It is important to first understand the society during Biblical times.
Around the eighth century BCE, according to the Tanakh, the Jewish people were divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. Around 720 BCE Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and deported most of the inhabitants while subjugating the southern kingdom of Judah as a vassal kingdom. Around 150 years later the Neo-Babylonian Empire defeated Judah and there ceased to be an independent Jewish state until the brief interregnum of the Hasmonaeans. At the time of Jesus the Romans had taken over Judea via the client kingdom of the Herod family. Many Jews were extremely unhappy with being under the thumb of yet another foreign nation, especially after independence was still within living memory.
The religious environment was tied closely to the political. After centuries of military defeats and rule by foreigners, after the destruction of their temple, and things generally just not going their way, a fatalistic view took hold: apocalypticism. The apocalyptic view was that it was futile to try to change the world through human efforts; that the world itself was under the power of evil and that the only way things were going to change was if God directly intervened and overthrew the existing order and ushered in a "Kingdom of God". There were various strains of apocalypticism during this time, with characters such as "The Son of Man" and "The Messiah", references to reestablishing the Davidic monarchy and descriptions of what the "End of Days" would be like. This was the milieu in which Jesus lived and preached. If you read the Gospels like an historian it's fairly obvious that this is what Jesus preached as well.
If you focus on the actions that Jesus told people that they needed to do to gain the "Kingdom of Heaven" (or "Kingdom of God", or sometimes simply "The Kingdom") it was very clear that it was the actions, and not believing in him, or accepting him, that got you into the Kingdom. I'm aware that there are sections that focus on believing in order to attain eternal life. A good case can be made that the later Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, represent a later development among the Christian Church, and were not what the historical Jesus taught. What Jesus taught was that pretty soon, within the lifetime of those he was preaching to, God would intervene in the world, throw down the kingdoms of the world, and establish God's kingdom on Earth. His comments about rejecting family, rejecting worldly goods, and especially riches makes sense in this context. It made no sense to to plan for the long term because he didn't think there would be a long term. He wasn't out to make the world a better place, because he didn't think "the world" was going to be around long enough to be made better. He gave instructions to his followers to change their ways so that they would make the cut when the Godly New World Order came to pass. Anyone who didn't straighten up and fly right would be outside gnashing their teeth before getting vaporized by destroying fire.
Did I mention that he thought that this would happen soon?
This doesn't mean that loving your neighbor and living the way Jesus told people to live isn't a good thing, but the reason Jesus gave for living that way turned out to be mistaken. God didn't overthrow the kingdoms of the world and establish his kingdom within Jesus' generation...or ever. Jesus was wrong.
Oops.
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