Jesus was only passing through the city of Jericho and immediately we are introduced by the author of this narrative to a colourful local character called Zaccheues.

Luke 19:1 – 2
He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich.

I am always fascinated and excited afresh every time I read the story of Zaccheus. Out of all the people, it is the city’s most notorious tax collector who defies all the odds and captures Jesus’ attention – and subsequently, of the whole town. He was the last person anyone would have expected Jesus to associate with.

After all, he was a tax collector.

Tax collectors collected taxes from their own people to give to the Romans and so were regarded as traitors. They effectively represented the Roman domination of Israel. In the rabbinical writings they are classified with robbers. They were social outcasts. If tax collectors were considered traitors and sinners, Zacchaeus then would have been chief among them, a major social outcast, one who was despised and looked down upon by one and all because of his profession.

Still, Jesus reaches out to the most unlikely person in Jericho. No one in their wildest imagination could have written the script for Zaccheus’s encounter with Jesus. Out of the entire city of Jericho it is Zaccheus who finds salvation. The very person many considered the most sinful and corrupt in town ends up meeting Jesus and getting saved by Him.

People, one and all, grumbled at Jesus’ association with a man they knew to be a blatant traitor and wilful sinner. Luke 19:7 And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” Here was Jesus associating with what they considered, the scum of the earth. Zaccheus was, for them, the epitome of sinfulness. He represented what was vile, disgusting and treacherous in their eyes. So Jesus’ association with him was almost unforgivable. How could he?

In his defence Jesus cites two factors.

The first was the fact that Zaccheus was a son of Abraham, an Israelite. It was not as if Zaccheus was a foreigner or a gentile “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and a stranger to the covenants of promise” (Eph 2:12). The Lord defended his actions stating that Zaccheus belonged to the commonwealth of Israel and was therefore fully entitled to the covenants of promise and to salvation.

On another occasion in Matthew 15:24, when approached by a Canaanite (non-Israelite) woman seeking his help, Jesus initially refused to help her claiming that he was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel: “He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Zaccheus, on the other hand, was a legitimate target of Jesus’ mission – the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” for whom he was sent. That was sufficient for Christ to reach out to him. Luke 19:9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.” Zaccheus belonged in there and was fully entitled to the benefits of that heritage whatever his current condition.

So too today. Whatever their state or condition of sin people may be in, they are still humans created in and bearing the image of the Creator God and for whom the Son of God came. That is enough to qualify all – without exception – for salvation. God, “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:4.

And if that wasn’t sufficient and people were not yet fully in the know, Jesus sought to clarify his mission on earth – the entire reason why he came – with the statement that “the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” Luke 19:10. The Lord’s concluding statement in his defence of the salvation a “sinner” was a declaration of his own mission. From Zaccheus’ end here was someone who was equally entitled to and in need of salvation like all the rest. And from Christ’s, his mission, the entire reason for his coming, was precisely “to seek and save the lost” of which Zaccheus was one.

God’s plan of salvation is all embracing – no one is excluded or beyond his reach for that is precisely why Jesus came. In his own words, “to seek and save the lost”. This was Jesus’ mission statement to those who grumbled on account of his association with a “sinner”.

This is the mission that Jesus came on and the same mission He is inviting us, His church, to join Him on today: the Church of Jesus Christ carrying out the mission of Jesus Christ. No other.