divine likeness. The Son comes not merely to represent the King, but to be the King. Jesus sees himself as no accident of history. He comes with the most specific purpose of asserting the Father's territorial rights over his rebellious vineyard. He comes, in a word, as the Messiah, to inaugurate the long-heralded kingdom of God of which those prophets had spoken.
There's only one way to avoid the conclusion that Jesus entertained such an understanding of himself. That is, to discard this parable as pure invention. And that, of course, is what the scholars do. They can't bear the thought that Jesus would have incorporated himself into a parable in this way as the Son, so they insist that the story has been worked over by later Christians to such an extent that its original form is now totally lost to us. But, frankly, there are no grounds at all for such a dismissal of Luke's record. Only prejudice of a most gross and blinkered kind could persuade anyone to deny that Jesus is here confessing a most remarkable filial consciousness. 'I am the Son,' he says, 'not merely a rabbi, not even a prophet. I am the Son of God and it is by virtue of that divine sonship that I exercise the authority in the temple of which you complain.'
Notice again the wistfulness of that divine soliloquy as the story continues: 'Perhaps they will respect him.' God surely says the same today, as he looks upon the church and upon the world. I know it is irritating to the modern liberal mindset to say that one religion is better than the other. In our pluralist generation all the pressures are upon us to paint Jesus in non-exclusive colours; a prophet, a philosopher, a gum, anything will do.
But flattering though such titles are, there's nothing unique about them. You can admire such people without following them. You can ignore them, if you wish, without cost. But Jesus will hot allow us to damn him with faint praise in that way. He claims to be God's last resort, his final Word, his beloved Son.
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