The comment about the stone rejected by the builders and the preceding parable are addressed to the ‘chief priests and the elders of the people’ (21:23), who question his authority to enact (through the events of his arrival in Jerusalem) the judgment and restoration of Israel. The parable is directed against the tenants of the vineyard - that is, against those who were responsible for leading and caring for the people of God. The conclusion is that the owner of the vineyard will put the tenants to death and let out the vineyard to faithful tenants who will give the fruit of the vineyard to the owner. In other words, God will destroy the corrupt leadership of Israel and entrust his people to a new leadership that will give him what is rightfully his.

In a vigorous Fulcrum article entitled ‘The Cross and the Caricatures: a response to Robert Jenson, Jeffrey John, and a new volume entitled Pierced for Our Transgressions’, Tom Wright argues that in order to make sense of the idea of ‘penal substitution’ we must locate it

within the biblical world, the Old Testament world, within which the creator God, faced with a world in rebellion, chose Israel - Abraham and his family - as the means of putting everything right, and, when Israel itself had rebelled, promised to set that right as well and so to complete the purpose of putting humans right and thus setting the whole created order back the right way up.

Jesus tells his disciples that in his kingdom, in the ‘regeneration’ of the people of God, ‘when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Matt. 19:28; cf. Lk. 22:30). ‘Regeneration’ is palingenesia. In the background is the use of the metaphor of new creation to describes the restoration of Israel in Is. 65:7; 66:22. Josephus uses the word to refer to the ‘rebirth’ of the nation following the exile (Ant. 11.2.9 §66).

A man comes to Jesus and asks what good thing he must do to inherit the life of the age to come (not ‘eternal life’ in the traditional sense). Jesus tells him that in order to enter life he must keep the commandments. The man has done this. What is still lacking? Jesus tells him that if he would be ‘perfect’, he must sell what he has, give to the poor, and follow him. What is the meaning of ‘perfect’ here?

This verse has often been used to support a theology of spiritual warfare. In fact, Jesus is saying something quite straightforward but crucial for the continuation of the community of believers and the success of the message that they proclaimed.

In 1998 Dr Andrew Overman discovered the ruins of a large Roman temple at Horbat Omrit. He believes that the temple was built by Herod in Caesarea Philippi to honour Augustus at the time when the emperor was coming to be worshipped as a living God. He suggests that the phrase ‘the son of living God’ in Peter’s confession (not found in Mark 8:29) reflects a conscious challenge to the divinity of Augustus.

The reference to this wicked generation locates the saying historically. I would suggest that Jesus is talking about the generation of Jews that would suffer the horrors of the war against Rome. He casts out demons from Israel, but he warns that these homeless spirits will return with a vengeance and wreak havoc. The derangement of the possessed who confronted him was nothing compared to the self-destructive madness of those who, a generation later, rebelled against Rome. Josephus describes the lead up to war in these terms…