Luke 19:10

Can we not take these last words as the keynote of the whole group of stories we have just read?… In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector you have a lost one sought, found, and saved. In the case of the little children you have lost ones received and blessed. He had come to save even them. And in the case of the young man, the ruler, you have one who refuses to accept God's estimate of what he was. He refuses to take the place of being lost. He is the one who goes away empty and sorrowful.

He treats everyone as lost who is not already saved by faith in Him. This is the point from which I look at the Gospel. I am lost; but Jesus came to seek and to save the lost; therefore He came to seek and to save me… And where is the spot where you may meet Jesus, the Saviour? That spot, my dear friend, is the small circle of the consciously lost; for He came for the lost and only for the lost. Reader, if you are not lost, I have no Gospel for you.

The Lord did not accuse, and speaks of nothing but the salvation which had come to the house that day… He gave what Zacchaeus had little thought of. He was come to meet the need He had created. He was come to seek, that is, to produce the desire; and to save, that is, to meet the desire.

He was not content with the work of the cross—mighty though that was—a work that in righteousness opens the way to heaven to the vilest who comes through Christ, but He SEEKS as well as saves—blessed be His name.

Would Zacchaeus justify himself by setting out what he did? As one of the lost the Lord came to seek him and to save him. All his doings had not saved him, nor could they. Never until then had salvation entered his door. The Lord brought it that day.

But why and how had salvation come there? It was because He, the Saviour, had come. Jesus Himself was salvation. If you have Him, the Saviour, then you have salvation. He does not send salvation, He brings it; and when He brings it, He comes to stay: "I will never leave you nor forsake you." We have the blessing, but we have the Blesser too.

As Son of Man — the title that ties Him to the whole human race — He cannot be limited to Israel; and as we have seen, Israel must still learn His wider interests. The title itself takes in people in general. And what He came to secure — the rich blessings in His generous hands — is open to all.

How does He save? He saves by His death; He saves by the work He accomplished for us on the cross. The only way we can be saved is through the death of the Saviour. Sin is on us; we have all sinned, and our sins must bring us into judgment. But what has taken place? The blessed Lord Jesus Christ has gone to the cross. There He bore our sins, and the judgment of God against sin, so that He may bring us to God.

When you were ruined and far from God, what met your case? Did God wait until you put away your sin? It never would have been done at all. God sent His own Son to seek you, to save you… That is the principle for you to act upon.