Picture this image: Jesus of Nazareth, God in human flesh, hanging on a cross and dying (torturously) in that flesh. On either side of Him hung two others, each thieves, and each deemed evil enough by the Romans, who really didn’t want to crucify Jesus (but were pushed into it by corrupt religious leaders), to deserve not only death but the worst death possible: crucifixion. However cruel, the Romans were sticklers for law and so, whatever these two men stole, it wasn’t a few loaves of bread to feed their hungry children. They were, probably, “repeat offenders.”
At first, both those “crucified with him also heaped insults on him” (Mark 15:32), though later one had a change of heart, perhaps after hearing Jesus pray, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). When his companion mocked Jesus again, he rebuked him. “ ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong’ ” (Luke 23:40, 41). This man has done nothing wrong? This thief probably didn’t understand the implications of those words.
Or maybe he did?
Between hearing the religious leaders mock Jesus as the Messiah—“Let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One” (Luke 23:35)—and the Romans mock Jesus as king—“If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself” (Luke 23:37)—this thief was having not only a change of heart but a revelation about what was happening there. That is, he now realized who was being crucified with them, for he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
Pleading with Him, this man showed that he was the only sinner in the world who, at this moment, knew what was happening here. Jesus’ followers, clueless, fled. The religious leaders, clueless, mocked Him. The Romans, clueless, mocked Him. The crowd, clueless too, did the same. Only this thief, this dying and helpless criminal, understood who was hanging there with him—which is why, in a desperate plea, he cried out, even calling Him by name: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And how did Jesus respond?
Well, friend, I’d really like to help you, but don’t you know that you have to be perfect to be saved?
Or did He say, Well, friend, I’d really like to help, but you were cursing me earlier?
Or, Well, friend, I’d really like to help, but how can I take someone with a character like yours, a criminal, a thief—to heaven?
No. Instead, looking at this man—who had nothing to offer, a man whose only relationship to God’s law was to break it, a man who deserved only condemnation—Jesus Christ declared to him, “You will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
And when Jesus Himself tells you that you are saved, you can know that you are saved!
What can this amazing story teach us about not only salvation, but the assurance of salvation for those who believe?
justification by faith
However dramatic, the account of “the thief on the cross” is a real-time, flesh-and-blood expression of a crucial biblical truth, which the apostle Paul explained theologically like this: “We . . . know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified” (Galatians 2:15, 16).
And like this: “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (Romans 3:28).
And like this, too: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8, 9).
In fact, around 1,500 years before Paul, Moses himself expressed something similar when, writing about Abraham, he said, “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
What these verses, and others, teach is what was the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation, what the Reformers called “justification by faith alone.” In fact, this “justification by faith alone” is the most essential truth of all Scripture, because it answers what is, really, the greatest question any person can ask, and that is: “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).
We live in a harsh, often brutal world that ends in death for everyone, always, which makes it seem absurd, vain, even meaningless. As one atheist expressed it: “In the eyes of eternity, a human lifespan is barely a flicker. Death will be upon us before we know where we are; and once we are dead it will be forever. What can anything I do mean or matter to me when I have gone down into complete nothingness for the rest of eternity? What can it matter to anyone else, either, when they too are eternally nothing?”1
Good point—except for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and its promise of eternal life under a new heaven and in a new earth without any of the things, especially death, that can make life under this heaven and in this earth so miserable now. This is the promise of salvation, a salvation that—as the thief on the cross showed in real-time, and what the Bible explains again and again theologically—comes by faith, and not from anything that we do to earn it.
What does that mean?
the Infinite for the finite
Perhaps, if not definitely, the most obvious biblical truth (one that does not need to be taken on faith) deals with human sinfulness: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Whatever good most people are capable of (even Hitler had a kind side), the world exposes the evil that humans are capable of as well. And, please, who hasn’t experienced things about your own self that stun, horrify, or even disgust you about your own self? Have you not done what you’ve been ashamed of doing, or have felt shame about not experiencing shame when you know that you should have (having perhaps become hardened in your malfeasance)?
But the good news is that, despite our shameful state, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). What this means is that, though we have all violated God’s law, His Ten Commandments, and thus we owe God a legal debt that we can never pay, except with our own life—Jesus, God Himself in the flesh, paid that debt for us so that we don’t have to.
The Bible says about Jesus that “all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). What this means is that anything created; that is, anything that once didn’t exist but then came into existence—like the infinite universe (if not infinite, what’s beyond it?)—came into existence only through Jesus. Scripture also says about Jesus that “by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16, NKJV).
Standing outside of space and time, Jesus created not only space and time but the two trillion (and counting) galaxies, incandescent with stars, with planets, and with all life, such a “principalities or powers” spread across that cosmos. Yet this same Jesus died for your sins! Would not the self-sacrifice of the eternal and infinite God atone for whatever finite number of sins you have done, no matter how many of those sins there were?
Of course.
how to know that you’re saved
This is why salvation has to be by faith. Otherwise, what? The death of the eternal and infinite God who created the entire cosmos was not enough to atone for your finite number of sins, and so you are going to add to what He had already done for you? The idea itself is blasphemous. Would not the atoning death of the Creator of the cosmos be enough to cover even you?
As long as you surrender daily to the Lord, seeking to obey the law—not as a means of salvation (obviously) but as an outward expression of that salvation—and as long as you claim by faith the righteousness of Jesus, you can have the same assurance, as did Paul, of “not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Philippians 3:9, NKJV).
If you wait until you feel holy and good enough to be saved, you will never have any assurance, because you are never going to be holy and good enough to be saved. That’s why you need Jesus. In fact, the closer you come to Jesus, the more sinful you will appear in your own eyes. The fact that you sense your need, and that need drives you to Jesus in faith, repentance, and obedience, is certainly great evidence that you are, indeed, saved right now. And, as long as you don’t leave Him, He won’t leave you.
the thief, again
The thief, who asked for salvation and got it, despite his unworthiness, died that day. But suppose, after Jesus had promised him eternal life, the thief had been pardoned, brought down from the cross, and had lived. Would he have become a thief again? No way!
Instead, he would have experienced a new life in Christ: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV). Only God knows what his new life of faith would have looked like, and what a blessing he could have been. He might have become a leader in the early church—and with a testimony unlike any other, that’s for sure!
And yet, no matter what he did, instead of his new life meriting him salvation, it would have always and only been an expression of the salvation already given to him at the cross, the same salvation that, if we don’t give up, is as assuredly ours as it was his.
Clifford Goldstein writes from Tennessee and is a frequent contributor to Signs of the Times®.
1. Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 29.
