Jesus Was a Socialist

He condemned wealth, promoted sharing, and promised a great reversal

When conservatives claim Jesus endorsed capitalism, I can't help but wonder if they've actually read the Gospels. The historical Jesus of Nazareth—a poor, colonized, Palestinian Jewish man—preached a message that fundamentally opposed the accumulation of private wealth and advocated for a radical reorganization of society based on cooperation and shared resources. In short: Jesus was a socialist.

At its core, socialism envisions a world where human society is organized around cooperation rather than competition, where resources are shared to meet everyone's needs rather than hoarded for private profit.

While Jesus never explicitly endorsed any modern economic system, his teachings and actions consistently demonstrated these same values. He condemned the accumulation of wealth, modeled the power of cooperation and shared abundance, and proclaimed that a new economic and social order was coming: the Kingdom of God.

This isn't merely wishful thinking by modern progressives. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus articulate three core principles that align perfectly with socialist values:

1. He consistently condemned private wealth and its accumulation;

2. He demonstrated through his miracles that sharing resources creates abundance rather than scarcity;

3. He proclaimed that a new world order was coming that would completely upend existing economic relationships.

Sound familiar?

His unequivocal condemnation of wealth

Jesus consistently taught that the pursuit of wealth corrupts the soul. In the Sermon on the Mount, he warns his followers about this directly: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth... for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Mt 6:19-20). He makes the point even more explicitly when he declares that "no one can serve two masters... You cannot serve both God and wealth" (Mt 6:24). The message is clear: the accumulation of material riches is fundamentally incompatible with living a life devoted to God.

It doesn’t end there. In Luke we're told that a chief tax collector, Zacchaeus, is only granted salvation when he gives away half of all his possessions to the poor (19:1-10). And in one of his most famous sayings, in Matthew Jesus tells a rich man, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (19:24).

But this warning is stated most explicitly in Luke 6:

But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.

These are the words of someone who understands that wealth—i.e., the private accumulation of goods—is deeply antithetical to the values of God.

The power of sharing

In contrast to his warnings about wealth, Jesus's miracles repeatedly showed that sharing resources leads to abundance and joy for everyone.

Take for example the feeding of the 5,000. When faced with the hungry multitude, Jesus's disciples suggest sending them away so they can go buy their own food. But Jesus shows another way is possible: share what you have, and there will be more than enough for everyone. Not only were all fed, but they collected twelve baskets of leftovers (Mt 14:13-21).

This pattern of creating abundance through sharing—a core socialist belief—appears throughout Jesus's ministry:

• He feeds 4,000 people with just seven loaves of bread and a few fish (Mt 15:32–39, Mk 8:1–9).

• He fills nets with fish after fishermen come up empty (Lk 5:1-1, Jn 21:1-14).

• And in his very first miracle, he creates not just enough wine but an overwhelming abundance of the finest quality (Jn 2:1-11).

In each case, Jesus demonstrates that sharing creates abundance—he never hoards, saves, or waits for wealth to trickle down.

This is to say nothing of Jesus’s radical teaching about debt forgiveness. The Lord's Prayer, recited by millions (if not billions) every day, includes a revolutionary economic demand: "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" (Mt 6:12). In Jesus's time, as in ours, debt was how the powerful kept the poor in bondage. Jesus called for its elimination.

A better world is possible—and coming

But these individual teachings point to something bigger: Jesus's vision of God's kingdom. This coming reign of God, as Jesus described it, will completely overturn the existing economic order. It will eliminate competition, private wealth, and artificial scarcity, replacing them with cooperation, shared resources, and abundance for all.

This radical economic vision appears from the very beginning of Jesus's story. In Mary's joyous song, the Lord’s mother proclaims that God "has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty" (The Magnificat, Lk 1:46-56). Jesus echoes this theme in his first public sermon, when declares that God "he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor."

These are not the words of a capitalist. These are not the words of a compassionate conservative. These are the words of a man who knew the evils of private property, material goods and scarcity. These are the words of a socialist. These are the words of God.

Jesus’s earliest followers took these teachings very seriously. Acts tells us that they "had everything in common" and "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions" (Acts 2:44-45). When someone had need, the community provided. This wasn't just nice religious talk—it was their actual economic practice.

Today's Christians would do well to remember this. Too many treat Jesus's economic teachings as inconvenient metaphors to be ignored. But Jesus's call to reject wealth and dismantle oppressive systems was clear and uncompromising.

While Jesus never used the word "socialist," his message was clear: God's vision for human society is one of radical sharing, economic cooperation, and collective liberation. That sounds an awful lot like socialism to me.