NOTES for Luk 19:5
How does the Savior find the people whose house He is ready to enter? Perhaps the same way He finds 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 merely a tax collector, but a chief, as we would say today, of the local tax office. The occupation itself was questionable, and in those specific conditions all the more so, since one had to work for Roman power, for strangers, 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 true fanatics, calling for a religious war with Rome until final victory, until the Messiah came. 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 of its consequences even after sincere repentance. The will to evil is a terrible and irreversible thing, so believing Jews of that time thought.
Zacchaeus apparently very much wanted that very reversibility. That is why he climbed the tree, despite his respectable position. He had evidently heard that Someone was traveling through Judea and Samaria who could cleanse even from sin committed by one's own free will. And such a desire for purity, for deliverance from sin, is immediately visible to God's gaze. That means it is visible to the Messiah's gaze as well, for He sees the situation with God's eyes. And He at once goes to the house of the one who wants deliverance from the power of sin. That is why Christ came: 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.