The Conversion of Zacchaeus by Bernardo Strozzi

Money, business, salvation and the kingdom of God. You won’t often find these words sharing the same sentence, but they do belong together in the Gospel of Luke. It turns out Luke has a lot to say about how we manage organizations that produce goods and services, and about how this is very closely related to salvation and God’s kingdom.

Luke’s passage about Zacchaeus provides an excellent example of this, although it may not be obvious at first for many modern readers. In this passage Jesus visits the house of a rich chief tax collector named Zacchaeus. When Zacchaeus says that he will give half his money to the poor, and repay fourfold anyone whom he has defrauded, Jesus responds by saying: “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9).