the kingdom

This parable reveals a God of extraordinary patience and final justice. He sends servant after servant, enduring insult and murder, and at last sends his own beloved Son, hoping against hope that they will reverence him. The long-suffering is real; so is the reckoning. A God who never called his tenants to account would not be just, and the parable does not flinch from the destruction the wicked bring on themselves.

It reveals, above all, the heart of a Father who gives his Son. The climax is not merely judgment but the sending of the heir into the hands of those who will kill him. And it reveals that the rejected Son is not defeated: the stone the builders refused becomes the head of the corner. Out of the murder in the vineyard, God raises up a new people who will bear the fruit the old tenants would not.

What it asks of us

This parable warns against the presumption that our standing with God is a possession we control rather than a stewardship we must answer for. God looks for fruit from those he has entrusted with his vineyard, whether that is a nation, a church, or a single life, and privilege without fruit is in danger. It asks whether we are rendering to the owner the fruit that is his due, or acting as though the vineyard were ours to exploit.

It also confronts us with how we receive the messengers God sends, and supremely how we receive his Son. The tenants' sin culminated in rejecting the heir. The decisive question the parable puts to every hearer is what we will do with Jesus: reverence him as the beloved Son and Lord of the vineyard, or cast him out. On that answer everything turns.

How it points to Christ

Christ is the beloved Son, sent last of all, recognized as the heir, cast out of the vineyard and killed, exactly as the parable foretold and exactly as it came to pass outside the walls of Jerusalem. Yet the rejected stone became the cornerstone of a new people gathered from every nation. His death was not the defeat of God's purpose but its very fulfilment, and all who build their lives on him, the stone the builders refused, will never be put to shame, but will bear the fruit the Father has always sought.

Frequently asked questions

What does the parable of the wicked tenants mean?

The vineyard owner is God, the servants are the prophets, and the son who is killed is Jesus. It pictures God's people rejecting his messengers and finally his own Son, and points to Jesus becoming the rejected-yet-chosen cornerstone (Matthew 21:33-46).

Is Jesus the son in the parable?

Yes. Told days before his crucifixion, the son sent last of all and killed by the tenants stands for Jesus himself. He then quotes Psalm 118 about the rejected stone becoming the head of the corner, foretelling his vindication.