Jesus Speaks from the Cross (#2)

Luke 23: 33-43

Very soon we’ll be commemorating the Passion Week that begins with Palm Sunday and goes through Easter Sunday...when we celebrate Christ’s resurrection. It’s during this holy week that Christ demonstrated the depth of His passion for us as He took our place in suffering for the penalty of sin on the cross of Calvary.

The Passion Week includes several events that are recorded for us in the Gospels (Matthew 21-27; Mark 11-15; Luke 19-23; and John 12-19). For instance...

• He cleansed the Temple for the second time (Luke 19:45-46).
• He disputed with the Pharisees concerning His authority.
• He gave His Olivet Discourse about end-time events.
• He ate the Last Supper with the disciples (Luke 22:7-38).
• He went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.
• He was arrested and unjustly tried before the religious and political authorities of His day.
• He was scourged by the Roman soldiers.
• He was forced to carry His own cross to Calvary (John 19:17), until Simon of Cyrene was “pressed into service” to carry it for Him (Matthew 27:31-32, Mark 15:20-21, Luke 23:26).
• He was crucified and buried.
• He laid in the tomb until Sunday morning.

Most of the time when we focus on the events of Passion Week, we often give our attention to the tremendous physical suffering that Christ endured during the period of His trials, beatings and crucifixion. We have been privileged to have two different medical doctors on two different occasions in recent years describe for us from a physician's point of view what His suffering really entailed. However, none of us are fully able to comprehend the agony of His suffering.

Possibly the closest anyone has come to visually portraying His physical agony was in the movie a few years ago entitled: “The Passion of the Christ.” However, don’t forget that even though the movie depicts the brutality of Christ’s painful suffering, the actors weren’t actually feeling the pain that Jesus endured. The truth is...It was even worse for the One experiencing it than we can ever imagine or adequately portray! If someone at the crucifixion scene had painted a picture that day accurately depicting it, none of us would likely want it displayed on our walls.

There is another aspect to Christ’s suffering, though, that gets far less consideration when thinking about the intensity of His suffering. It has to do with the emotional pain Christ endured. Peter draws our attention to it in his epistle:

“For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: ‘Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth’; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.” (1 Peter 1:21-24)

“Reviled” translates a Greek word that refers to all kinds of verbal abuse intended to cause injury to someone. “Threaten” means making verbal threats that are intended to stop the other person from doing something.

In other words, when Jesus was “verbally assaulted” during His crucifixion, He did not “verbally assault” His persecutors in return. He did not “threaten” them with harm to make them stop. He simply bore the emotional abuse of their verbal lashings and harsh words within Himself.

These words from Peter can refer to the attacks Christ endured through the entirety of His ministry. However, the fullest application of them comes during the Passion Week of Christ when He is repeatedly and verbally insulted, abused, mocked and taunted.

Think about how it makes you feel when you are verbally abused by someone that is trying to belittle or demean you. It was these kinds of assaults that reached their apex while Christ was being tried and later hung on a cross. The Gospel writers specifically include references to some of these abusive words.

The Gospels mentioned four different groups that hurled their insults at Jesus at His crucifixion:

1. “Those who passed by” (Matthew 27:39-40)...”blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself, and come down from the cross!” (Mark 15:29-30)
2. The religious elite that mocked Jesus “with the scribes and elders, said, ‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.” (Matthew 27:41-44; cf. Luke 23:35)
3. The Roman soldiers were already mocking Jesus during the trial phase leading up to His crucifixion. After He was condemned to die, the soldiers took Him into the Praetorium where they stripped Him, put a scarlet robe on Him, twisted a crown of thorns and placed it on His head, put a reed in His right hand and kneeled before Him saying, “Hail, King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:29). Then they took the reed and hit Him on the head, driving the thorns deeper into His brow, as they spat on Him!

At the crucifixion scene the soldiers continued their mockery, “by offering Him sour wine, and saying, ‘If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself.’”

4. To all this mockery and insults, the scripture says, “Even the robbers who were crucified with Him reviled Him with the same thing.” (Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32; Luke 23:39-43)

It was in each of the essential offices of Christ that He was ridiculed: as Prophet (Mark 15:29-30), as Savior (Mark 15:31) and as King (Mark 15:32).

What these verses prove is that Christ was isolated from even the slightest hint of support from anyone. With all their taunts and ridicule He is shown to be completely abandoned...surrounded by little more than His worst enemies.

Thomas Carlyle called ridicule “the language of the devil,” and especially in this case, that definition is certainly true. What we need to remember is that not only did they crucify Him physically that day, they also crucified Him emotionally with their words! In every way Jesus was suffering for you and for me.

Do you find it strange, as I do, that even the two criminals hanging on either side of Jesus joined in with the taunts and insults? Mark uses the imperfect tense of the verb “reviled” (Mark 15:32) when speaking of the two criminals’ verbal assault on Jesus, indicating that initially both of them repeatedly mocked Him with the others (Matthew 27:44).

What’s truly amazing is that some time during those morning hours as Jesus hung on the cross, crucified both physically and verbally, the heart of one of the crucified criminals began to change toward Jesus.

What caused the one criminal to change His mind about Christ? There are some possibilities that are worthy of consideration.

• Maybe it was seeing the sign above Jesus’ head that read, “The King of the Jews” that made him realize this was no ordinary man and that He was the Messiah.
• Maybe it was looking into the eyes of Jesus and seeing the compassion He expressed toward those crucifying Him that convinced him Jesus was the Savior.
• Maybe it was because he feared eternity and the just punishment he would receive for his sins that turned him to his final and only hope.
• Maybe it was the words Jesus spoke from the cross when He said, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34) that convinced him that Christ alone could offer him forgiveness.
• Maybe it was being alone while he hung there suffering and dying without any other person that cared about his life. (It might have been at the moment that Jesus spoke to His mother [John 19:26] that he realized he was going into eternity alone.)
• Maybe it was the calm and majestic way in which Jesus conducted Himself as He suffered this horrendous crucifixion. Only an innocent man on a mission would be willing to die this death without defending Himself or crying out in anger.
• Maybe it was the words mockingly spoken by Christ’s enemies, “He saved others” that convinced him that Christ alone could save him. The thief may have reasoned, “If He saved others, then He can save me!” (What they taunt Him for not doing, saving Himself, is precisely because He must die to save others. He cannot save (from the cross) Himself and save others from eternal Hell!) Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony for Christ’s enemies!
• Maybe it was just the realization that Jesus was enduring an unjust sentence that finally convinced him that Jesus was Whom He claimed to be.

I don’t know what triggered the change and neither do you, but one of the criminals definitely changed his mind about Jesus as he watched Him die. The result of that changed heart was a promise from Jesus that he would be with Him in “Paradise.”

"Paradise" has Persian roots, meaning "a walled garden" and it gives us a beautiful picture of what Christ was promising this changed criminal. When a Persian king wished to give one of his subjects a very special honor, he made him a “companion of the garden.” In other words, he was chosen to walk in the royal garden alongside the king. Jesus was certainly promising this man immortality, but it is so much more than that alone. He was promising him the honored place of a “companion of the garden” in the courts of heaven. This is equivalent in essence to what Jesus said in John 14:3.

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

Heaven is about so much more than just the beauty and majesty of the city He has prepared. We talk about going to Heaven as if it is only about the streets of gold, walls of jasper or the gates of pearl. We revel in the fact that in Heaven there is no suffering, sin or sickness...and rightfully so. Sometimes, though, we slip back into our “earth-bound” thinking and overemphasize the value of the “place” while minimizing the value of the “person” Who made it all possible. I don’t believe we’re going to Heaven and be mesmerized with anything more than Jesus. Because of God’s grace, we’ll be walking WITH HIM as a “companion of the garden.” What the criminal that changed His mind about Jesus was finding out was that there really was Someone that loved and cared for him. Nobody stood with him at the crucifixion scene that cared if he lived or died...except Jesus.

Three things changed in the repentant criminal’s heart that must change in all of our hearts...if we’re going to walk with Christ as a “companion of the garden.”

First, he recognized his own sinfulness and stopped blaming others for his sins.

“But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds...’” (Luke 23:40-41)

It’s not easy to admit that you are a sinner, as these two criminals illustrate. The repentant criminal owned his sin, but the unrepentant one refused to admit his sin.

Apparently, the unrepentant criminal was the kind of man that was always looking for someone else to blame or someone worse off than himself. Lots of people salve their conscious by comparing themselves to others they consider to be worse off than themselves: “Well, I’m not as bad as he/she is!” Or, “I would never do the kind of things he/she did.”

The repentant criminal simply acknowledged what he knew to be true about himself and all of us…”for we receive the due reward of our deeds.”

Hell is what we all deserve because we are sinners by birth and by choice. When I say sinners, I’m talking about all the usual things we think of that classify a person as sinful: lying, stealing, cheating, adultery, fornication, hypocrisy, impatience, greed, materialism, pride, unforgiveness, bitterness, anger, etc. etc.

But, do you know the worst sin of them all? UNBELIEF!! No one goes to Hell because he/she commits the aforementioned sins. A person goes to Hell because he/she has not trusted in Jesus Christ as his/her own personal Savior. All of the other things are just symptoms of the greater sin that condemns us. Even if you could change all of the sinful “habits” of your life, that still wouldn’t alleviate your need to trust Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.

“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:18)

Second, he acknowledged that Christ was perfect and his only hope!

The repentant criminal heard the words of Jesus when He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” (Luke 23:33) These words must have enabled this criminal to see that if Jesus could forgive the very ones doing this to Him, that He must be a perfect man.

Jesus was innocent of all the charges against Him. He had been illegally incarcerated, falsely accused, wrongfully convicted and unjustly executed.  If ever there was a miscarriage of justice, this was it.

• Pilate said that Jesus was innocent and he could “find no fault in him.”
• Pilate’s wife had a sleepless night and warned her husband not to be a part of the execution of Jesus because He was a “just man” (Matthew 27:19).
• Judas regretted his decision to betray Jesus and committed suicide, thus testifying to Jesus’ innocence.
• The Roman soldier at Christ's death said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54), testifying to the innocence of Jesus.
• Now this repentant criminal recognizes that Jesus is innocent and asks Him to remember him when He comes into His Kingdom.

You and I will also have to acknowledge the person of Jesus and His sinlessness, if we are to walk with Him as a “companion of the garden.”

Third, he asked for what Jesus alone could give.

Amidst all the taunts and insults hurled at Jesus this day, we often miss the fact that both criminals asked to be “saved.” We know that’s true of the repentant thief, but listen again to the words of the unrepentant one.

Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.” (Luke 23:39)

What his taunt indicates is that the unrepentant criminal requested temporal salvation (to get down from the cross on which he was dying), while the repentant thief asked for eternal salvation.

This unrepentant thief met Jesus face to face, but he did not own his own sin, acknowledge that Jesus was the sinless Son of God (“If You are the Christ…”) and ask Him for the ETERNAL SALVATION He alone could give him.

The repentant criminal seemed to understand that he would have to wait for the salvation Christ promised him until His work on the cross was finished (“When You come into Your Kingdom…”).

Jesus could not save the repentant thief, or you and me, had He left the cross before the penalty of sin was paid in full. That’s part of the unrepentant thief’s problem, he wanted Jesus to come down from the cross before His work there was finished.

What they taunt Him for not doing, saving Himself, is precisely because He must die to save others. He cannot save Himself (from the cross) and save others from eternal Hell!

Let’s see how this all applies to you and me:

1. Name the place and time that you asked Jesus to be your personal Savior.
2. Don’t give up on anybody’s eternal soul because it’s never too late till they’re gone.
3. Don’t wait till Heaven to begin walking with Jesus as a “companion of the garden.”