NOTES for Luk 19:5
How does the Savior find those people into whose house He is ready to enter? Perhaps in the same way as those whom He calls to follow Him. And yet, how? Here is Zacchaeus, a man who by no accepted standards in a religious environment was 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 questionable in itself, and all the more in those concrete conditions, because one had to work for Roman authority, for foreigners, one might say, for occupiers.
Of course, even the most religious Pharisees paid taxes, and no one doubted their piety except perhaps the Zealots, but those were real fanatics who called for religious war with Rome to the victorious end, until the coming of the Messiah. Yet paying taxes is one thing, and helping collect them is quite another. The first is forced; the second is voluntary. And voluntary sin is not forgiven; one cannot be cleansed from its consequences even after sincere repentance. The will to evil is a terrible and irreversible thing, or so the believing Jews of that time thought.
Zacchaeus, it seems, very much wanted this very reversibility. That is why he climbed a tree, despite his solid position. Apparently he had heard that Someone was walking through Judea and Samaria who could cleanse even from sin committed of one's own free will. And such a desire for purity, for deliverance from sin, is visible at once to God's gaze. And therefore to the Messiah's gaze as well, for He sees the situation with God's gaze. And immediately He goes to the house of the one who wants deliverance from the power of sin. After all, Christ came precisely for this, to deliver from the power of sin those who want to be delivered from it. And to give such people the opportunity to begin life with a clean slate, in His Kingdom.