Luke 19:8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
How do you know if someone has really changed? This question is asked hundreds of times a day by those closest to addicts, abusers, and others who frequently say they are sorry following a fall. And it is a legitimate question to be asked.
We all want to believe that people can change, that their past behaviors don’t determine their future choices. We want to give them the benefit of the doubt. We want to believe their tears. But how do we know!
The main character in our text today was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a man with a reputation, and not a good reputation. He served in a profession that made him a traitor to the Jews. He collected Roman taxes from his own people. And those taxes enabled the Romans to rule with a heavy hand.
And tax collectors were known for padding the tax bill and putting the extra in their own pockets. Imagine a toll collector on the toll road in his booth. When you pull up to pay the $1.00 toll, he tells you it is $1.25 instead. You try to object, but he tells you the toll is now $1.50. So you shut up and just pay the extra so that you can keep driving.
Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were known to be this way, and as a result they got rich off the backs of the poor. And the text tells us that Zacchaeus was rich. So he was loved by the Romans because he did his job, but he was hated by the Jews because he was stealing from them.
But Zacchaeus has one thing going for him. He wants to see Jesus. And Jesus invites himself for a meal at Zacchaeus’ house. And before they even leave for the dinner, Zacchaeus has a huge change of heart. He wants to correct every wrong he has done.
He gives half his money away, back to the very people from whom he has stolen it. And then he promises restitution to anyone from whom he has cheated, four times the amount stolen. Now that is a change of heart.
You can tell he is serious by his actions. Now we don’t have video of him actually carrying out his promises. We don’t have testimony from the poor who received his wealth. We don’t have income tax returns showing his change in income and assets.
But we do have the testimony of Jesus. Jesus saw something in this man the convinced Him that he was serious. He saw some action that confirmed his word.
I think that is how you tell if a person has really changed. Their actions speak louder than their words. If they change and stay changed over months and years, then the change is real. But change is hard to pull off apart from the power of God. The encounter with Jesus made the difference for Zacchaeus, and an encounter with Jesus can make the difference for us.
The Arnold Journey 