“Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was but, because he was short, he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Luke 19:1-10 NIV
Another story we learned in Sunday School…with a jewel hidden in its detail.
There is a massive truth hidden in this story which few of us recognise because we have been conditioned to believe that good-for-nothing sinners are what we are. As a youth in a Christian youth group, I would sing, “I am ASSBG, a sinner saved by grace.”
Jesus interpreted the situation from a different perspective. He viewed humans as people created in the image of God who have moved away, through the intrusion of sin, from God’s blueprint. Man’s original state was perfection. Like a little child, clean and dressed in party clothes, who wanders away and plays in the mud, so mankind, created perfect and fit for fellowship with God, has wandered from God’s path and become polluted and lost to God’s purposes in the wilderness of sin.
The story of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, illustrates this truth. He was a Jew, a member of God’s covenant people. He was a descendant of Abraham, but a lost one because he had been led astray from God’s way by his love of money. He had sold himself to the Roman government to collect taxes but also, by extortion, to enrich himself. He was a sinner in the eyes of his ”judges”, the people who dismissed him as “lost”!
Curiosity led Zacchaeus to climb a tree for a better view of Jesus as He happened to be visiting Jericho. Zack was a short man. So keen was he to set eyes on this man who was causing such a stir in Israel that he suffered the indignity of shinning up a tree, something he hadn’t done since he was a boy, just to catch a glimpse of this celebrity.
Imagine Zack’s surprise when Jesus stopped right below him, looked up into the tree, and called to him. Imagine the shock of his neighbours when Jesus, the holy man, chose to interact with Zack, the chief tax collector!
“Zacchaeus, I know you are there! Come down from your tree. I have an appointment with you today!”
“What! Who, me? How do you know my name? How did you know I was in the tree?”
Zacchaeus was gobsmacked! Did Jesus walk all the way from Jerusalem to Jericho just to visit him…and to heal Bartimaeus on the way! Yes, He did! Why would Jesus do that? He did that because Zacchaeus was a lost son of Abraham, and precious to God….not just a sinner, although that he appeared ti be by his behaviour.
Can you see this jewel in the story? Jesus was always careful to stick to the original. God made Zacchaeus in His image to fulfil His purpose. Sin had intruded to derail him but Jesus intervened to set him back on course.
Jesus’ perspective is very different from the way we view ourselves and others. We see ourselves as defective, messed up, of no value to God. Jesus sees us as precious and significant but lost to His purposes as long as we are in the wilderness of self- centred indulgence.
For example, the Pharisees asked Jesus a loaded question…perhaps to trap Him.
“Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
Matthew 19:3 NIV
Jesus reply wasn’t what they expected…
“Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.”
Matthew 19:8 NIV
The Pharisees viewed the situation from the perspective of, and as a solution to, messed-up people. Jesus, in response, took them back to God’s original plan. “Let’s see what God intended from the beginning.”
Jesus said not a word to Zacchaeus about his greed or his sinful lifestyle. Jesus’ encounter with the tax collector was enough to make him aware of his lostness to God’s purpose. Zack’s conscience was working overtime. He immediately decided to return (repent) from “lostness”, back to his true self…a son of Abraham.
This is the way God works. He does not beat us over the head with our sin, our guilt, our shame, our unworthiness. He holds before us the truth of who we are…His sons and daughters, created in His image to be His family and partners in the management of His earth.
What a difference this would make to our self-image, our behaviour, and the way we view other people! Not Zacchaeus, the hated tax collector but Zacchaeus, the son of Abraham.
Everything God calls us to, including the things we do to grow our understanding of God and our confidence in Him, for example, prayer and the Word…come back to who we really are…God’s children created in His image. This is the true meaning of repentance.
What if, instead of viewing ourselves and others as worthless sinners, only redeemed because God felt sorry for us and didn’t want to send us to hell, we see ourselves as God’s treasure, created to be like Him, to reflect Him and to rule with Him in His kingdom?
What difference would this make to the way we live?
To be continued…