Was Jesus a Socialist?

“In Matthew 25, Jesus says: I was hungry and you fed me… In as much as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it also unto me.” – Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA), during a March 31, 2025 Senate floor exchange about healthcare, poverty, and related public policy.

There is an on-going and intensifying debate in the West about how economic policy impacts human flourishing. How much government regulation and central-planning do we need to support optimal socio-economic outcomes and avoid corruption and exploitation? What levels of taxation are necessary, fair, and productive? Should social safety nets be more or less privatized? Do human rights extend to things like housing, healthcare, and universal income? Is free market rhetoric just a tool for oppression against the poor and marginalized?

We may feel uninterested in this debate, but the debate is very interested in us. As someone has wisely said, “If you don’t have a seat at the table, it’s because you’re on the menu.” The economic policies our society chooses to pursue has ramifications for our taxes, our investments, our financial plans, and our futures…

But what does Jesus have to do with it? Wouldn’t it be best to leave religion out of this?

I will briefly offer two quick thoughts: First, it is revealing that people seem to intuit some form of morality lurking beneath these disputes. Economic policy is not just about supply-demand curves, inflationary inputs, or other pseudo-academic economic abstractions. At some level, we’re struggling with right vs. wrong as a society. Economic policy becomes an expression of our moral-ethical commitments to our money, our neighbors, and our culture-at-large.

Second, objectively-speaking, morality in the West has been heavily influenced by the ethics of Jesus as expressed in the Gospels. And so it is only natural that people would be quite eager to claim the teachings of Jesus for the moral high-ground.

Defining Terms & Goals

So back to our question about Jesus and socialism. I will admit that this is a bit click-baity because “socialism” was not a well-defined ideology at the time of Jesus. So let’s be a bit more nuanced in what we’re asking. How about this – “Do the economic ethics of Jesus point towards Socialism?” Or do they point in another direction?

This exercise obviously begs for a definition and I’m happy to oblige. Socialism is the belief that aggregate human flourishing is best pursued when economic resources are collectively owned and cooperatively regulated for the sake of social welfare and justice. It postulates that the radical self-interest of individuals and private enterprise need to be externally constrained to avoid consolidation of resources that leads to corruption and financial exploitation.

Before we continue, I offer this parenthetical disclosure: I am a man of Christian faith, but my Thoughts On Money project is not to proselytize. Not at all. I’m not even attempting to make the case that the teachings of Jesus are the moral standard everyone should conform to (although I believe that to be true). My project is simply this – to the degree that people want moral validation of their economics by Jesus, doesn’t that beg the question about what Jesus taught about economics? If we’re going to claim the morality of a position as it relates to Jesus, shouldn’t we know something more than a handful of Jesus-slogans?

Now hold up there, Mr. Bonecutter. Jesus didn’t get into the weeds about economics or government, right? The Gospels aren’t exactly a textbook about the kinds of issues we’re dealing with today. Wasn’t Jesus mostly concerned with spiritual matters? Surely there is very little we can apply to the kinds of debates we’re having two thousand years later. Isn’t it disingenuous to burden the ancient teachings of Jesus with modern economics in the post-industrial information age?

The Economic Framework of Jesus

This is where things get very interesting, in my opinion. While it is certainly true that Jesus did not leave us with a textbook on modern economics, the teachings and actions of Jesus reveal a rich thought-world full of first principles. Many of the hard-hitting parables Jesus told had an explicit economic framework and the underlying first principles necessary to leverage those stories are both noticeable and remarkable. For the nerds in the back – I want to make the case that the words of Jesus presuppose and advocate for certain axioms of economic-anthropology that are unavoidable and enduringly relevant.

But instead of talking about it at a distance, let’s jump right in and consider some examples. What economic first principles are evident and confirmed in the teachings and behaviors of Jesus? And how do these tease out potential answers to our question about socialism? Our task is not to interpret the main meanings of every text, but to notice the inherent worldview they are built upon.

There is an interpretive danger of mistaking the descriptive for the prescriptive. In other words, just because Jesus uses a given framework for storytelling doesn’t necessarily imply that the framework is justified. Fair enough. But I would argue that as you follow the thread of the stories here, you see that the underlying morality of these frameworks is assumed. If they are not assumed and are mere narrative props, the internal logic of the stories falls apart. Jesus is relying upon these presuppositions as normal features of moral reality and reasoning.

Let’s examine a handful of stories that were told multiple times and discover what economic presuppositions they reveal:

1. Parable(s) of the Landowner and Tenants: Jesus told more than a few parables against the religious scholars (Pharisees) of that era. And one narrative structure that was used multiple times was about a wealthy landowner (God) leasing land to agricultural tenants (people of Israel). The story highlights the landowner’s right to charge rent from the tenants, but the tenants refused to pay/meet their obligations or recognize his rights of ownership. Things got so bad that when the landowner sent his own son to collect, the tenants rebelled and killed the son in an attempt to falsely claim the land as their own. What economic first principles are necessary for this story to make sense?
   1. Private Property In General: In order for the underlying morality of this story to work, private property rights must be confirmed. This would not have been controversial at all because the Mosaic Law explicitly confirmed the sacred rights of private property (including the “means of production” – land, oxen, donkeys, etc.). In fact, the eighth commandment against stealing and tenth commandment against coveting (envy) are only coherent if people can own personal and real property. If the higher moral good is for property to be communalized, the internal logic of the story would unravel. The rebellious tenants would be righteous in their cause and the financial claims of the greedy landowner would be justly condemned.
   2. Real Property Ownership Rights: Owning defined parcels of land – and even taking legal title to land was well-established in the ancient world. In fact, owning land as a means of personal fruitfulness was a sign of blessing. Notably, the Mosaic Law instructed farmers not to glean all the way to the edge-corners of their fields to make some provision for the poor. But that provisional allowance is categorically different from saying that productive lands should be owned by the collective for the sake of addressing poverty.
   3. Landlord-Tenant Relationships: A natural consequence of private land ownership is the existence of leaseholders (owners) and tenants (renters). Owners may use their land directly or lease it to others for their use. In the same way that vintners today might lease land from property owners in Paso Robles to grow grapes for wine, so did the people in Jesus’ day. There was nothing remotely morally nefarious about that arrangement. Each party benefits by transacting with one another. There is a two-sided transaction wherein both parties have mutual obligations and benefits. If either fails to meet their end of the bargain, they are not only morally compromised, they are subject to legal consequences.
   4. Wealth Disparity: Underneath all of this is a fundamental reality that not everyone has equal means. Disparity of economic circumstances and outcomes were as real then as they are today. This was understood as an enduring reality of being human this side of heaven, not something that could be systematically remedied. And while Jesus certainly had many things to say about exploiting and caring for the poor, the stories he told never suggested taxation or government intervention as a moral answer.
2. Parable(s) of The Wealthy Investor: In a similar set of parables, Jesus tells a story about a wealthy investor (God) giving different amounts of venture capital to several employee-managers (various kinds of people), expecting a return on investment. Two of the managers double their allocation and are rewarded with more capital to invest. But when one of the employees puts the capital “under a mattress” to preserve it out of fear of loss, the wealthy investor (God) rebukes him for not at least putting the capital with bankers to earn interest! The lazy-fearful employee is summarily fired. Again – we will bypass the macro-level theological implications of this teaching and examine the first principles that are necessary to tell the story…
   1. Capital Formation: Those who have surplus investment capital look for ways to deploy the capital with a risk-adjusted rate of return seeking growth..
   2. Unequal Distribution/Diversification: Investors deploy capital to different projects and managers at different levels. Resources are not evenly distributed. Prudent investors not only diversify with different employee-managers, they allocate at different weightings.
   3. Entrepreneurial Risk: Investors who put capital to work risk losing their capital.
   4. Opportunity Cost: Failing to at least earn nominal interest represents lost opportunity and the erosion of purchasing power.
   5. Banking & Earned Interest: Usury (loan-sharking to desperate people at exploitative rates of interest) is condemned, but prudent banking is assumed as a necessary good.
   6. Meritocracy: The employees are rewarded commensurate with their performance. There is no vision of “equity” in attempting to level the playing field for all economic actors.
3. Parable of The Uneven Wages: One of the more curious parables of Jesus is about a landowner (God) hiring day-laborers (Jews & Gentiles) for a particular job. The terms of employment were one denarius for each laborer, which would have been roughly the equivalent of a daily wage. Some laborers started working in the morning and some weren’t hired until the workday was almost over. Surprisingly, every person received the same wage at the end of the daily shift. The laborers who started in the morning were upset that people who worked less time got the same pay and they complained about it. Instead of siding with the perceived injustice against the full-day laborers, Jesus sides with the owner who had a right to pay wages however he saw fit. Let’s notice the first principles involved:
   1. Voluntary Exchange: There is no central coordinating system matching laborers to a task or setting wages. There is no royal or government decree to direct economic traffic. There is simply an employer who needs day-laborers and offers a standard daily (not living) wage. The laborers are not coerced into working for the employer and freely choose to accept his terms. This is the heart of free and voluntary exchange.
   2. Defense of Uneven Wages: You may recall one of the cornerstones of Marxist economics is the so-called, “Labor Theory of Value.” That means that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor put into it, not the demand/supply or particular utility of the commodity itself. This would also imply that the compensation related to that labor would be uniformly calculable. This is at the heart of Marxian economic justice… and it is nowhere in view here. Quite the contrary. In this story, the employer has ultimate freedom to not only set wages, but to distribute them unevenly across labor-inputs. It is fully his discretion and the explicit twist and startling irony is that there is NO injustice in the uneven wages among the laborers.

The Mechanism of Economic Charity

I will end with a final Jesus story. But this is not a parable Jesus told – it is a commentary he offered about something he observed while visiting the Temple in Jerusalem. Namely, Jesus and the disciples were observing a poor widow offering her small and only financial resources to the Temple treasury as an offering. And Jesus angrily said,”This is criminal! That poor woman shouldn’t give anything – she should be getting help from those rich people! What an injustice to think this destitute person of no means would give money when she should be receiving it from the governing authorities! True equity would be achieved if the rich had to tithe more so this woman wasn’t poor!”

I lied.

Jesus didn’t say that at all. Here’s how it reads in the Gospels:

“And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”

I offer a couple of concluding takeaways from this episode:

• Economic charity-giving is primarily personal: I don’t necessarily mean “private” as “unknown to others” – although there is an essential Christain virtue in that. What I mean is that economic charity is first and foremost a matter for individuals to engage in as individuals. We are each freely responsible to give from our individual means. Higher marginal tax rates from Caesar or a set tithe to a religious institution are not given as the answers. Coercive contributions and redistributions of wealth are not proposed as the answer. It would have been all too easy to suggest those principles, but they were not proposed. The condition of our heart is the answer.
• A core contrast of giving from abundance vs. sustenance: Note that Jesus did not condemn the rich for their giving. Rather, he called out the special nature of the widow giving everything she had to give. It wasn’t the absolute amount that mattered to Jesus – it was the amount of relative sacrifice. I do not believe that this means everyone should give everything they have to give. A close study of the Gospels suggests this is appropriate for some people (the rich young ruler, for example), but not all. The morality isn’t pointing to everyone taking a vow of poverty. The point is for each of us to consider whether we are sacrificially giving out of our abundance or out of our own sustenance.

Speaking of charity – I am willing to extend a judgment of charity to the Reverend Senator Warnock and his good intentions on behalf of the poor. But I think his Jesus quote deserves to be put in greater Gospel context. I will stop short of saying Jesus was a capitalist, but that’s because “capitalism” is a subtle derogatory term coined by French Marxists to deride free market economic theory.

Centrally managed redistribution of wealth is not an explicit or implied feature of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels. The economics of Jesus look far more like the “virtuous cycle” produced by energetic participants in a free market with decentralized agency, voluntary exchange, and personal moral responsibility. So do the economic ethics of Jesus point towards Socialism? My simple answer to that complicated question is, “No, they do not.”

Brett Bonecutter
Private Wealth Advisor

Trevor Cummings
PWA Group Director, Partner

Blaine Carver
Private Wealth Advisor