🌳 Zacchaeus (19:1-10)
Luke 19:5-10
"And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully... And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’"
Zacchaeus was chief of the tax collectors—the most hated of the hated. Tax collectors gathered taxes for Rome and frequently extorted the people. But he 'was seeking to see who Jesus was'—a curiosity that God honors. Jesus sees him before Zacchaeus sees Him, calls him by name, and invites Himself to his house. The initiative is Jesus’, not Zacchaeus’. The conversion is immediate and practical: half of his goods to the poor, fourfold to those he defrauded. The salvation Jesus brings is not only spiritual—it transforms economic relationships. ‘The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost’—this verse is the summary of the entire Gospel of Luke.