About this sermon
Jesus was crucified between two criminals, and while one joined the crowd in mocking him, the other rebuked him and confessed that Jesus had done nothing wrong. He asked, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and Jesus answered, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The dying thief brought nothing but his need, and Christ received him by grace alone, as he receives every sinner who looks to him.
Sermon transcript
evening we are going to be looking at a passage from Luke chapter 23 verses 32 to 43. Verses 32 to 43. As we look at this passage, we look at an ancient way of execution. And I want to just remind you, when we look at the sufferings of Christ, we’re looking at more than just mere physical suffering.
Many people suffered the pain of crucifixion. Many felt the nails in their hands and feet. In fact, we are told in history about 100 years before this incident that the Romans executed as many as 6,000 men in a slave rebellion on the road from Capua to Rome so that the entire way along the road you would see one of these men who had been executed on this 120-mile road. I think it’s a little bit ironic that we see the Roman Empire in some ways as the height of civilization, when in fact they had perfected their methods of rule and justice in ways that were anything but civilized.
They were very scientific in the weaponization of torture. And if anybody wished this sort of torture on you, if someone tried to subject you to it, I wonder how we would respond. Jesus was subjected to all the wrath and the evil that humanity had to offer. And what reaction would come from the one who had power to do something to stop it at any moment? Well, let’s look and find out here in verses 32 to 43. It also asks you to see this incident from the vantage point of one who was near him, the criminal.
Before we do that, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, open up your word. We ask that your spirit would be present, not only in the reading, but in the hearing and the understanding and the expounding, but also may it not merely stay in these walls, but follow us in our minds and hearts as we go into the world, knowing what it is that is happening on the cross to hear the words of Christ from the cross. and to know what it is that he’s doing there. Know what his job and his work was there. Lord open up your word to us this evening and we pray this in the merciful and powerful name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen. Luke chapter 23 beginning in verse 32. Hear now the word of the Lord.
Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they cast lots to divide his garments. And the people stood by watching.
But the ruler scoffed at him, saying, he saved others. Let him save himself. If he is the Christ of God, his chosen one. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also an inscription over him. This is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals were hanged, railed at him. saying, Are you not the Christ?
Save yourself in us. But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. Grass withers and the flower fades, but this the word of our Lord endures forever. Amen.
In the first three verses, we’re giving the scene. We see here the three crosses and the three men that are being executed. Two criminals on either side of Jesus. Likely these were Barabbas’s co-conspirators, where they had the same title given to them of a bandit or thief, depending on how you translate the word. But they were given the same word. They were likely all cohorts. Two of them there with the replacement for Barabbas, Jesus of Nazareth.
And the first three verses of our section communicate this with One other detail, and that is that Jesus is using his limited breath to breathe out a word, a message for those who have murder in their eyes for him. I wonder if you’ve ever seen somebody who has a hostile, violent intent towards you, have murder in their eyes towards you. Have you ever looked at someone desiring your death, or could you even imagine that? Jesus knew this experience with many men before this. The Pharisees had tried to kill him. Sadducees and Roman soldiers and crowds of sinful men now were there at this moment with murder in their eyes towards him.
Ever look at somebody who hates you, who obviously hates you, who wants to do the maximum amount of damage and harm to you as possible. And what do you say in that moment? What words do you have for such a person? Well, Jesus has some words. He lifts up his head, takes a pained breath to say with a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
And he belts out, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Now, before we look at those who are crucified with Christ, I think we have to pause and reflect on just how bizarre these words were to the ears of those that were there. Jesus’ Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Now, they very well lacked the knowledge and understanding that this, in fact, was the Christ, the Son of God.
They did not, maybe they probably did not know the history of Genesis 3.15 to Malachi 4 to put that together. But in another aspect, they knew exactly what they were doing. And the fact that they knew that they were murdering this man, they fully knew that they were killing him. Those are the people that Jesus looks at and says, Father, forgive them.
Look at that moment and you realize that that is not a natural response. I wonder how many executions these people had seen before. This was not an uncommon sight in Roman occupied territory. In fact, they liked to publicize their executions, put them on public roads so that everybody saw what happened to a rebel against Roman rule. This scene would have played out over and over again. They probably had seen the full textbook of reactions to this being done to them. Natural terror from the victims. Reactions of rage to the people that were doing this, or just rage at whoever is nearby.
And in fact, I think that’s mostly what you’re seeing there in the reaction of the mocking criminal in verses 35 to 39. He’s doing this in the context of a crowd that has various verbs that are used for the reactions towards Jesus. In verse 35, we’re told that the rulers scoffed at him. used in 36 is the soldiers mocked him. And in verse 39, one of the criminals joins in and it said, this is a strong word to say that he’s railing at him.
He is throwing abuse at him. It almost makes you wonder why Jesus, why was he the object of his wrath? Suffering can produce a reaction. people of anger and rage. And Jesus was the closest target. He was the one that was a target of others. And so the focus was off of him, off of his shame and his pain. And so he’s just the nearest person nearby in which to have violence by words.
Sometimes we hear that saying as a child, sticks and stones break bones, but words will never hurt you. That’s one of the most untrue things I think you ever hear as a child. Words reach where hands cannot. Words are often the sharpest swords that we have. I’ve heard it said that the tongue is a deadly weapon by some, perhaps even in scripture.
And that is a natural reaction of natural fallen man. And that is one that you observe by those who are in suffering. Many of us can have one of two reactions to getting hurt physically or relationally. I observe it in my children. You know, some will get hurt and they’ll be in tears and in self pity at the hurt. While others will stub a toe or get hurt somehow and they get mad and they want others to know the hurt that they feel and they yell or they hit in their pain.
And this man on the cross, the first thief, feels pain, and the reaction is to give out what he has been given. It’s a natural reaction to give an eye for an eye here. This criminal has been mocked, and so he will mocked in return. Now, he did not know who he mocked at that point, and yet he still might have mocked if he knew this was God incarnate.
You see, when we hurt, We often will stab at others around us. And sometimes we stab upward towards God. Sometimes our questions of why are not looking for a response. They’re just interested in stabbing up to God with questions. We think of God sometimes in our pain as a tyrant or sadist or an uncaring monster. And we want to punish God for our pain. So we withhold our prayers and our worship. We declare our doubts with anybody who’s around us, all the while trying to punish God with the deadliest weapon that we have, our words.
And still, in the midst of scoffing, mocking, and railing, are the words of Jesus, Father, forgive them. And both criminals hear this. But something significant happens to the other criminal. In verses 40 and 41, we have this reaction, which is worth hearing again. But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong.” In that moment, he makes his confession. We are guilty, and he is not.
Now, first, something that makes this moment a little bit more dramatic is this detail that we find in Matthew 27, 44. We’re actually told that at one point, both of the thieves on the cross, both of the criminals were mocking Christ. That’s what we’re told in Matthew’s gospel, which means that at some point, this criminal had to turn from mocking Christ to defending and declaring his guilt and the innocence of Christ.
What caused that change? I don’t think we can necessarily put our finger on it for sure, but think about what he saw. He saw the suffering of the unique one. And when he saw the suffering of his friend, and he saw the suffering of this unique one, he saw a unique sort of suffering. On the one hand, he saw rage from his friend, and that’s natural. In fact, that’s what he felt too. But when he saw Jesus, what did he see? Something supernatural. a unique suffering that under suffering spit out forgiveness rather than rage. Have you ever seen someone suffer with grace? It is a rare sight, I think, even among faithful.
I don’t know if some of you are readers of history. I was a history major in college and so I love to read biographies and histories. I was struck in reading the book that perhaps many of you have read, Unbroken. This was a story of an Olympic athlete, runner, Louis Zamperini.
In World War II, he became enlisted in the Air Force, was shot down in the Pacific, and then was a prisoner of war, and was put into a Japanese prisoner of war camp and suffered great torture, things that left him physically affected for the rest of his life.
And in fact, the main person that was doing this was somebody that gave the nickname The Bird. And in fact, towards the beginning of 1945, he and his fellow prisoners began to circle around and plot. Even if it meant their death, how would they kill this man who had put them to such torture? They were desperate for any opportunity they had to dish out what they had gotten. But they were stopped in their plans by the end of World War II. They went home.
And Louis Zamperini married. and then sunk into alcoholism, didn’t know how to deal with his pain, with his suffering, with his rage that he still felt until one day his wife forced him, as wives are known to do sometimes with their husbands, forced him to go to hear the gospel.
He heard the gospel, became a Christian, had a Billy Graham crusade. And then what he did after that was not natural. He decided he was going to go back to Japan. And he was going to seek out the people who had tortured him, the guards that had been responsible for his torture. And he found one, actually, in a war camp that was in there for war crimes. And he went and visited them. And the guards were confused, thinking that perhaps he would come to them to mock the fact that they were in prison and he was free, perhaps to add to their imprisonment or torture.
But Luis Zamperini visited every soldier he could find to forgive them. so bizarre to them, they’d ask why. And Louis would explain, it’s because that’s exactly what Jesus did to me. Because Jesus was the first here to do that. He forgives his torturers.
And that is a bizarre sound and image to them. It is supernatural. So when the other thief saw this, a unique suffering, that the sufferer would give grace. It’s after that, that we see the thief rebuke his friend. confess his sins, that we are getting what we deserve, and then say to Jesus, remember me. Grace, especially grace in suffering, can melt hearts. It’s a picture of the gospel whenever you see grace in suffering.
Now, when the thief said this, when he said, remember me when you enter your kingdom, we can take stabs at what he meant by that. We don’t know the theology of the thief in that moment. In fact, maybe when he said, when you enter your kingdom, he thought some distant future. I believe you have some kingdom, but maybe it’s way out in the future.
Or maybe he thought that when they were separated, he’s just asking for a fond thought of him. If somebody, one person can have a fond thought of him. Or maybe he thought kind of like the prodigal son. Remember the story of the prodigal son when after he has spent all of his money, he thinks, I’ll go back to my father and I’ll be a servant in his house. I’ll serve him.
Maybe he thought there’d be some offer of you can work this off. Maybe he thought he’d be in a different place. Maybe he thought he’d be in purgatory to burn off or work off his sins. But the response that Jesus gives to him betrayed his highest hopes.
It’s beyond that. Because Jesus says, today. Not the distant future. Not after some time in purgatory. No, Jesus says today, because both of them would be off of the earth by the time that the sun set. That was the end of the day. And they’d already passed noon. From noon to three is the suffering of Christ. They’d already passed that point. But Jesus says today, before the sun sets in a sense, I’ll be stabbed in the side. You will have your legs broken.
We both will be off of this earth and today you will be with me. in paradise. The thief would not get a fond thought of remembrance. He would not be a slave in the fields of the kingdom of heaven. In fact, he would be in paradise with Jesus. And this is such a horrifying thought to some. especially in the unbelieving world. A man who may have been a murderer, undeniably a thief and a rebel, would be promised heaven without any penance. There’s no community work that Jesus says he has to do first, no cleaning up trash on the side of the road, no payments to the families of victims.
You know, I have in my study an entire shelf that’s just dedicated, that shelf, to the writings of atheists attacking Christianity. You want to know what they’re arguing. You know what’s surprising to me, an argument that comes up so often against Christianity, is the thief on the cross. Christopher Hitchens, the late famous opponent of all things religious, said that he hated above all the idea of forgiveness apart from personal repayment of debt.
He called it vicarious redemption, we know of it as vicarious atonement. The idea that you could be a sinner for your life and throw your sins onto a substitute, he said, quote, destroys responsibility and morality. Ultimately, the objection is the story of the thief on the cross is not fair or moral. You see, the true carrying out of justice, he said, would be the death of the rebel, the upholding of personal responsibility, and even as Hitchens says, quote, a rejection of loving your enemy. Beyond that, there are some that are horrified by this thought because they think that even while you have forgiveness, that there has to be some sort of repayment, either in another world, in purgatory or something like that.
But it doesn’t work when Jesus says, today, I will see you in paradise. Not in purgatory, not after some time paying it off, but today I will see you in paradise. You know what? For both of those groups of people, it’s just not fair. And thank God, fairness is justice, and justice calls for a condemnation. You remember the story of Cain and Abel? Do you remember after Cain kills Abel, what God says to him?
He says, the blood of your brother cries out from the ground. What word do you think that that blood is crying out for? It’s crying out for justice, for his condemnation. Think about Hebrews 12, 24. which is one of my favorite short summaries that’s packed with theological significance in all the Bible, where it says, Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Our deeds call out for our condemnation. The blood of those that we spilled, the ones that the thief probably had killed, called out for his condemnation.
But there was one bleeding for him And His blood called out for His forgiveness. Brothers and sisters, do not look to the cross if you want to hear cries merely of justice, because when you look at the cross, you will hear one who was on it say, Father, forgive them. Jesus proclaims in loud and gracious words from the cross in that moment, salvation is by no other means than by grace alone, given by the work of Christ alone, received by faith alone.
There was no baptism for the thief on the cross. The substance of salvation would have to be there without the sign. There was no good deeds from the cross, no tithes or attendants that he could pay for his ticket. There was no love of his neighbor in the actions of feeding the needy or clothing the naked or sheltering the homeless. He had nothing in his hands to give. All the thief had was sin and debt and immorality. The only thing that possibly could have paid his ticket to heaven was Jesus and his work and his words.
And Christ hung and bled there for the sins of a rebel, of a murderer, of a thief, physically for Barabbas, whose spot he took, and spiritually for the thief next to him. And that’s because Jesus’ suffering was unique, like no other in history. In essence, since he was unique as God and man in one person, but also as you look at the next few verses, in 42 and 43. There is where we had read when he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. When you collect the words that Christ said and thoughts for his mother and her care.
In the midst of suffering, this also, these words of grace to the thief, were sufferings of Christ, because he was giving grace. To give grace is to suffer. It is to suffer loss. Why don’t more people give grace and act with grace? Because grace is expensive, costly, and often painful to give, because grace suffers loss to give forgives the damage done to let someone have something for free. We need to realize this.
We love grace because when it’s given to us, grace is literally a gift. We love being given a gift because it’s free to us, but it would be very ignorant to think that the gift given to us did not cost the one who gave that gift a price. This is why gifts are often measured by their cost.
The cost of giving something to someone may be measured by the cost of how much it took you to give. We were given a quilt for our wedding. And part of the cost of that was the hours that went into it. Often, people will measure the engagement ring that you buy for your betrothed by how many months’ wages it was for the ring. You see, the giver suffers loss in obtaining and giving the gift. Loss of effort. in it, payment to give it, work to give it.
The gospel is news of both free and costly grace, not costly to us, completely free for us, but costly for the giver. The minute Christ said, Father, forgive them, he knew that he was going to have to pay for his request with his blood. And yet he asked for it fully knowing that Christ suffered loss. loss of comfort, loss of the physical toll on him and loss in spiritual terms, the broken communion with the father when he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And Christ suffered the loss of it all, as we’re told in the scriptures, emptied himself by becoming a servant, by taking on human nature in a body, being fully God and yet fully man, losing his comfort in heaven in order to pay for sinful men. was cheap or a cheat.
It was costly and lawful. It was costly to Christ, for Christ was the lawful federal head to pay that price. But it is true that it wasn’t fair. It’s better than fair. It’s grace, free and clear to a man who couldn’t pay it back in the slightest. And that’s exactly as it’s offered to us. And looking at these two thieves, we have to ask, What is our reaction to the suffering that we encounter in this world? Is it rage against the Creator?
Or do we hear the One offer a gospel of forgive them and we confess our guilt and confess that our just condemnation would be bearing that penalty and then we see Christ pay for us. If only we would look to the One paying the price, trust His work, trust Christ than today, we could be with him in paradise.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Lord convict us of the fact that when we look at the cross, we see what we deserve, even as we confess Christ as our substitute. Lord, may we confess not only our guilt, but the grace that is offered to us in Christ is one that is beyond our comprehension. It is supernatural. It is, in fact, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Lord, cause us to have faith to receive and to spread that.
And Lord, I pray that you would do this to your glory in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. We are going to sing a song before partaking of the Lord’s Supper. number 340 in your hymnals. There is a fountain filled with blood. Draw your attention to the presence of our dying thief within verse 2. But let’s stand as we sing this as our hymn before we partake of communion. Number 340. There is a fountain filled with blood. so There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. ♪ And the year is past when he can find ♪ ♪ Those other guilty stains ♪ ♪ But I can’t wait for you to speak that loud again ♪ ♪ And there am I as child I speak ♪ ♪ Watch all my sins away ♪ was the
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