Remember, Jesus was not American. He didn’t have any notion whatsoever that government should not provide charity. There is nothing inherently unchristian in the nanny state.
Compassionate, but false. The state can take your the fruits of your labor by force. This is not charity, it is robbery under state authority.
Of course he did! He and his fellow Jews held to the idea that charity is usually a short term response to an emergency, and/or mostly for widows and orphans who could not otherwise provide for themselves. I think they would have been horrified at the idea of able-bodied people living off of the confiscated resources of other people.
And, secondly, charity is at least as much for the giver as it is for the receiver. Charity given freely by an individual is important to the soul of the giver.
And, thirdly, Christ and Christianity emphasize individual salvation - something that is antithetical to an enormous, confiscatory, governmental “charity” machine, which establishes a great distance between the giver and the receiver and the receiver from the giver. It removes the possibility of thankfulness and gratitude and creates instead a cycle of dependence and ingratitude.
Jesus had no such thought. He was NOT a communist. Government is always force—which is evil. (Necessary evil which has to be limited.).
Jesus believed in subsidiarity and charity—yes. But Charity can NEVER be defined as forcing one person to give his stuff to another. That force makes it NOT charity. “Governments” are incapable of practicing charity.
Jesus was for individual dignity and worth-—never “the End justifies the Mean” of Karl Marx. You can never kill of a few people for the good of the State. EVERYTHING about the NANNY state is not only unchristian—it is unconstitutional.