There’s a very well known parable that Jesus tells, about hiring workers in a vineyard. In the parable, the vineyard owner goes out in the morning and hires some workers at the rate of a denarius for their days work. They go out to work, while the owner comes back to the marketplace at noon and again in evening, hiring more and more workers, promising each of them a denarius as well.
At the end of the day, the ones who started very late in the day are paid, and they get a denarius. When they ones who started at the beginning of the day get paid, they’re angry when they only get a denarius as well.
They protest to the vineyard owner, saying basically “Hey, we worked much longer, we deserve much more.”
Add this is the landowner’s reply, according to Jesus:
But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ –Matthew 20:13-15
It’s hard for me to imagine any clearer answer to the question of whether Jesus is in favor of economic freedom.
1) You agreed to work for it, so this wage is not unfair.
2) I have the right to do what I want with my own money.
And lest anyone doubt, at the beginning of the parable, Jesus specifically says the Kingdom of Heaven will be as described in this parable.
Now, before anyone goes overboard, this is a parable. It’s designed to show through story some aspects of what it’s like when we place ourselves completely under God’s rule. The parable is not about the landowner and his workers. It’s about the fact that God gives eternal life to everyone who chooses to be with him, regardless of how hard they worked or how long.
But the landowner does represent God in this parable, and Jesus would not represent the father with a person of whose conduct he disapproved.