The scene was one of striking and even bitter contrast. While three men were being hauled off to their deaths, one of them was far different from the other two.
Two of these hapless three were thieves, and as thieves they had lived by the law of the thief: namely, easy come, easy go. If you take it, you can lose it. If you steal it, someone else is very likely to steal it from you. And if you put someone else’s life on the line in order to take his money or his goods, well, then, the state will put your life on the line if and when you are caught. Thieves live and die by the law of thieves. Two of these men were thieves, living and dying about as you might have expected, pilloried for their crimes, wild and high against an eastern sky.
But the other was no thief. He had no reason to be a thief, he had no reason to steal, because the cattle on a thousand hills were his. Because all things were His; He had made all things, and without Him was not anything made that was made. This other man was no thief and indeed would have had no reason at all to steal anything.
A scene of striking and even bitter contrasts. And a scene in which the two thieves, who knew all too well the law of theft, encountered something no thief can steal. I want to suggest to you this morning that at that scene, two bandits, whose whole lives had been giving to stealing, encountered and were offered three things which no thief can steal. They were offered salvation; they were offered assurance; and they were offered companionship. All of them things which, once you have them, no thief can steal.
I
First, the two thieves encountered in that victim on that center cross the issue of salvation. One of them, the cursing thief, chose to believe that it was too little, too late, for him to receive salvation. But the other thief, the believing thief, chose to hope that even while he suffered on his cross there was a fountain of salvation, something that no thief could steal from him.
The cursing thief snarled, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!" And in his desperation, his bitterness, he heaped upon Christ all the self-hatred he had been carrying around. He just refused to believe that anything good could happen to him. The cursing thief, with one last chance to save a shred of dignity, one last opportunity to be affirmed by somebody … the cursing thief is every one of us who thinks we are hopeless. The cursing thief is every one of us who thinks we’ve made too much a mess of it. The cursing thief, crying out, but not believing it, "save yourself and us", is every man and woman in this world who has lived so long by the law of the thief, who has taken and cheated and acted out of low self-esteem so long that he sees no hope except to get worse and worse and just go on and die.
A couple of weeks ago, Sixty Minutes broadcast the story of a prisoner in Texas who is petitioning the state to execute him. He acknowledges that he committed murder and rape, and has concluded that he is in fact so miserable, so hopeless, that he ought to die. He is trying to get a judge to sentence him to a lethal injection. As I saw that story and listened to an otherwise very intelligent, soft-spoken, literate man, I heard the accumulation of years and years of self-hatred. He had hated himself so much that he had worked out violence on others. He had scorned himself so much that he had stolen the purity of young women. And now all he really knows is to hate himself into the grave.
The cursing thief hated himself so much that he would even throw away the last hope of salvation.
But the believing thief … the believing thief … whose crimes equaled the other’s, whose life was no different, whose guilt was just as heavy … the believing thief saw something else. The believing thief saw something which no thief could steal, which no self-hatred could snatch away. The believing thief saw that, wonder of wonders, the penalty he should be paying was paid by Jesus. The condemnation that should have been his was being heaped on the innocent one. The believing thief saw that both he and the other thief had been condemned correctly, for, he said, "we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”
The believing thief, just as guilty as the other, just as deserving of death, reached through all his years of wrong and of self-loathing and of guilt, and found that the bill for his crimes was paid. The believing thief at the cross of Jesus found that though he had accumulated a record just as horrible, just as vile as the other thief, now Jesus paid it all. The believing thief discovered that it is never too late, that no one is ever too far gone, that no one is ever so corrupted to be beyond the reach of the Cross.
And he had something which no thief can steal, no grave can corrupt, no self-hatred can destroy. He had salvation.
II
Second, the two thieves encountered in that one on that other cross the issue of assurance. All of us need assurance; we need to know where we stand and to whom we belong. We need an assurance that we are not forgotten, something which no thief can steal.
The cursing thief found his assurance, if that’s what you call it, in flinging his defiance in the face of Christ. The cursing thief, a stranger and an alien, out of sorts with the world, out of line with the law, out of kilter with himself – the cursing thief could see no other way to assurance than to stay in character and spit out his defiance. "Who needs you, Lord? Who needs God, who needs help, who needs anybody? I’ll handle myself. I’ll provide my own assurance."
Oh, but you and I know what that really is, don’t we? You and I know that’s not assurance, that’s not confidence. "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" That’s not assurance. That’s bravado, that’s machismo. That’s a little boy pretending to be a man. But you and I really know that when the stakes are down, we want somebody there to assure us that we are going to be all right. You and I know that in life’s extremities, no matter what kind of defiant and self-reliant face we may put on, down deep we want to know that we belong to somebody. Assurance that no thief can steal, that’s what we really want.
And so the believing thief ... hear him. "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." "Jesus, remember me …" Give me an assurance that I have a place in this universe. Give me an assurance that even my little, miserable, misbegotten life has its place in the economy of God. "Jesus, remember me."
Sometimes I get a call from a local funeral home to come and provide a funeral service for someone I do not know and who has no church relationship, and the family doesn’t know any pastor either. And usually I will have only the barest minimum of contact with the families in cases like that.
When I do talk with such families, my neither knowing them nor their loved one, I try to probe for something that the deceased has done that is worth remembering. I try to find something that was in the character of the one they loved that is worth affirming. But do you know that in nine times out of ten the family cannot think of anything worth remembering? Nine times out of ten they get a blank stare on their face when I ask them to tell me about grandma! Seventy or eighty years of life seems to be an empty void! I remember one man, when pressed to tell me about his mother, could only say, "Well, tell them Mom was a nice person!"
How would you like to be remembered as nothing more than a nice person? Come to think of it, how would you like, as the cursing thief knew would happen for him, to be remembered as not a very nice person? Down deep, we want to be remembered, and we want to be assured that somebody knows who we are.
The believing thief found that assurance. "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Never mind his misdeeds, never mind his mistakes and his sins. The cleansing fountain of forgiveness would be for him a wellspring of assurance, and he would go into eternity knowing that he had a place in the heart of God. Gone, executed, destroyed, yes; but not forgotten.
"Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; oh what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation, purchase of God. Born of His spirit, washed in His blood." Assurance is something which no thief can ever steal.
III
Finally, the two thieves encountered in that one on the other cross the issue of relationships, the issue of companionship. Two criminals, suspended between earth and heaven, pouring out their lives and their souls, encountered in their companion in pain the ultimate of questions, "Are we alone?" "Are we alone?" Or is there a companion for the journey, a companion whom no thief can steal away from us?
The cursing thief chose to push away the only one capable of reaching out to him in that moment of extremity. The cursing thief, having chosen all of his life to live on the boundaries of the world, having chosen to be hostile to everyone and everything, now, in this last hour, made one more wrong choice. And in the face of the matchless love of the Cross, he still chose to stand alone. In his foolish pride he chose to stand alone.
Oh, how that speaks to me! How much I am the cursing thief. When I get into a mess, and somebody tries to help me, I will say, "No, no, I can do it. I can handle it." And even when I know that I cannot handle whatever the problem is, I will stonewall it. I will pretend that I do not need help. I will pretend that I do not need relationship. But I do. Of course I do. But something in me wants to be the cursing thief.
I cannot begin to confess to you the number of times when I have chosen to be alone, even though down deep I wanted companionship, I wanted partnership. Some of you have sensed this. You’ve said, "Can I help? Can I do anything? Can I make phone calls or run to the Post Office or help in some way?” And I, like the cursing thief, would push to arm’s length every offer of help. Why? Because human pride keeps on saying, "I’d rather be a martyr. I’d rather they think that I don’t need anybody." Human pride keeps on pushing those who want to be my friends out to the edges of my life. And I easily become the cursing thief, never able to accept the companionship of love.
Oh, but look at the believing thief: what he received! The believing thief, just by reaching out, what a gift was his. Listen to the words from the third cross; hear the love and the warmth of Christ for him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." You will be with me … you will have my presence. In the last extremity, you will not die alone, you will not walk this last journey without my hand in your hand. Today, because you have believed and trusted, because you have confessed your need, you will be with me. Because you have admitted that you cannot handle either your life or your death all alone, today you will have a companion for your eternity. Today you will have a relationship which time cannot corrupt and which no thief can steal.
The Lord Jesus says to you this morning, "Truly I tell you, today … today … you will be with me." And if you have that, you will never walk alone, nor will you die alone. Your foolish pride and mine will be washed away by that fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins, and sinners, even sinners like that thief … oh my heart, even sinners like me … when plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.
"The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day. And there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away."
