via_Dolorosa,

In your quote of Luke 19.......

8 Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.”
9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; 10 for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

...you suggest that Zacchaeus and Jesus were working together, that Jesus took care of the salvation part, while Zacchaeus did his part of performing his good works, pulling himself up by his own bootstraps as it were, so that he, like us, could get out of his rut.

Protestants would say that Zacchaeus was not speaking in accordance with Jesus, but rather that Christs revelation was other than a Zacchaeus way of thinking. Zacchaeus offers up his paltry, worthless works as if they validate reasons for Christ's consideration. Jesus speaks in spite of Zacchaeus, not in league with him, giving the sole reason how it is that a son of Abraham, whom Jesus in these verses calls "lost", could be saved.

The verse is a revelation that Jesus does not recognize bootstraps has having anything to do with ruts. That is, salvation came to the Jews as prophesied not because any of them was a bootstrap-puller of some sort, making good contribution to his rightness with God, but solely because "the Son of Man has come", and that Zaccheus, in all his pulling, was never going to get out of his rut, but rather was one of the "lost" now, happily, found.

There is other precedence for Jesus speaking this way. Read again his conversation with Nicodemus, another man of good will toward Jesus who totally misunderstood him. Nicodemus is talking about child birth, and Jesus is busily revealing long held secrets of how the Father regenerates a dead (Eph 2) soul to new life.

In both cases, the lost soul is not making a contribution to Jesus' revelation, rather he is showing the lostness of his confession while Christ is revealing how He alone accounts for getting out of ruts, and getting out of wombs.