A Wee Little Doctrine

I’ve said it before:

Calvinism gets a bad rep. When it’s correctly understood, however, it’s the most comforting view of God on the planet!

At its heart it says, “no matter how bad you’ve blown it, God can still make straight lines with crooked sticks.”

A crooked stick like me says: “sign me up!”

When it comes to crooked sticks, what about that slimy character Zacchaeus in Luke chapter 19?

If you grew up with felt boards you’ve got that song in your head already (you’re welcome!). Truly, he was a wee little man. What he lacked in height he also lacked in integrity. Given that he was a chief tax collector he would’ve been lining his pockets by extorting money from his own people and skimming a little off the top. Think more Tony Soprano than Harold Crick (the detail-oriented IRS auditor from 2006’s “Stranger Than Fiction”—a movie which is not half bad!).

Yet, if you’ve ever seen an episode of the Sopranos you’d know there’s a deep conflict in the heart of the mobster that is Tony S. He believes in God and believes himself to be on the “right side” of morality…yet, he’s plagued by anxiety and insomnia over the weight of his evil actions. In fact, even the lavish lifestyle his life of racketeering and extortion have earned him doesn’t satisfy him.

One has to wonder if there was a similar conflict in the heart of Zacchaeus? He’d carved out a lavish lifestyle for himself. Yet, it created a reputation for him as a sinful man (Luke 19:7).

He had heard of Jesus of Nazareth and when he makes an appearance in his neck of the woods, he’ll go to extreme lengths (and heights!) to catch a glimpse of him. And when Jesus sees it? He imposes upon the short man, invites himself over for dinner, and the rest is IRS history as they say.

This man of ill-repute responds with a joyful welcome. His days of reverse-Robin-Hood-ing are over. No longer will he rob from the poor to make himself rich, but he’d pay back fourfold from anyone he’d defrauded in the past.

Jesus is truly able to take the worst and turn them into the first. (And I mean that in the Vineyard Parable sense. See Matthew 20.)

Remember I’m talking about Calvinism here and my point on this journey is to sneak us in through the backdoor to love the aspect of that theology that gets the worst reputation. I’m talking about predestination.

It’s the most offensive “piece” of Calvinism and the most violently attacked. Its reputation isn’t much better than Zacchaeus’s. Yet, for those of us who properly understand it: gosh is it beautiful.

Here’s the point: from the vignette we get of Zacchaeus he was a wretch saved by amazing grace. We see him curiously seeking out Jesus and Jesus changing his world. But what we’re not made privy to is the invisible work of the Father in this passage. We see Jesus’s transformative action in this man’s life, but the Father’s work is unseen.

For “No one can come to Jesus unless the Father who sent Jesus draws him” (John 6:44).

That day, I imagine, Zacchaeus thought it was his own two feet that brought him to that tree. And his own two hands that helped him climb up. Now he knows what I only see in part (1 Cor. 13:12):

It was the unseen work of a Father’s love that drew him. And he was redeemed at a different tree that Jesus was en route to when he stopped to invite himself over for dinner. Those hands that helped him climb the sycamore had nowhere near as much importance in changing his life as the hands that were pierced on Calvary.

It’s the same with you and me.