New Testament attitudes to wealth and posessions

• in the time of Jesus, wealth was regarded as a good thing, as it was a sign of god's approval. this explains the bewilderment of Peter when in response to Jesus' comment about it being hard for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of god, he said 'then who can be saved?'
• Jesus' teaching challenged the idea that wealth was a sign of god's approval
• Jesus told the rich man that if he wished to gain eternal like, he must give everything he had to the moor (mark 10)
• Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16) contained a warning of dire consequences for those who enjoyed great wealth but ignored the needs of the poor. in that parable the rich man was reminded that caring for the needs of the poor was at the heart of the law and prophetic teachings
• Jesus did not condemn wealth in itself. zacchaeus would still have been wealth even after giving away great amounts of money but Jesus said that he was 'saved' (Luke 19). unlike the rich man in mark's gospel who could not do as Jesus asked, zacchaeus was not 'tied' to his wealth
• In the very early days of Christianity, people shared everything
• when there was a famine in Jerusalem, christians in syria collected money to send to those in need
• the possession of wealth was not seen as wrong in itself; it was the attitude to it that mattered
• 1 Timothy 6:10: 'for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil'