IN BRIEF
Luke 23:39–43
It is never too late for salvation
c.29 CE Golgotha, a hill outside the walls of Jerusalem, during Jesus’s crucifixion.
Jesus The Messiah and Son of God, who is crucified by the Roman authorities in place of the criminal, Barabbas.
The repentant thief The criminal to Jesus’s right: although unnamed in the Gospels, later Christian tradition calls him “Dismas” or “Demas.”
The unrepentant thief A fellow revolutionary who taunts Jesus; later tradition named him “Gestas.”
Jesus is crucified between two criminals on the hill of Golgotha, overlooking one of the roads into Jerusalem. The two men on either side of Him are “robbers” (Matthew 27:38) who may well have been comrades of Barabbas, a resistance fighter against Roman occupation of Judea. Jesus, who is Himself being crucified on the charge of rebellion, has taken Barabbas’s place in execution, and occupies the central of the three crosses. As Jesus hangs on the cross, the crowds taunt Him and tell Him to come down if He really is God’s chosen king. The criminal on Jesus’s left joins in: “Aren’t you the Messiah?” he asks. “Save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39). As far as the thief is concerned, Jesus cannot be the savior if He is unable to put an end to their suffering.
The thief calls out
However, the second condemned man realizes Jesus really is the savior. He sees now that the violent attempts of Barabbas and his comrades to resist Roman occupation had been misguided, and that God desires something far deeper than political nationalism: a kingdom of people who follow Him through humility and service.
Calling over to the first man, the repentant thief tells him to stop mocking Jesus: while the two of them are hanging on their crosses for real offenses, Jesus—despite dying in the place of a criminal—“has done nothing wrong” (23:41). The thief then asks Jesus to “remember me when You come into Your kingdom” (23:42). The Jewish faith had long spoken about a kingdom beyond death, in which God’s faithful people would enjoy everlasting life. This, he realizes, is the kingdom of which Jesus is king. Jesus replies with assurance: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (23:43).
Deathbed salvation
The repentant thief illustrates a vital aspect of the Christian faith. Acceptance into God’s kingdom is not dependent upon good works or a blameless life, since the thief clearly had no time to amend his ways. Instead, Jesus freely gives places in His kingdom to those who recognize that He is their only hope. Jesus’s promise to the thief, just moments before his death, is also part of the rationale for the later practice of deathbed confession and absolution, or last rites. In this, a dying person is given assurance in their final moments that their sins have been forgiven by God; it is never too late to repent.
Crime and punishment in the time of Jesus
Like any society, Jesus’s world had a complex system of law and punishments. In Jewish law, the practice of reparation—giving back what was taken with interest—was typical. Stoning to death was the form of capital punishment favored by the Jews for serious offenses.
However, the Romans—the occupying overlords—routinely used crucifixion to execute criminals who were not Roman citizens, especially those who resisted their authority or slaves found guilty of wrongdoing. Crucifixion was a humiliating death, in which the victim was stripped, flogged, and then nailed to a horizontal beam of wood through the wrists, and an upright beam through the ankles. Jews detested it because of one of their laws, which said “anyone … hung on a pole is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23).
See also: The Divinity of Jesus • The Crucifixion • Salvation Through Faith • The Power of the Resurrection