Why was Zacchaeus saved according to Jesus?

Question

In Luke 19:1-10 we read the story of Zacchaeus which ends like so:

And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold."

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."

(Luke 19:8-10 ESV)

Clearly Jesus announces that salvation has come to the man's home. Less clear (to me anyway) is the why. I can see several possible interpretations of the text:

• Salvation came to Zacchaeus because he was generous in giving away his money and paying back those he had wronged. (I get this from the flow of the text, Jesus responding to Zacchaeus.)
• Salvation came to Zacchaeus because by turning from his tax collecting, he turned from Rome and was reconciled back to the Jewish community. ("He also is a son of Abraham.")
• Salvation came to Zacchaeus because Jesus had called him down from the tree and gone with him to his house. ("The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.")

Which of these (if any or many) is to be preferred? And why?

Answer 1

In Dr. Thomas Constable's commentary (click the "Constable's Notes" tab), he posits a fourth option:

Jesus’ assessed Zaccheus’ promises as an evidence of saving faith. Salvation had come to that house because Zaccheus had exercised saving faith and had thereby proved to be a genuine descendant of Abraham, the spiritual father of all believers. His faith and works proved that he was a spiritual son of Abraham and not just one of his physical descendants (cf. Gen. 15:6; 22:1-19). Now he could enter the kingdom, not because he was a Jew physically but because he was a believer in Jesus.

“This ['He also is a son of Abraham'] will seem to be an irrelevant remark unless we recognize that the principal tension in the story is caused by the rejection of Zacchaeus by the Jewish community.”

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Although brief, the Bible Knowledge Commentary (p. 252) has a very similar take on this verse.

Jesus' words, Today salvation has come to this house, did not imply that the act of giving to the poor had saved Zaccheus, but that his change in lifestyle evidenced his right relationship before God. Zaccheus, a son of Abraham by birth, had a right to enter the kingdom because of his connection with Jesus. That was Jesus' mission—to seek and to save those who are lost (cf 15:5, 9, 24).

(All emphasis theirs—they bold words quoted from the text.)

Answer 2

Zaccheus was saved because God chose him to be a type of Christ.

His name means 'pure' and as the chief tax collector in a tree he portrayed Christ on the cross in the same manner as the serpent which was lifted up in the wilderness. Jesus was pure as he bore the sins of man. The tax collector represents sin because we cannot serve God and mammon.

He also represented Jesus being 'least' in stature. Jesus humbled himself and came to serve all men. He is the greatest in the kingdom because he made himself least in this world.

When Jesus saw the picture of his own destiny in Zaccheus, he invited himself to dinner to finish the picture, since when he came off the cross, he went to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

As a bride of Christ figuratively, his actions of giving away his possessions and restoring what he had taken completes the picture since Christ and his bride are 'fruitful'.

Jesus sees the hand of the Father in the intimate details of what happened and declares salvation because of the presence of the hand of God in it all.

We too are chosen to be types of Christ and God works in the details of our lives to make us look more like Jesus every day.

'Why' is always because God chose to, 'How' is always the cross. There is no merit toward salvation in giving things away, nor by giving up his job, nor by being called down from the tree. Jesus was merely declaring what God had done by the fruit that he saw.