Luke 23.39-43
Salvation
(Luke 23.39-43)
Jason Procopio
Last week we were in chapter 23, v. 26-38 of Luke’s gospel, in which we saw Jesus Christ, the Son of God, fully God and fully man, crucified by men he created.
And we took some time to ask ourselves a very simple question: why did Jesus go to the cross? Why die by crucifixion (instead of in his sleep)?
We saw that Christ went to the cross to bear our sins; he went to the cross to take up his throne; and then we spent a good amount of time talking about the fact that he went to the cross to show us what kind of people he means his followers to be. If he is our King, and if we are his people, we follow in his footsteps. Which means that as our King died, we are called to die as well. He calls us to deny ourselves—to deny our dreams, our priorities and our own sinful desires in order to follow him.
So we left Jesus last week on the cross, still alive, but in absolute agony. He’s been physically brutalized beyond what we can imagine, and he is enduring the worst shame of his life.
We often speak of “salvation” in the church, about “being saved,” but when we talk about it, we need to be specific: saved from what?
The religious leaders and the soldiers who are present with Jesus on the hill tempt him by saying, “If you’re the Christ, if you’re the Son of God, save yourself.”
Come down from the cross! Save yourself from this suffering! Show us who you are! Prove your identity! If you’re the Christ, save yourself.
But that’s what salvation is—salvation isn’t being saved from suffering, or being saved from lies about who we are.
Real salvation is being saved from the wrath of God against our rebellion, our sin.
That’s what Christ won for us on the cross, that’s what he offers to everyone who would come to him with faith.
But what does salvation look like? What characterizes the true salvation that Christ gives?
That’s where Luke is going to take us in the next verses, through this remarkable story of one of the criminals on the cross next to Jesus.
Luke 23.39-43:
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.”
Now let’s just get something out of the way real quickly: this second criminal on the cross gets saved.
That’s what we see in this passage: this man gets gloriously, wonderfully saved. He is converted, he
is regenerated. And we know that despite his very real pain and his very real death, he is saved, because Jesus tells him that today he’ll be with him in paradise. True salvation is a lot more than going to heaven, but it’s definitely not less than that.
On the cross—of all the places for this to happen!—this man became our brother. (And that’s how I’ll refer to him most of the time today, just to avoid confusion and not have to call him “the second criminal” the whole time.)
So let’s see what our brother’s conversion tells us about salvation—about being “saved.”
I have three points today: salvation is immediate; salvation is personal; salvation is transformative; and salvation is easy.
Salvation Is Immediate.
Again, our brother is a criminal—that’s all we know about him. Matthew tells us that they were robbers, and that at least at first, they were both mocking him (Matthew 27.44).
And yet, something happened over the course of the hours they spent hanging there with Jesus that radically transformed this man who became our brother. The Holy Spirit does a work in his heart to make him see something the first criminal couldn’t see.
He turns to Jesus and he says (v. 42), “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And what does Jesus say? V. 43: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Does anyone else find that unfair?
This guy hasn’t been following Jesus around; he’s not one of his disciples. He’s just spent a few hours with Christ, some of that time spent mocking him, and all he does is ask him to remember him? And it works?
YES.
This guy says, “Jesus, remember me,” and what does Jesus not say?
“Well sorry buddy, it’s too late; you should have thought to come to me earlier.”
Or, “Maybe, but you’ll have to spend a couple hundred years in purgatory first to pay for your sins.”
No—he says, “TODAY you will be with me in paradise.” TODAY. We’ve got a few difficult hours left in this life, and after that, you and I will be home.
Salvation is Personal.
People often have this idea in their minds of heaven being a kind of spiritual void, in which our “energies” will join the other “energies” which came before us. We can imagine our spirits going up to some kind of other plane of existence, but once we get there we have a hard time imagining that it’s going to be us.
That is not what the Bible teaches us.
Our brother’s request is perfect. He says, “Jesus, REMEMBER ME when you come into your kingdom.”
And what does Jesus say? “Today, YOU will be with me in paradise.”
YOU—not your energy. Not your essence. YOU. You’ll be with me, and I’ll know it’s you, and you’ll know it’s me. We will be together in paradise.
And that fact is vitally important for us, because if salvation is not personal—if we do not remain fully ourselves in heaven—then we have no hope of resurrection.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listen up—this is really good news.
The Bible tells us that three days after his death, Christ was raised from the dead, and that his body was “glorified”—perfected. During his earthly life, Jesus lived in a limited human body like the ones we have: he got tired, he got sick, he got hungry, just like us. But after his resurrection, his body was changed—he was still recognizable, but he was definitely different. And he ascended into heaven in that body.
So in case this is news to you, let it sink in: Christ is still alive, and reigning from heaven in a physical human body which has been made perfect.
He doesn’t get sick now. He doesn’t get tired. He doesn’t get weak. He has been glorified.
And the Bible tells us that one day, he will return to this earth, and he will bring heaven with him. He will renew this earth and remove everything in this earth that sin has broken. No more decay. No more death. No more tears.
And not only will he renew the earth, he will renew us. He will resurrect our bodies and make them like his body.
My grandfather died about ten years ago; my grandmother died this past January. We had the viewing for Grandma, when they had the casket open for us, and they did a good job with her, but she still looked very dead. She is now buried next to my grandpa in Norman, Oklahoma. Grandma hasn’t been there for long, but Grandpa’s body is more than likely nothing more than bones by now.
Now, I loved my grandparents. I don’t take their deaths lightly. It hurts me to talk about the fact that their bodies are decomposing in a grave in Oklahoma.
But here’s why it doesn’t hurt too much.
Both of my grandparents loved and followed Jesus Christ. Which means that their bodies are in the ground right now, but they are with Christ. Today. Grandpa is still Grandpa, and Grandma is still Grandma, and they are both blissfully happy with Christ right now.
And one day, when Christ returns to this earth, he’ll bring Grandpa and Grandma back with him. Their bodies will be raised and renewed, and they will once again be not just themselves, but physically themselves—except on that day, Grandma won’t have arthritis; she won’t have a body riddled by cancer and the treatment she endured. Grandpa will have a heart which never clogs and never requires another triple-bypass.
They will live forever, in those perfect bodies, as themselves. Their identities are now, and will forever be, intact.
Jesus says, “Today, YOU will be with me in paradise.”
Salvation is immediate and miraculous.
Salvation Is Transformative.
This is going to be the part that many of you aren’t going to want to hear, but we have to hear it.
Salvation changes us. If we have been saved by the Holy Spirit of God, we will not stay the same as we were.
Although this account of the criminal crucified next to Christ is short, Luke gives us a lot of information in that short time concerning the transformation that this man has undergone.
Firstly, he’s come to terms with his own guilt.
He tells the other criminal on the cross next to Jesus (v. 41):“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…”
In other words, even though just a few minutes before he was mocking Jesus, now he understands that he has rebelled against God, and that he deserves this.
I want to be careful here. Some Christians who are going through hard times will be tempted to take what I’ve just said and run with it, thinking, God’s punishing me. My suffering is punishment for some sin I’ve committed.
Please realize that if you think that, you are doing a disservice to Christ’s work on the cross for you. This man suffered the punishment of men for his crimes, but Christ suffered the punishment for his sin. Christ bore your sin on the cross, 100%, and God doesn’t punish the same sin twice; he is just.
So I never want to give Christians the idea that their suffering is somehow punishment for their sin, and I don’t want to kick anyone when they’re down.
That being said, on the whole, I think most of us need to learn to relativize a little better.
This criminal looks at what he’s suffering on the cross and thinks, This is fair.
A common question people ask when they’re suffering is, “What have I done to deserve this?”
The answer to that question is always very easy: you’ve sinned against a holy God. I’m not talking about any one sin in particular; I’m talking about your sinful nature. We have all rebelled against a holy God, and are deserving of eternal punishment for that sin.
So if you are in Christ, is your suffering somehow punishment for your sin? Absolutely not.
Do you deserve it? Absolutely you do. We all do. No matter how intense our suffering is, it is far less than what our sin actually deserves.
Our brother has come to terms with that reality. He’s come to terms with his own sin, and what that sin deserves.
Next, he’s come to terms with his own impending death.
This is pretty amazing: our brother knows he’s going to die, and he doesn’t seek to escape it.
The other criminal does, mockingly, like the elders and the soldiers. He says the same thing: “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
But our man doesn’t do that, even though clearly he now believes that Jesus is who he claims to be. He doesn’t ask Jesus to end his suffering. He knows he’s going to die, and he doesn’t seek to escape it.
Why is this such an important realization?
Because it shows us that this man understands that the real threat here isn’t his suffering or death; it’s what comes after. It reminds us that we don’t ultimately need to be saved from suffering or death, but from the consequences of our rebellion against God.
We need to be saved from the wrath of God against our sin. We have all, without exception, rebelled against a perfectly holy and eternal God, and because of that rebellion, we deserve punishment. That is the only fitting response to sin.
And our brother realizes it.
And that realization leads him to ask for something better than escaping death: he asks to be brought into Christ’s kingdom.
He knows there is a kingdom, and that Jesus is King.
Being saved, truly being saved, doesn’t mean escaping our suffering in this life, but receiving eternal life in the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ, forever, where there will be no suffering, no sickness, no death, no tears.
Being truly saved means knowing there is a kingdom, and that Jesus is King.
He says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
And our brother doesn’t seek to enter the kingdom by shortcut or by cheat. He seeks to enter the kingdom simply by recognizing who he is, recognizing what he deserves, and throwing himself upon the mercy of the One who has the power to save him.
So for all intents and purposes, this man is living the rest of his life on the cross, but knowing there’s a kingdom.
This is what we saw last week. Christ took up his throne through dying on the cross, in order to show us that we are his people, called to take up our cross and follow him into the kingdom.
We live on the cross too. We are called to die to ourselves every minute of every day. To give up things the world thinks we can’t live without.
And we can do it, because we know there’s a kingdom. We know that real life isn’t found in our jobs or our families or our pastimes, but in the kingdom.
And that knowledge will shape the way that we live. It will change the way we see the world and think through our situations and make our decisions.
It will drive us to give our time, our effort, our resources to pursue the glory of Christ, even though everything in our world is telling us to maximize our own pleasure by working hard to make as much money as we can and to spend that money on things that will make us happy.
The knowledge that real life is found in the kingdom will drive us to refuse to bear grudges against others, butrather to forgive them and seek reconciliation with them, even though everything in our world is telling us to insulate ourselves from people we don’t like. Sorry guys, we don’t get to choose our family—we don’t get to choose whom we get to love and whom we get to hate. We’re called to love one another, and even to love our enemies.
This knowledge drives us to expose ourselves to critique and to reproach because we know we’re not strong enough to fight our sin on our own. We confess our sin to God and to others, and we aren’t afraid to offer or to accept loving criticism from one another, even though everything in our world is telling us to put our best face forward and make everyone think we’re better than we are.
If we are in Christ, we are in his kingdom, so our lives will be marked by the norms and customs of his kingdom, not those of this world.
Now what does this have to do with our brother on the cross next to Jesus? He didn’t do all these things. He didn’t have time to do all this. He died a couple hours later, and he didn’t come down from that cross before dying.
That’s true.
But we know that if by some miracle he had lived, he would have lived this way. He would have continued to be changed by the Holy Spirit of God.
How do we know this? Because Jesus tells him, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Jesus promises him that when he comes into his kingdom, he’ll remember him.
Which means that this man is no longer the thief he once was. He’s no longer a criminal. He’s no longer a sinner.
He has been transformed.
If you have been truly saved by the Holy Spirit of God, that salvation will change you.
It will happen progressively, it will probably happen a lot more slowly than we’d like, but it will happen.
So salvation is immediate. Salvation is personal. Salvation is transformative. And lastly:
Salvation Is Easy.
The reason I love this text so much is because it underlines how incredibly easy salvation is for us.
Our brother did nothing. He didn’t reform before coming to Christ. He didn’t go visit the sick. He didn’t give to the poor. He didn’t welcome Christians into his home. He didn’t lead a home group. He wasn’t even baptized.
All this guy did—all he could do—was ask.
And not only does he not do anything; he doesn’t know anything either! He has no theological training. He makes no clear profession of faith, no clear articulation of the gospel. All he knows is he’s about to die, he deserves God’s wrath, and this man Jesus can save people from that.
Most churches would refuse to baptize this guy based on the little we see here. Now, in some ways that’s normal—if he had lived, the church would have looked for more than what we see here, would have taught him, would have trained him to be a disciple of Christ.
But all the hoops churches make people jump through in order to be welcomed into the family of God often have the unintended effect of making people think their salvation is conditional—that you have to check a certain number of boxes in your knowledge and in your practice to be able to say that you have been saved.
But none of those things saved our brother on the cross. He knows nothing, and he does nothing—and yet, Jesus tells him, Today you will be with me in paradise. Because Jesus knows what’s going on in his heart—he knows the faith that the Holy Spirit has put there—despite the fact that there is little exterior evidence of that faith.
Now, no matter how good this news is, here’s where a lot of people will actually start to get a little depressed, because of all the transformation stuff we talked about a few minutes ago.
These people will think, Yeah, it’s easy to get in the club. Jesus made COMING to salvation easy. But LIVING our salvation? STAYING in the kingdom? That’s a lot harder. If this guy had lived, and not died on the cross, he would have seen it’s not as easy as it looks.
If that’s you, I love you, so I’ll put it to you straight: You’re WRONG. Salvation is easy, from beginning to end. Living for Christ is easy.
And so you can see that I’m not making this up to make you feel bad, look at Matthew 11.28-30. Jesus says,
28 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
This is something many of you still don’t believe, because only experience can really prove it to you.
Here’s the best way I can think to explain it.
How many of you have had more than two or three jobs? A lot of you are young, so you may not have had time to have this experience yet. But anyone who has had multiple jobs can tell you that doing a job that you love is a thousand times easier than doing a job you hate, even if the work itself is harder.
I’ve never had a harder job than I have right now. In January I transitioned to working five days a week, to be able to spend more time with my family. Before that, since planting in September 2014 up to this past December, I worked six days, and often up to eighty hours, every week. Over the last five years my family has typically taken two to three weeks of vacation a year, and in five years (as far as I recall) we’ve never just left for the weekend.
I’ve never had a job that’s been more physically, mentally and emotionally demanding.
And I feel like this is the easiest job I’ve ever had, because I love it. I love doing what I do. Going to work in the morning is like going to play.
Now, my point isn’t to talk about my job, or any particular ministry. My point is that when we are doing what makes us happy, our work is easy, no matter how hard it is.
Brothers and sisters, living for Christ is so much easier than living for yourselves.
If you live for yourselves, you will necessarily pour yourselves into things which will disappoint you, because you are disappointing. You’re all terrible gods.
But every single one of the commandments God gives us in the pages of Scripture exists for our good and for our joy and for our flourishing—this is the way he created us to live. So yeah—often it’s hard. But we find that when we obey him anyway, lo and behold, it works. We realize, You know, God actually DOES know what he’s talking about when he tells us how to live.
Obedience to God’s commands gives us life.
One of the hardest things for me to endure as a pastor is watching some of you give Jesus only part of your lives, and then getting angry at him when it doesn’t work for you.
You say, “Jesus, I’ll give you a few hours on Sunday, and Thursday evening, and—okay—some of my social interaction. But my sexuality and my money and my family? Sorry, that’s mine.”
And then you come to those places you’ve given him—you come to church on Sunday, or to home group on Thursday—just beaten down and weary, because your life has just been drained out of you by the things you’ve held on to. It’s exhausting, trying to be the god of your own life.
If you would just listen to him, and do what he invites you to do, you’d discover that denying yourselves and taking up your cross and following him is infinitely easier than pursuing your own pleasure.
Now, I understand that what I’m saying now can seem either hopelessly unrealistic or hopelessly idealistic. And some of you are ready to either get angry at me—He’s finally done it, he’s lost his mind—or just to mentally switch off, because clearly this is wrong.
So let me just be clear. Am I saying the Christian life isn’t difficult? Of course not. The Christian life is unbelievably difficult. Those of you following the reading plan I’m on know that we finished the letter to the Hebrews last week. Remember the end of chapter 11? The author gives this long list of heroes of the faith, and at the end he says that some of these people were mocked, flogged, put in prison, stoned, sawn in two…
That’s difficult. That’s painful.
But here’s the thing: if you look at the concrete examples we have in the New Testament—most notably in the apostles—you don’t hear them talking about their difficulties, do you?
No; you hear Jesus asking his disciples if they want to leave him like everyone else (because his teaching is so difficult), and Peter responding, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6.68).
We see the apostles arrested and mocked and beat by the Sanhedrin, and Luke tells us (Acts 5.41), Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.
The apostle Paul lost everything when he chose to follow Christ. He was a Pharisee—part of the Jewish religious elite—one of those who actively persecuted Christians. So when he chose to become one of those whom he and his band persecuted, he lost everything. He lost his reputation (which was spotless); he lost his community, his friends; he lost his livelihood.
And what does he say about everything he’s lost? Philippians 3.7-9:
7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him…
So of course the Christian life is difficult.
It’s trying, yes; sometimes it’s painful, yes; it’s always difficult, yes.
But it’s easy.
It’s easy because it is in Christ that we find life. It’s easy because when we give Christ everything—no matter how difficult it is—it’s like we can finally breathe for the first time. It’s easy because even when it’s difficult, the alternative is infinitely harder.
Entering into salvation is easy, because Christ did all that work for us. And living out our salvation is easy, because it is there that we finally learn how to live.
Conclusion
Many of us who have grown in church have heard pastors talk about salvation so many times that we have a hard time remembering that salvation is a miracle. It’s not something we do; it’s something God does IN us. So God is calling us through this text to be in awe of the miracle he’s performed in our hearts. To fall on our knees and thank him for saving us, thank him for the knowledge that he’s going to remember us when we die, and that we will be with him in paradise.
Many of us have heard about salvation so many times that we forget our salvation is made visible by the changes it brings about in our lives, and that these changes will actually make us happy if we let God do his work. That working out our salvation with fear and trembling is easier than refusing to do it.
Maybe today God is trying to do some spiritual surgery on you, to strip away some of these things you’re still holding on to, which are keeping you from actually living. Don’t ignore his work; don’t harden your hearts to him; give him everything. And trust him to give you what you need in order to do it.
Some of you here this morning may be hearing all of this for the first time. Maybe you’re thinking, Well that sounds good, but you don’t know me—this isn’t for me.
If I can lovingly disagree: if salvation is possible for this guy, it’s possible for you. He didn’t know anything before coming to Christ; he made no moral reforms before coming to Christ. He came in all of his brokenness and all of his guilt and just threw himself on the mercy of Christ.
And you can do that too. In a minute we’re going to take communion, and during that time, we’re going to give you a few minutes to do that. I pray that you will.
