NOTES for Luk 19:5

How does the Savior find those people into whose house He is ready to enter? Probably the same way He finds those whom He calls to follow Him. And yet, how? Here is Zacchaeus, a person who by no accepted religious measure is suitable for a visit. Not simply a tax collector, but the head, as we would say today, of the local tax service. The occupation is dubious in itself, and all the more under those concrete conditions: after all, one had to work for Roman power, for foreigners, one might say, for occupiers.

Of course, even the most religious Pharisees paid taxes, and no one except perhaps the Zealots doubted their piety. But the Zealots were real fanatics, calling for religious war against Rome to the victorious end, until the coming of the Messiah. Yet paying taxes is one thing, and helping collect them is another. The first is forced; the second is voluntary. And voluntary sin is not forgiven, and one cannot be cleansed from its consequences, even after sincere repentance. The will toward evil is a terrible and irreversible thing; believing Jews of that time thought this way.

Zacchaeus, it appears, very much wanted this very reversibility. That is why he climbed the tree, disregarding his respectable position. He had evidently heard that Someone was walking through Judea and Samaria who could cleanse even from sin committed by one's free will. And such a desire for purity, for deliverance from sin, is seen at once by God's gaze. Therefore it is seen by the Messiah's gaze as well, for He sees the situation with God's gaze. And He immediately goes to the house of the one who wants deliverance from the power of sin. Christ came for precisely this, to deliver from the power of sin those who want to be delivered from it. And to give such people the chance to begin life with a clean slate, in His Kingdom.