Mark 12:7

But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.

This is the heir ... These words make it mandatory to believe that the Jewish hierarchy recognized Christ as the true Messiah, the lawful head of the theocracy, and the promised holy one who would deliver them. This does not contradict Paul's statement that "if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 2:8). Paul was speaking of the fact that they did not know that Christ was "God come in the flesh." Thus, the error of these men was twofold: (1) Although they recognized Christ as the heaven-sent deliverer who would deliver them from sin, they preferred rather to be delivered from the Romans, supposing of course that they already had a hope of heaven through the Law of Moses. (2) Although they recognized Christ as holy, sinless, and undefiled, the true Messiah promised by the word of God, "the heir" as stated in this allegory - despite all this, they did not know that Christ was God, the very judge who would sentence them eternally.

The inheritance shall be ours ... Some have thought it difficult to understand their viewpoint; but Jeremias pointed out that:

There was a law in which the property of a proselyte who died without a will (was thereby made) ownerless; and whoever was in possession of such property at that time had a prior claim. The tenants here assumed that the absentee landlord, so long in a foreign country, had already died.[6]

Here the parable fits the reality perfectly; for the tenant husbandmen were no more wrong about the owner of the vineyard than were the Jewish hierarchy concerning their purpose of taking God's true religion away from him and running it according to their own preferences.