Friday, April 14, 2017

The Two Crucified Criminals (Holy Week Devotional)


“One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.””

- Luke 23:39-43

Jesus’s companions in crucifixion, one on his left and another on his right, can be described in several different ways. Matthew and Mark call them “thieves,” an indicator of the crimes that earned them their crosses. Luke prefers the more general term “criminals,” perhaps unwilling to limit the extent of their sins. And John seems unconcerned with their back stories, thinking only of them as “two others” who shared an execution date with the Lord. I suggest another way of thinking about them, based upon their interactions with Jesus in Luke 23:39-43—they are our representatives; living, breathing examples of how all people respond to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The first criminal speaks to Jesus with derision, mockery, and perhaps a hint of desperation: “If you were the Messiah, you’d save the three of us!” He looks at the broken body and the spilled blood of Jesus and sees an imposter finally paying the piper—Jesus may have had some pretty words and some fancy tricks up his sleeve, but when all is said and done, he bleeds the same as any common criminal.

His response to Jesus, simply put, is rejection. He cannot see past the evil of the world and the darkness of his own circumstances; he cannot imagine that there may be purpose to the pain or hope from the horror. His only answer to agony is anger, and so all he can think to do in his final moments is hurl insults at God’s anointed. A Christ whose response to the world’s evil is meek submission will never be his king.

The second criminal behaves differently, scolding the first man for his irreverence and pointing out that, while Jesus is suffering the same punishment as they are, he is not guilty of the same crimes. He looks at the body and blood of Jesus and sees something different than his fellow thief does—he sees a king willing to suffer for his people, a Lord who is answering injustice with grace.

His response, in other words, is acceptance. So, facing is own death, he turns to Jesus with an earnest plea: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He knows that, with all his sins, he does not deserve the attention of Christ, but he prays that there is enough grace in the bosom of God to afford him some small legacy in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus gives him more than what he asks for: the man—no longer a sinner, but now a saint—will not only be remembered in the kingdom of God, he will be part of it.

Easy as it is to give the two men on either side of Jesus ostracizing labels—thieves, criminals, sinners—they are not so different from you. Just like them, you stand justly condemned in your sinfulness, incapable of saving yourself. Just like them, you face a punishment that is as unendurable as it is deserved. And just like them, Jesus is with you in your suffering, an abiding Lord to the end. When he turns to you for a response, what will you say?

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