The Passion of Christ: The Ultimate Sacrifice: Hope from the Cross

Bible Passage: Luke 23:32–34

Luke 23:32–34 “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.”

1. Side by Side Suffering | Divine Forgiveness Declared

Luke 23:32–33 “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.”

Our passage begins with Jesus being accompanied by two others. These men had been tried by the Roman authorities and found guilty of a crime. They were criminals meaning that they were evil doers and law breakers, since crucifixion was reserved for severe crimes we can assume that what they had done was serious. Matthew records “two robbers” Matthew 27:38 which would have meant that they had forcefully stolen from another person or possibly committed insurrection. We don’t any more about what they did to be sentence to death by crucifixion but both Luke and Matthew agree that they had been tried by the Roman authorities and found guilty for their crime. Their sentence was death by crucifixion with Him.

These two criminals sentence was just being found guilty of a legitimate crime whereas Jesus was the innocent one who would endure the cross for the very people who had placed him there. The righteous and unrighteous find their place on Calvaries hill.

The place called The Skull is where this happened. It is also known as Golgotha in Aramaic and in Latin as Calvaria. If you have ever visited a church called Calvary or heard a reference to Calvary’s Cross its a reference to the place where Jesus was crucified called The Skull which is where we find Jesus and two criminals being led away and there they crucified Him.

Crucifixion was and unusually brutal form of punishment. The bible looks as those hung on a tree as cursed Deuteronomy 21:23 Forms of crucifixion date back to 9-6 BC where the Assyrians and Babylonians would impale their enemies on a stick. The Persians around 6-4 BC refined crucifixion by suspending the body in the air to avoid defiling the earth. King Darius reportedly crucified 3000 Babylonians and Alexander the Great crucified 2000 men after taking Tyre in 332 BC.

Romans had taken crucifixion to an unusual and cruel punishment as they used it as a deterrence and to shame those who received this sentence. They used it to maintain power and authority by not only killing those who opposed them or had committed crimes but to humiliate and terrorize those who saw it. People living in this time would have understood the impact and not needed much explanation beyond just the word crucifixion to understand the gravity of what the three men endured. They had witnessed the scourging and being whipped with a flagrum. They saw those condemned walking through the streets carrying the patibulum to the execution site. They saw them stripped naked in humiliation. They saw the nails that were driven through their wrists and hung from as they were hoisted the patibulum and affixed it in the air and nailed their feet to the stipes. They saw the grueling death by asphyxiation where beaten and torn bodies became too weak to lift for another breath of air. And when death mercifully arrived the Romans were not finished, they left the dead to hang as a reminder to the living that they have the ability to do this to you. We loose all that the people of that time saw and experience but it wasn’t lost on God.

David being carried along by the Holy Spirit wrote Psalm 22 over a 1000 years before this. David hadn’t a clue as to what crucifixion was or what it would look like as it wouldn’t be recorded as being used for quite sometime but David accurately depicts what would be fulfilled at the cross.

Psalm 22:6–8 “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!””

The prophet Isaiah was also carried along by the Holy Spirit prophesying of this event long before when he says:

Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

As did the prophet Zechariah:

Zechariah 12:10 ““And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”

The point I’m trying to make is crucifixion though unusually cruel and carried to a new level of punishment by the Romans, didn’t fall outside of what God knew would happen. It is His plan in bringing about salvation through His son. This really happened and Jesus really endured it so that was lost in sin could be redeemed through his punishment.

One way to look at it is:

God demands a perfect life.

Matthew 5:48 “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Our lack of obedience to the command to be perfect is what is called sin. Sin must be paid for.

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, “

The cross is the way God choose to redeem or buy back those who where lost in sin.

The cross Jesus hung on wasn’t really for him, he didn’t deserve a cross as He is the only one who is holy and innocent of any wrong doing. He is perfect as His Father in Heaven is perfect. He hung on that cross on our behalf. It should have been you and I that hung there for the wage of sin we have committed, But there he hung on a cross that was meant for you and I and by doing so he made a way for us to be reconciled to God through his own suffering.

The Holy Spirit though Paul records of Jesus,

Philippians 2:6–8 “who, though he(Jesus) was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Side by Side Suffering with the thieves. The unrighteous criminals with the righteous Lord of Glory. Though he was innocent of any wrong, He suffered crucifixion for me and for you! Bearing the pain and agony of the cross wasn’t the only thing we see in this passage that Jesus did for us. Lets look and see what Luke records in God’s word for us.

2. Divine Forgiveness Declared

Luke 23:34 “And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.”

In the first of Jesus’ seven sayings while he hung on the cross he prays that the Father would forgive them. What an odd thing to say in the midst of the struggles of crucifixion that he would ask the Father to forgive them. Father is a term of endearment for first person of the trinity God the Father. It shows Jesus love and concern toward the Father bringing those who need forgiveness before his throne of grace asking the Father to forgive them.

Forgiveness means to send away or to be discharged, to release from a debt, or to cancel punishment. The same word is used in the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:12 “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

When I was in the military, while out at sea we would often have live fire exercises to practice shooting. We shot all sorts of things from small hand guns, to 50 cal machine guns, to CWIS, to Sea Sparrow Missiles. We would fire them or discharge them off the ship of course in a safe operating zone. The one thing we didn’t want was for them to return, for any reason.

This word forgive bears the same idea to separate “them” from their sins.

Psalm 103:12 “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

Hebrews 8:12 “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.””

Jeremiah 31:34 “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.””

The next word “them” is of the utmost importance in this passage. It reveals who it is Jesus is praying to be forgiven. He is speaking out loud, this wasn’t a thought that was recorded but something Jesus actually said. Since he said it out loud it would apply to those who could hear him.

His mother and his disciples were there Luke 23:49 “And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.” John 19:26 John records Jesus saying John 19:26 “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!””

Earlier in our passage we saw that two criminals were crucified with him. He was praying for them, and as we will see later in this passage His prayer is answered in repentance for one of them.

The solders were there to ensure the crucifixion went smoothly. They performed the physical actions of the crucifixion and then stood guard. And later the centurion who stood facing Jesus would see that this was in fact the Son of God. Luke 23:47 “Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!””

The people were there.

Luke 23:35 “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!””

Many who had yelled “crucify him” in Pilots court would have followed.

The scribes, chief priest and the elders would have been there. They had pronounced a guilty sentence against Jesus for blasphemy

Luke 22:70–71 “So they all (assembly of the elders of the people gathered together, both chief priests and scribes) said, “Are you the Son of God, then?” And he(Jesus) said to them, “You say that I am.” Then they said, “What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips.””

Blasphemy carried a death sentence.

Leviticus 24:16 “Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.”

They would have wanted to see the sentence of carried out.

In a larger context, Jesus is praying for us all that the Father would forgive us.

Romans 3:23–26 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. “

The word Propitiation is key in this verse. It has a dual meaning in the way it works. First, It means forgiveness like the forgiveness we are talking about for our sin to be separated from us as far as the east is from the west. Psalm 103:12 “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

Second, it means atonement. Atonement can be broken down as “at-one-ment” meaning to bring back into unity or harmony.

Forgiveness is transactional. It must be given and it must be received. Jesus prays that we would be given forgiven and we are, but we cannot receive forgiveness for what we do not see that is wrong. For genuine forgiveness to take place we must be born again. Through the Spirit we are able to receive the forgiveness that Jesus is asking for.

If you have not repented of your sins being born again then Jesus prays that you would receive the forgiveness by grace that is freely offered at the cross.

Ephesians 2:8–9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

How can we receive the free gift of grace which is the forgiveness of our sins past, present and future which we may not even know?

Acts 16:30–31 “what must I do to be saved?” And they (Paul and Silas) said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved,”

If you have believe in the Lord Jesus, Jesus prayed that like he you would be forgiving forgiving others.

Matthew 6:12 “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Ephesians 4:32 “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Forgiveness is hard.

“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Its hard for the unbeliever to say that they have faults and need a Savior to save them from their sins.

For the believer when they have been done wrong, its hard to let go of the wrong done to them. We want to hold grudges and forget that the cross on which Jesus hung was really meant for sinners like you and I. If we had hung there we would have likely riled back at the crowd who cursed us. Jesus, however, He prayed that the Father would forgive them, they know not what they do. Father make away for them to be reconciled to us. And the Father does just that! He pours His wrath against sin on His one unique son who bears the sins of the world for our behalf. So that through his life, death, burial and resurrection those who would receive the forgiveness that Jesus prayed for at the cross would be reconciled.

To summarize, We don’t know what impact our live will have. We are sinner by nature and Jesus prays that we would receive His forgiveness so that we can be drawn into his space. Have you received the forgiveness that Jesus freely gave at the cross? If so, are you forgiving others as you have been forgiven? Forgiveness is what it means to be Christian. May we forgive like our Father in heaven who forgives us Colossians 3:13!!