Who are the lost the least and the last in the society?

“Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20 KJV). Rather than spend his time with the wealthy nobility, he spent his time with the “last, least, and lost” of his society, including tax collectors, prostitutes, and the poor.

“The last, the least, and the lost” is an amalgam of three verses in the book of Matthew in the New Testament of the Bible:

The Last: “So the last will be first, and the first will be last” Matthew 20:16 KJV.

The Least: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” Matthew 25:40 KJV.

The Lost: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” Matthew 18:11 KJV.

I am sure when he got up that morning, Zacchaeus did not expect that before long he would be entertaining the Son of God in his own home.

As a rich, important and chief tax-collector he was an individual who was hated by the Jews and despised by the Romans and was quite possibly a man who had been a swindler or a thief. But Jesus took time to come to him, to call to him and to open up for him the path of salvation, for Jesus has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

No doubt God had been preparing the heart of this wealthy yet detested tax-collector, for God is able to discern the motives of every man, and this meeting with Christ brought a sinner to repentance, when confronted with the incomparable perfection of the Son of Man.

How unlike the arrogant Pharisees, who looked with such disdain on tax-collectors and sinners and thanked God that they were so different from such 'offensive' people. These self-righteous men were so proud that they fasted twice a week, paid tithes of all their cumin and dill. They were unswervingly righteous in their own unenlightened and petty little eyes, yet failed to act justly to love mercy and to walk humbly before God.

How different the Lord Jesus was from those critical Jewish leaders, who so readily accused the Lord Jesus of fraternising with tax-collectors and sinners! But that day, salvation came to the house of Zacchaeus, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.

God still knows the heart of man and He is still seeking and saving those which are lost and bringing salvation to many souls who trust in HIM - by grace through faith.

These two verses at the end of the account of Zacchaeus provide insight into Christ’s purpose for coming to us in the flesh, but not in the way we might expect. Jesus says He came to “seek and to save the lost,” but He did not seek out Zacchaeus—Zacchaeus was seeking Jesus.

The word translated “seek” in both verses 3 and 10 is the same word in Greek. Even in the parables leading up to this account, others were coming to Jesus—infants were being brought to Him (18:15-17), the rich young ruler came to Him (18:18-30), and the blind beggar called out to Him (18:35-43). So how is Jesus seeking and saving the lost?

Maybe this echoes John 13:34-35, the new commandment Jesus gave at the beginning of the upper room discourse. He said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We will be known by how we love our brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus has an attractiveness the world cannot explain, and our faithful living witness to Him shows that same beauty. Our witness is our life; nothing we can do to “spruce it up” will substitute for authentic faith.

I do not know that we usually see Christianity in this light. Often Christianity is reduced to a worldview, a set of ideas that passively underpins our thoughts and actions, a competing “truth” in the marketplace of ideas. But when we reduce it to something like a worldview, we strip it of the life within. Christians understand truth not merely as a collection of knowledge, or a right and coherent understanding of our experiences of the world, although those are aspects of our faith. Truth is a person, and one day those who are saved will give Truth a hug!

The way we seek the lost for Christ to save should reveal the nature of Jesus. We should live an authentic Christian life in community with our fellow believers, a life so distinct and appealing to those the Spirit prompts, that they will come to us seeking what we have.

That is really hard. The temptation is to use clever marketing or attraction techniques to draw people in, which is much easier and gives us an illusion of control. In my experience, what draws people in is what keeps them in, and if we draw people into the church with anything other than Christ, we do disservice to them and to our Lord.

May we live as Christ, and may our lives display a Hope and Truth that is only found in Him.