A son of Abraham

And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” And he hurried and came down and received Him gladly. And when they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” But Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have extorted anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.”

Luke 19:5-10

Introduction

Why did Jesus go to the house of Zaccheus? Is it because he climbed a tree to see Jesus speak? Is it because the people grumbled against His going? What does Jesus say is the reason?

because he, too, is a son of Abraham.

So Zaccheus was a son of Abraham. But what about the crowd gathered there in Jericho? They were all of the tribe of Judah, members of the house of Israel and sons of Abraham, too, right?

By blood, they certainly could claim sonship under Abraham. That is certain. But starting even before Jesus’ ministry, a paradigm shift takes place where the faulty notion that blood makes one a true son of Abraham is undercut.

The promise made to Abraham

Before getting into the weeds of what makes one a son of Abraham, it is important to understand why it is important to be a son of Abraham. The most famous promise made to Abraham is given in the opening to Genesis 12 as Abraham is called:

And Yahweh said to Abram, “Go forth from your land, and from your kin and form your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

There are echos of this promise in Genesis 15 and 22, but the essence is this as in him all the families of the earth will be blessed – that is in his descendants. But very specifically we know it is a single descendant Jesus Christ who is the seed through whom all the nations are blessed with the gift of salvation from sin (Galatians 3:16).

And note that embedded in this promise is one to bless those who bless Abraham’s seed and to curse those who curse his seed. This favor of God is bound up in what it means to be a child of Abraham. If you are a child of Abraham, then you are an heir of this promise given to him, blessed by God to be a great blessing to the entire world.

If you are children of Abraham

Before Jesus even began His ministry, there was another. “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me.” (Malachi 3:1)

This prophecy speaks of the one who was to come before the incarnate God. And before Jesus’ ministry was started, His cousin John was prophesying and calling the people to repentance. John’s call to repentance was to lay the groundwork for the work of Jesus, as he prepared the hearts of the people to receive the Lord. But not everyone embraced John’s message. In fact, he harshly rebuked even some of those who were coming to him to be baptized, saying, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.” (Luke 3:7-8)

We see immediately that being a child of Abraham is not contingent on your blood relation to him. And that is a truth not novel to John’s ministry. In fact, the very line of King David and therefore the anticipated Messiah was through multiple gentiles who were grafted into the family of Abraham. Notably Ruth from Moab who married Boaz, the great-grandfather of David, and Rahab, Boaz’s mother who was a resident of Jericho before the conquest of Canaan. Yes, the very same Jericho where our story takes place.

Continuing in this vein, Jesus was confronted by some who initially believed Him, but their hearts were turned away when He called them slaves to sin (John 8:34). They were furious with Him, saying they are slaves of no one because they have Abraham as a father. And His response is extremely informative to Zaccheus’ situation: “If you are Abraham’s children, you would do the deeds of Abraham.” (John 8:39)

So coming full circle, we can now answer why Jesus went to the house of Zaccheus. He was a son of Abraham. And we know he was a son of Abraham because his faith compelled him to act. He sought the Lord by climbing the tree, and when the Lord called him, he determined to divest himself of all his ill-gotten gains and devote himself to following after God. Just as Abraham believed God’s promise and left all that he had to enter into a strange land he did not know, Zaccheus too left everything behind to follow after the Lord and a promise. The others present were not willing to do this, and so were not called sons of Abraham like Zaccheus was.

Finally, we read in Galatians 3:29 that “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heris according to promise.” So if you are one who belongs to Christ – that is, you believe in Him and trust His work on the cross – then you are also Abraham’s seed and will do the deeds of Abraham. Your faith will be manifest, and the Spirit will sanctify you. Turn to these things for assurance to know that He is with you and has written your name in the book of life.

May the Lord bless you and conform you into the image of His Son.