Jesus On Economics

Jesus told parables to teach His disciples spiritual truth. In each parable, he used truth about the physical world that was well known and accepted by the audience. He used mankind’s innate knowledge about the reality of earthly life to teach them about the reality of spiritual life. The word “parable” itself comes from the Greek word to “throw to the side”, highlighting the comparison between spiritual and physical. In Matthew 20:1-16, often titled the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, Jesus uses economic truth to teach what the Kingdom of God is like. Does it encourage you to know that the Kingdom of God, in many ways, mirrors the earthly kingdoms we live in? It does that for me.

Generally speaking, the two things that Jesus throws beside each other is the kingdom of heaven and the marketplace. In the market, are the types of people you would expect. First there is a property owner. More specifically this person owns land on which is a vineyard. The other people are day laborers. In today’s lingo, Jesus is describing the Home Depot parking lot. Same concept and same market actors. The reference to economics should be obvious.

The first part of the parable describes the interaction and agreements between the landowner and the laborers. The landowner goes to the market five different times in verses 1-7. The first time, the two parties come to an AGREEMENT. They will work about twelve hours for one denarius. For context, the denarius was the most common silver coin in the Roman Empire at the time. It was sometimes thought of as the Roman “penny.”  It is also the most frequently mentioned coin in the gospels. Going back to the parable, the key word to observe in verse 2 is that they agreed. Each party valued the labor equally and no external standard was used to compute how many denarii was due them for twelve hours.

I have seen some Bible commentators state that a denarius was a commonly accepted amount for a day’s wage. That is possible and could explain why the agreement was made. It also explains why translators use the word “generous” in verse 15 for the more general word for “good.” But it also must be noted that both parties had a say in the matter according to Jesus’ parable. The wage was set by agreement not by law or math or sociological study. The economic concept Jesus builds this part of the parable on is called “subjective value theory.”  See the link for more explanation of the concept, but in short it means people get to decide for themselves how they value goods and services including their own labor.

You see the same thing play out in the other four market interactions between the landowner and the laborers. The landowner simply says he will pay them “whatever is right” in verse 4. In our world today a similar situation could play out where a property owner has a job he needs completed by the end of the day. Due to time constraints he could be willing to pay a higher wage, in $/hr, as the day draws to a close, if there is a threat that the job will not get done in time. It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine situations where the wage goes down over time too. Maybe the owner is running out of money. Maybe one of the workers offers to work for free. Maybe the owner wants the work done by the end of the day but it isn’t that important to him, or progress is ahead of schedule but adding one more laborer, at a lower wage, makes it a certainty. In all of these cases, the property owner would have paid the workers, “whatever is right”.

In verses 8-10, the vineyard owner pays out wages to all the laborers. This is where Jesus’ teaching in the parable comes to light, that the last shall be first and the first shall be last in the kingdom of heaven. In my own words, believers don’t receive a greater reward if they believe earlier in their life compared to later. Every believer receives forgiveness of sins and an eternal relationship with God. However, the workers in the parable have an understandable response. Those who had worked 12 hours are upset that they were paid the same as the workers who had only worked 6, 3, and 1 hour. They had obviously worked more hours and in more difficult conditions. But again, Jesus appeals to the economic concept of subjective value and the legitimacy of private contracts in verse 13. It is all based on two parties agreeing on the value of the exchange. It would be wise of us to remember this lesson in both a spiritual and earthly way. As believers we shouldn’t compare the amount of work we do for the kingdom of God or in our careers to the amount others do. That can breed jealousy in one direction and bitterness in the other.

This parable also presupposes, and thereby supports, that private property exists and individuals have a right to do with their property as they will. First, we go back to v.1 to observe that the landowner owned a vineyard. It was his private property. He also refers to the land as “my own” at the end of verse 15. To put it simply, it was his to do with as he wills, even to hire others to do work on it. We also see the laborers owning their own labor, and therefore having the right to sell their labor to whomever they choose. The landowner recognizes this in v. 14 where he tells the grumbling workers to “take what is YOURS, and go your way”.

In verses 14-15, the landowner appeals to his will as the standard for determining what to do with his property. Some translations use the phrase, “I wish”. But the Greek word θελω more directly means “to will” than “to wish”. This means that the will of an individual dictates value and what to do with property. It also shows the source of such things comes from within an individual.

The last point made in the parable is that all of this activity is right and good. Jesus isn’t describing a scene where the characters are sinning, but where they are carrying out natural law, God’s intended relationships between people. In three places, Jesus states that the landowner is correct in his earthly actions. First, he says in verse 4 that the payment to the later workers is “right” or in other words righteous or just. Second, in verse 15 Jesus says that the landowner paying different labor rates to the workers is “lawful”. I think this is a direct reference to natural law. He isn’t appealing to the law of Moses or the political law of the land, but what is naturally lawful for a human being to do. Third, again in verse 15, Jesus declares the landowner is “good” in the parable. Most translations contain the word “generous”, but it is the Greek word αγαθός, which means good.

The earthly truth which Jesus embeds in this parable is that subjective value and private property rights for an individual are right, lawful, and good. This should be remembered whenever someone speaks ill of natural rights or individualism, or when reading passages such as Romans 13:1-4 and 1 Peter 2:13-16.