Was Jesus a Socialist?

Commentary by Lawrence W. Reed from FEE.org:

On June 16, 1992, London's Daily Telegraph reported this astonishingly bold remark by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: "Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind."^{1
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You don't have to be a Christian to appreciate the errors in the Gorbachev canard. You can be a person of any faith or no faith at all. You just have to appreciate facts, history, and logic. You can even be a socialist — but one with open eyes — and realize that Jesus wasn't in your camp.
In a modern political, economic, and social context, socialism isn't voluntary like the Girl Scouts. Its central characteristic is the concentration of power to forcibly achieve one or more (or usually all) of these purposes: central planning of the economy, government ownership of property, and the redistribution of wealth. No amount of "we do it all for you" or "it's for your own good" or "we're helping people" rhetoric can erase that.
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So was Jesus really a socialist? More to the main focus of this essay, did he call for the state to redistribute income to either punish the rich or to help the poor?
I first heard "Jesus was a socialist" and "Jesus was a redistributionist" some forty years ago. I was puzzled. I had always understood Jesus's message to be that the most important decision a person would make in his earthly lifetime was to accept or reject him as savior. That decision was clearly to be a very personal one — an individual and voluntary choice. He constantly stressed inner, spiritual renewal as far more critical to well-being than material things. I wondered, "How could the same Jesus advocate the use of force to take stuff from some and give it to others?" I just couldn't imagine him supporting a fine or a jail sentence for people who don't want to fork over their money for food-stamp programs.
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The fact is, one can scour the Scriptures with a fine-tooth comb and find nary a word from Jesus that endorses the forcible redistribution of wealth by political authorities. None, period.
"But didn't Jesus say he came to uphold the law?" you ask. Yes, in Matthew 5:17–20 he declares, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."³ In Luke 24:44, he clarifies this when he says, "Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." He was not saying, "Whatever laws the government passes, I'm all for." He was speaking specifically of the Mosaic law (primarily the Ten Commandments) and the prophecies of his own coming.
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In Luke 12:13–15, Jesus is confronted with a redistribution request. A man with a grievance approaches him and demands, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." Jesus replies thusly: "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you? Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions" (emphasis added). Wow! He could have equalized the wealth between two men with a wave of his hand, but he chose to denounce envy instead. [read more]

Interesting essay. Socialists and the Left are always trying to twist and make socialism and Christianity the same thing by using code words like “collective salvation.” Socialism and Christianity are nothing alike and ministers and preachers who use Left’s terms like “social justice” are doing a disservice to Jesus’ teachings.
If anything, Jesus is more closer to what a conservative is.

Bryan Fischer on OneNewsNow.com also wrote an interesting commentary called "No, Jesus was not a socialist."