Jesus came looking for you

The good news, in plain words

A man in a tree

Luke tells about a tax collector named Zacchaeus who had gotten rich by cheating his neighbors. When Jesus came through town, Zacchaeus wanted a look at him, but he was short and the crowd wasn't about to make room. So he ran ahead and climbed a tree (Luke 19:1–10). He didn't call out. He found a place where he could watch from a safe distance.

Plenty of us know that place. You can be interested in Jesus, even admire what he taught, and still keep far enough away that he doesn't disturb your life very much.

Then Jesus reached the tree, stopped, looked up and called Zacchaeus by name. He said he was coming to his house that day. Jesus knew how the man had made his money, and knowing all of it, he stopped anyway. Afterward he explained why he had come at all: "the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10).

If you've been watching from a distance, that story is about you too. Before you ever went looking for God, he came looking for you.

What's wrong, and why we can't fix it

Most of us know the gap between seeing what needs to change and changing it. There's the temper, or the resentment we thought we'd put down, or the thing we keep feeding in private. We try harder, and it helps for a while.

The Bible's word for the trouble is sin, and it means something worse than a list of bad habits. We were made to live with God, and every one of us has gone our own way instead (Romans 3:23). Paul puts it bluntly: we were dead (Ephesians 2:1–3). He means cut off from the life we were made for, like the son in Jesus' story who was very much alive while he wasted everything far from his father (Luke 15:11–24). Becoming a slightly better version of ourselves won't close that distance. We need God to act.

What God did

God has acted. God the Son became one of us. Jesus lived the life we haven't, and in Jerusalem he was crucified. On the cross he bore our sins (1 Peter 2:24), and on the third day he rose from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:3–4).

He did it out of love (John 3:16), while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Much of life runs on earning. You work your hours and expect a paycheck, and nobody calls it generosity when it comes. Grace is different. God gives what we could never earn or make him owe us (Ephesians 2:8–9). Years of church attendance don't put him in our debt, and a rough past doesn't put anyone beyond his reach.

You don't have to clean yourself up first

Some people hear Christians and conclude that the message is: get your life under control, and then maybe God will accept you. But Zacchaeus hadn't promised to change anything when Jesus called his name. Grace came first.

Wesleyans talk about the grace that goes before us. God is at work in a person before that person has decided anything, waking us to our need and making it possible to answer him. We can resist that grace, or we can trust the one who has come near. If something has been stirring in you as you read this, take it seriously.

How to answer him

The Bible puts two things side by side: repentance and faith (Mark 1:15).

Repentance is turning around. Suppose you back out of a parking space and hear that awful crunch. You can feel terrible about it, and you can tell yourself you're usually a careful driver. Repentance is leaving your name and phone number on the other car. It means we stop defending the road that has been taking us away from God. Zacchaeus stood up and promised to pay back everyone he had cheated, four times over.

Faith is trust. It means relying on Jesus, on what he did on the cross and on the fact that he is alive, and no longer on our own record (Romans 10:9).

No special prayer saves anyone. Jesus saves. But you can speak to him honestly, in your own words: confess your sin, ask him to forgive you, tell him you believe he died for you and rose again, and put your trust in him.

What happens next

God forgives everyone who comes to him through Jesus, and his Holy Spirit gives new life (John 3:3–8; 2 Corinthians 5:17). The Spirit also assures God's children that they belong to him (Romans 8:16).

That is the beginning. From there God keeps working, something like restoring an old house. Fresh paint helps for a while, but real restoration gets beneath the surface, into the wiring and the plumbing, and it takes time. He doesn't leave you to do it alone (Philippians 2:12–13).

Not every consequence of the old life disappears. Zacchaeus still had people to repay, and some in Jericho may never have trusted him again. But he wasn't headed the same way anymore. Following Jesus was never meant to be something you figure out by yourself, so please tell someone.