Encounters with Jesus (6)

Encounters with Jesus

You Will be With Me

Luke 23:33–43 (ESV)

33 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. 34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments. 35 And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!” 36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine 37 and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” 39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Three Dying Men

This is an encounter with mankind. It is a picture of three dying men.

Who are these three dying men? What is this situation we are looking at? If you’re familiar with the Scriptures, you know that the Scriptures have been leading up to this very focal point. these men on the cross accompanying Jesus, are a focus of history moving to this point.

And what does it do? It divides all mankind, just as this aisle divides us left and right.

It divides all of mankind into two groups of people.

as we enter into this story

of these three men it is the thieves that we most like not Jesus - it is the thieves with whom we identify

Listen to what the people say.

Listen to what just the people say – in Luke it says, “The people stood by, they scoffed at Him, and said this, ‘He saved others, let Him save Himself if He is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.’”

In Mark — in Matthew they say, “Those who passed by derided Him.” What’s interesting about that word “deride” there – it’s actually they “blasphemed Him.” They derided Him and what did they say?

“You who would destroy this temple and build it back in three days, save Yourself. If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

Even the scribes and the elders who should have known who He was, what did they say?

They mocked Him: “He saved others, He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel — let Him come down now from the cross and we will believe in Him.

He who trusts in God — let Him deliver Him now if He desires Him, for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”

It is also ironic that He the innocent, the righteous is executed by the guilty, justice is turned on its head.

He appears unable to save Himself or anyone else, yet being unwilling to save Himself becomes the Savior of the world.

He is the one who gives life, who is life, who is dying that those who are dead might receive life.

One such dead sinner is hanging next to Him, to whom God miraculously, sovereignly, powerfully, instantly transformingly gives life.[1]

It’s a personal story of salvation.

It’s about one man, one thief

But it’s also the pattern of the story of all people’s salvation.

You might read the story and say, “Well, you know, this isn’t exactly the kind of thing that we associate with salvation. It’s kind of cryptic and kind of looks like historical shorthand and do we really have enough to know that this man met the necessary conditions for salvation?

And it’s your story and my story if you’re a believer. [2]

Hurling Abuse at Jesus

Luke 23:39 (ESV) 39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”

Rather than treating Jesus with reverence and repentance, the man on the wrong side of the cross used his dying strength to treat him with sarcasm and contempt.

When he heard the priests and soldiers making fun of the man on the cross next to him,

he knew that he had not yet hit absolute bottom.

Seeing that Jesus was even lower than he was, he raged against him.

This is the way people are. If we feel bad about our situation, we take our anger out on someone else, especially someone in a worse situation than we are.

No matter how low we go, we look for someone even lower to ridicule.

The angry criminal demanded Jesus to save him on his own terms.

This too is the way of fallen sinners.

When we do not get what we want out of life,

often our first instinct is to get angry with God and to start telling him what he has to do in order to earn back our allegiance.

What this man wanted Jesus to do was to get him down from the cross.

He was not interested in having a relationship with Jesus or actually dealing with the eternal consequences of his sin.

He wanted salvation only in the very limited sense of escape from immediate death.

“For all his pain,” writes David Gooding, “there was with him apparently no fear of God, no confession of guilt before God, no expression of repentance, no request even for divine forgiveness.”3

This is what many people want from God:

practical help in temporary emergencies. They want a deity who can work them a few miracles, but not a God who demands their service and obedience.

When their circumstances get desperate, they demand for God to intervene,

but once the crisis is over they go right back to living for themselves.

What kind of relationship are you looking to have with Jesus?

Do you want him to be your cosmic “easy button,”

or do you want to know him in a way that will change your entire life?

The spiritual problem with this impenitent sinner was that he had neither faith nor repentance. Rather than confessing his crimes, he angrily attacked Jesus.

Refusing to repent, he kept on sinning. Even though he asked Jesus to deliver him in some sense, he did not believe that Jesus really had the power to save. [3]

Both thieves joined in the comedy, the mockery, and the blasphemy.

There are two convicted felons in this story, and at the beginning of the crucifixion neither one of them was ready to come to Jesus.

This is clear from the Gospel of Matthew, which tells us that

“the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way” (Matt. 27:44). Matthew’s use of the plural (“robbers”)

indicates that both men railed against Jesus.

Both of these hardened criminals ridiculed Jesus: “The men impaled on his right and left hitched themselves up, gathered in precious air, and exhaled abuse on Jesus in deadly blasphemy.”5

At that moment, these two men must have seemed like the two most unpromising candidates for salvation in the entire world.

Both of them deserved to die on what the Romans called “the unlucky tree.”

Both of them were adding to their guilt by abusing the Son of God.

Yet as unlikely as it was that either of these men would ever make it to heaven,

something happened that changed one of their lives forever.

We do not know exactly what moved the man from ridicule to repentance, apart from the gracious work of God the Holy Spirit.

Maybe it was the gentle patience of Jesus as he suffered ridicule,

injustice, and the excruciating pains of the cross.

Maybe it was the prayer of forgiveness that Jesus offered for his enemies (see Luke 23:34).

But whatever it was,

sometime during his dying hour the convert on the cross responded to Jesus with repentance and faith.[4]

The Rebuke

Luke 23:40–41 (ESV)

40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”

The man’s knowledge of God is evident from his reverence for God. He gave the other criminal a strong rebuke for not showing proper respect. “Do you not fear God?”

he said (Luke 23:40).

Or, more literally, “Don’t you even fear God?”

Even if a man does not respect anything else, he should at least fear God, who has the power over life and death, heaven and hell.

So the convert on the cross rebuked the angry, unconverted criminal for showing

the kind of irreverence that would send him to hell.

Not only did the convert on the cross have the proper fear of God, but he also had holy reverence for Jesus.

Rather than thinking that somehow he was superior to Jesus,

like the man on the other side, he knew that he was inferior.

we begin to hear the makings of salvation

So at the end of verse 41 he says, “this man has done nothing wrong.”

This is true, of course, but the convert on the cross had no way of knowing it. Instead, he was saying

something similar to what Pilate had said earlier: “I have found in him no guilt deserving death” (Luke 23:22).

Somehow the convert on the cross sensed that this was true. After all, no crime was listed on the sign over his head. Nor did it seem likely that Jesus had done anything to deserve such a degrading death. So the man recognized the righteousness of the Savior’s holiness and confessed it as well as he understood it: “this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41).

Out of reverence for God and respect for his authority as the Judge, the man admitted that he was in the wrong.

Not only was he upset by what the other robber was saying, but

He confessed his own transgression. We are justly condemned, he said, “for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds” (Luke 23:41).

Presumably he was referring specifically to the punishment he was receiving for breaking the law: these men deserved to pay for their crimes.

But we sense that something deeper was happening in the man’s heart.

As he saw himself in comparison to Jesus, he came under the conviction of his sin.

The most important lesson the convert on the cross can teach us

is not that we can still be saved at the very last minute (which is true, but foolish to depend on),

but rather that whenever we come to God we must come knowing that we deserve justice rather than mercy.

What do you deserve from God?

See yourself in the criminal on the cross and ask God to have mercy on your soul.

It is never too late to come to Jesus. However, this story is not primarily about getting saved in the nick of time. It is really about getting saved at all, which always includes repenting for all the things we have done wrong. Donald Barnhouse said:

This must be the position of anyone who is going to be saved.

“As long as we cling to our own selves and think that there is even a shred of righteousness in ourselves that could satisfy the demands of a holy God, there is no possibility of salvation for us.”

Donald Barnhouse

But when we recognize that we have sinned … then we are in the position of those who may obtain mercy.

A wicked criminal has a massive transformation.

It is shocking, a hundred and eighty degrees, his taunting goes silent. And while his body is in horrible trauma and agony, the unparalleled suffering of crucifixion, his mind might be assumed to go foggy as he tries to deal with the pain and as some kind of shock would set in just to protect him from agonies that would be totally unbearable … and we know the body has the capacity to send us into shock in order to mitigate those kinds of excruciating experiences.

In the moment of the worst imaginable kind of agony, his mind becomes crystal clear with a clarity and a perception of reality and truth that he had never experienced in his life, with a clarity and a perception of truth and reality that he hadn’t experienced a moment before.[5]

Something has happened.

A divine sovereign miracle has happened. There is no other explanation.

You want a parallel to this? Paul on the Damascus Road, that’s the best parallel. His thoughts of Jesus are thoughts of hate. His thoughts toward those who confessed the name of Jesus are thoughts of persecution and execution. Paul has papers. He’s on his way to Damascus to persecute and execute those who name the name of Christ. And while he’s on his way with papers in his hand, God invades his life, slams him to the dirt, blinds him and saves him.

That’s how salvation works. It is a sovereign miracle. Not always that dramatic, but sometimes that dramatic.

All of a sudden, in a moment he is dramatically transformed,

and it becomes immediately evident what has happened.

He goes from blaspheming Jesus to being horrified at the other criminal blaspheming Jesus. His whole perception of how you treat Jesus is completely changed. [6]

Remember Me

Luke 23:42 (ESV)

42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Genuine repentance is always joined to saving faith.

Rather than taking something that did not belong to him, the way he usually did, for once the thief asked if he could have something he did not deserve: “And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom’ ” (Luke 23:42).

This is one of the only times in the Gospel of Luke that anyone calls Jesus by his given name. How appropriate it is for the convert on the cross to use it, because Jesus is the name of salvation.

The name “Jesus” means that God saves, and this is what the man was asking: for Jesus to give him the salvation of God.

In addition to repenting of his sin, he was making a deliberate request for salvation, trusting Jesus to give him the free gift of eternal life.

The criminals on both crosses asked Jesus to save them, yet only one of them was saved.

What was the difference? Why was only one man saved, while the other man was lost forever?

Though their words are different, their requests sound almost the same. One man said “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39), while the other one said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). What was the crucial difference between the prayers of these two sinners?

Even though both of these men asked for some sort of salvation, the attitudes behind their dying requests could hardly have been more different.

Consider the differences:

one request was made in angry unbelief; the other was offered in humble faith.

One thief was not sure whether or not Jesus was the Christ, so he asked him to prove it.

The other thief knew Jesus could save him, so he simply asked to be remembered.

One man required Jesus to save himself before he saved anyone else.

Somehow the other man knew that Jesus had to die first, and only then would he rise to his kingdom.

One man was hoping for immediate deliverance from physical suffering, while the other was looking for salvation beyond the grave.

He knew in his heart that “while there was no question of his being released from the temporal consequences of his crimes, there was every possibility of his being delivered from the wrath of God and from the eternal penalty of sin.”10

The second man is an extraordinary example of saving faith. What is truly remarkable is not how late he was saved, but how much faith he had when he finally came to Christ.

The convert on the cross believed that Jesus was the king of a coming kingdom

. At the time, Jesus was surrounded by scoffers and bleeding a ghastly death. He hardly looked very kingly. In weakness—in extremis—he was emptied of all his royal glory. Nevertheless, and although he was crucified, the convert on the cross believed that Christ would have a kingdom.

As Spurgeon said, “He saw our Lord in the very extremity of agony and death, and yet he believed in him as the King shortly to come into his kingdom.”11

We do not know how the man knew that Jesus was the King.

Maybe the idea came from the sign above his cross, or from the cruel taunts of the crucifying soldiers. Nor is it clear exactly what kind of kingdom he thought Jesus would rule. But wherever the idea came from, the convert on the cross believed in Jesus and wanted to belong to his royal kingdom.

The man also had a “believing expectation” in life after death. 12

Speaking as one crucified man to another, he trusted that this was not the end for Jesus, or for him. He would have immortal life in the world to come.

Has any man ever had more faith?

What could one dying man possibly do for another? Yet this dying man believed that Jesus could get him into the kingdom of God!

As he witnessed the crucifixion, he also had faith in the resurrection, and thus he believed the whole gospel before any of the apostles did.

Do you have as much faith as this crucified man put in the crucified Christ?

Here is a man who was fully confident that all he needed for all eternity was for Jesus to remember him. Sometimes people have the idea that it must have been easier for him to believe because, after all, he was there at the crucifixion.

Yet it took as much faith for him as it does for anyone—maybe even more.

It takes faith to see Jesus crucified and believe that your sins will be forgiven. It takes faith to believe that he has the resurrection power to give you eternal life.

It takes faith to rely on his remembrance for your destiny.

It takes faith for anyone to pray what that old criminal prayed on the cross: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).[7]

A Thief is Rewarded

Luke 23:43 (ESV)

43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus will not forget. Anyone who prays to him in repentance and faith will be saved forever.

Jesus said this in the strongest possible terms, as he promised the reward of a gracious Savior: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise’ ” (Luke 23:43). “Yes,”

Jesus was saying, “I will not forget; I will remember you.” But he was also giving the convert on the cross far more than he asked or imagined.

Jesus promised to save the man immediately.

He would not have to wait until tomorrow, but would enter his reward that very day.

Our bodies will be laid in the ground, where they will wait for their resurrection on the day of judgment

But our souls immediately enter the presence of God. To be “away from the body,” the Bible says, is to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8).

. But there is no mysterious delay, no season of suspense, no purgatory, between his death and a state of reward. In the day that he breathes his last he goes to Paradise. In the hour that he departs he is with Christ.13

Jesus promised to save this man eternally, because paradise is the heaven of God.

The word is used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to a place of future blessedness—a home of everlasting rest for the people of God (see 2 Cor. 12:2–4; Rev. 2:7). “

Luke 18–24: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (The Conversion)

The wonderful promise that he would be with Jesus in Paradise (heaven; 2 Cor. 12:2; cf. Rev. 2:7 with 22:2, 14) speaks of his full reconciliation to God.

He would not merely see Jesus from afar, he would be with Him. His restoration would be full and complete

He promised to save the man personally.

The convert on the cross asked Jesus, man to man, to save him.

This is the only way that any can be saved: by asking Jesus himself for salvation. Jesus responded with these words: “I say to you.”

He was making a personal transaction, speaking as a friend to a friend.

But what is even more personal is the promise of his presence.

Heaven is a wonderful place, but what makes paradise to be a paradise is being with Jesus. If he had said only “Today you will be in Paradise,” that would almost be enough.

But what Jesus actually promised was infinitely better: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). In fact, the words at the end of his promise almost seem redundant. What other paradise do we need if we know that we will be with Jesus?

Jesus saved this man immediately, eternally, personally, and also graciously—by faith, apart from any works.

If ever there was a man whose works could not save him, it was the convert on the cross.

His life was almost over.

Even if he wanted to do something of his own that would be good enough for God, he couldn’t do it, because his hands and his feet were nailed to the cross.

Jesus saved this man certainly, or assuredly.

We can always count on anything that Jesus promises anyway,

but whenever he begins a sentence with the word “truly,” he is making a solemn and unbreakable vow.

So here at the end of the Gospel of knowing for sure we meet a man who knew for sure that he would be saved. By the promise of Jesus, the convert on the cross was certain of his salvation.

Do you have the same assurance?

Do you know for certain that if you were to die today, you would be with Jesus in paradise?

Charles Spurgeon said that Jesus took the convert on the cross with him to paradise “as a specimen of what he meant to do. He seemed to say to all the heavenly powers, ‘I bring a sinner with me; he is a sample of the rest.’ ”17

Jesus loves to save sinners. He was busy saving people right up to the end of his life, and he has been doing it ever since. If he was willing to save the thief on the cross, after everything that that man had done, he is willing to save anyone, including you. [8]

If you are humble enough to confess your sins and turn away from them, calling on the name of the Lord, God promises he will forgive you of your sin and robe you in his righteousness.

And that day paradise will be your home.

This same news and offer of paradise is offered to you. If you are not yet a Christian,

I pray you have this kind of humility.

I pray you’re able to admit that you are a sinner.

I pray you’re able to acknowledge that God’s condemnation is righteous and is coming.

And I pray you can see that you cannot save yourself but you need a Savior.

I pray you put your faith in Christ.

The Bible promises that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Do not doubt it; just do it. Call on the name of the Lord, and you will be saved. [9]

[1]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [2]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. 3 David Gooding, According to Luke: A New Exposition of the Third Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 344. [3]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 2, pp. 595–596). P&R Publishing. 5 R. Kent Hughes, Luke: That You May Know the Truth, 2 vols., Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL:Crossway, 1998), 2:384. [4]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 2, pp. 596–597). P&R Publishing. 7 Miriam LeFevre Crouse, “Upon a Hill,” in The Cross: An Anthology (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 109. 8 Donald Grey Barnhouse, Exposition of Bible Doctrines Taking the Epistle to the Romans as a Point of Departure, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), 2:161. [5]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. [6]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You. 10 Gooding, Luke, 344. 11 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Dying Thief in a New Light,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (London: Banner of Truth, 1969), 32:54. 12 Norval Geldenhuys, The Gospel of Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 611. [7]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 2, pp. 599–601). P&R Publishing. 13 J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Luke (1858; reprint Cambridge: James Clarke, 1976), 2:473. 14 See Jerome, “On Lazarus and Dives,” in Luke, ed. Arthur A. Just, Jr., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT 3 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 367. 17 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Believing Thief,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (London: Banner of Truth, 1970), 35:187. [8]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 2, pp. 601–605). P&R Publishing. [9]Anyabwile, T. (2018). Exalting jesus in luke (p. 347). Holman Reference.