Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man named Zacchaeus lived there. He was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. Tax collectors collected Roman taxes, and Zacchaeus held authority among those who did that work.
Jesus was moving along a public route through the city rather than first entering a house. Zacchaeus came out not to collect revenue but to discover who Jesus was. His office and wealth did not give him a clear view through the people surrounding Jesus.
Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was, but he could not see over the crowd because he was short. He ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the route Jesus was taking.
The obstruction was the combination of his height and the crowd. Zacchaeus did not wait for everyone to disperse. He looked ahead to the direction Jesus was walking, ran beyond the people, and chose a tree beside the approaching route.
Climbing placed him above the heads that had blocked his view. Though he was a wealthy chief collector, he accepted the exposed position among the branches for the opportunity to see Jesus. He waited there for Jesus to pass below.
When Jesus came to that place, he looked up and called Zacchaeus by name. He told him to come down quickly, because he had to stay at Zacchaeus’s house that day. Zacchaeus came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
Jesus did not pass beneath the tree unnoticed. He stopped, looked upward, and spoke Zacchaeus’s name before Zacchaeus introduced himself. The instruction was immediate: come down quickly. The visit was also for that very day, and Jesus described staying at the house as something he must do.
Zacchaeus answered with action rather than asking for more time. He descended as quickly as he had been told and received Jesus with joy. The man who had climbed merely to see Jesus now welcomed him as a guest.
People saw this and complained that Jesus had gone in to stay with a sinner. Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said that he would give half of his possessions to the poor. If he had taken anything from anyone unjustly, he said, he would repay it four times over.
Those watching did not share Zacchaeus’s joy. They grumbled together and defined the house by the reputation of its owner: Jesus had entered the home of a sinner. Zacchaeus did not answer by defending his public standing.
He stood before the Lord and addressed what he possessed and what he might have taken from others. Half would go to the poor. Any person he had defrauded would receive four times the amount. His welcome of Jesus was followed by a stated change in how his wealth would be used.
Jesus declared that salvation had reached the house that day, not at some unspecified future time. The home condemned by the crowd as a sinner’s home was named as a place salvation had entered. Jesus also restored Zacchaeus to the family identity the crowd’s judgment had obscured: he too was a son of Abraham.
Jesus said that salvation had come to that house that day, because Zacchaeus too was a son of Abraham. He said that the Son of Man had come to seek and to save the lost.