Luke 19:9 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

This day is salvation come to this house. — The Greek tense, This day came there salvation to this house, has a force which it is not easy to express in English, implying that the salvation was already looked back upon as completed in the past. In one sense salvation had come in the personal presence of the Saviour, but we must remember all that the word implied — deliverance, not from the penalty only, but from the habit and the power of sin. This had come, and the words and acts of Zacchæus showed the fruits. And it comes to him because “he also is a child of Abraham.” The Abraham character was in him, as that of the true Israel was in Nicodemus (John 1:47). A son of Abraham, like him in his noble generosity (comp. Genesis 13:9; Genesis 14:23), was found where, to the common observer, it would have seemed as hopeless to look for one as among the stones of the Jordan valley (Matthew 3:9).