Luke 20:13 - Exposition

Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do! I will send my beloved son . The guilt of the husbandmen who acted as vine-dressers here reached its highest measure. The words represented here by Jesus as spoken by God, possess the deepest doctrinal value. They, under the thin veil of the parable-story, answer the question of the Sanhedrim ( Luke 20:2 ), "By what authority doest thou these things?" The deliberative words, "What shall I do?" recall the Divine dialogue alluded to in Gem. Luke 1:26 . St. Luke here represents the Father as calling the Son, "my Beloved. " St. Mark adds that he was an only Son. Such sayings as this, and the remarkable prayer of Matthew 11:25-27 , are a clear indication of the Christology of the synoptists. Their estimate of the Person of the blessed Son in no wise differed from that given us by St. John at much greater length and with fuller details.