The Cross of the Christ and the Two Others
Luke 23:32-43
Today we are on Part Two of our series entitled “the Passion of the Christ: Curious? Find out more!” Glad you are here to find out more. That Mel Gibson movie “The Passion of the Christ” sure has got a lot of attention, hasn’t it? From the reports I have heard, it seems that it is doing just as well as the Oscar winning picture “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” at the box-office. One of the recurring things I have heard since the movie was released is that it does not give any sense of historical context; it assumes some prior knowledge of the story since it begins at the Garden of Gethsemane. Consequently it is best to always go back to the book, which inspired the movie to really get a good feel for what really transpired in those moments when Christ was crucified.
Whatever your motive is here this morning, my job is help you find out what really went on while Jesus hung on the cross with the two others who were there suffering alongside him. Remember, it was not only Jesus who was sentenced to die, there were two others! What is it about Jesus’ crucifixion differentiates from the other two? Why did His inspire spiritual revolution out of grisly death-filled horror event, why not the other two? They too, died on that same day, in the same way, with the same amount of emotional and physical pain, with the same humiliation hanging naked for all to see. So let’s read the text which motivated Gibson to make the movie, let’s go right to the source, the Bible. Reading from Luke 23:32-43 (NLT)
32 Two others, both criminals, were led out to be executed with him. 33 Finally, they came to a place called The Skull. All three were crucified there—Jesus on the center cross, and the two criminals on either side.
34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing.” And the soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice.
35 The crowd watched, and the leaders laughed and scoffed. “He saved others,” they said, “let him save himself if he is really God’s Chosen One, the Messiah.” 36 The soldiers mocked him, too, by offering him a drink of sour wine. 37 They called out to him, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 A signboard was nailed to the cross above him with these words: “This is the King of the Jews.”
39 One of the criminals hanging beside him scoffed, “So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!”
40 But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you are dying? 41 We deserve to die for our evil deeds, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”
43 And Jesus replied, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Here we have the Christ hanging between two criminals, with blood oozing out, life slowly being drained out of you, Jesus said this, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Read it again! “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Wow! What a thing to say! Who would be thinking paradise, when pain and torture screams through your body?
If I were a witness there, you know what I would say? I probably would say this “How can he say that?” I mean, how can He promise paradise while He is dying? It’s like an ice-cream salesman promising ice cream with no freezer in sight in the middle of the Sahara Desert. It sure sounds hollow!
Prove it! That was the challenge from the other criminal. How can Jesus back up such a statement? Jesus could be labeled a liar for what He said, couldn’t He? There were no miracles there. He died there on the cross, as history reveals to us. Crumpled up, bloody, humiliated, everything it seems, has ended in defeat. Miracle-worker, yeah, right? C’mon, give us a show then, OK? Where is the power display? Krispy Kreme will give us donuts, they promise donuts, they will give us donuts. So if this Jesus is God, He will do God sized stuff, right? What’s going on here? Run of out of juice? What’s the matter? Paradise? Paralyzed, is more like it, with nails punctured through the body! Even my windows computer which freezes up on a daily basis looks more reliable, at least it can be rebooted and get it going again. It seems Jesus froze and can’t be rebooted, He died believing He was some sort of Messiah. Oh Yes, prove it, Jesus! Wouldn’t you or I if we were on the cross next to Jesus, say that?
Jesus the Messiah? I can fully understand where the crowds and religious leaders of the day were coming from; they were not impressed. See v.35.
35 The crowd watched, and the leaders laughed and scoffed. “He saved others,” they said, “let him save himself if he is really God’s Chosen One, the Messiah.”
He can’t be the Messiah, which He claims to be, can He? So weak, no super-human powers here, no supernatural rescue here. The truth is, which Gibson’s movie covered, that Jesus was crucified naked. No clothing apparently to cover the private parts, shameful, shame, shame, shame! What’s wrong with the picture? Can you see the perspective of the criminal here (v.39) “One of the criminals hanging beside him scoffed, ‘So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!’” Can you understand why he would be angry? Can you appreciate the fact that the evidence for the divinity of Jesus was hopelessly lost as He was nailed to the cross? This criminal’s scoffing is not at all off the mark, it seems.
If this guy were a Jewish revolutionary, as some believe, not just a common thief, he would have held a belief that the Jewish Messiah would defeat the hated Romans who ruled his land. The Messiah would come Matrix style guns blazing, blasting away the bad guys. He would have hoped that the Kingdom of David, would be restored, that a new age for Israel would be ushered in. But all he could see was his own death coming, a defeated impostor beside him who’s suffering as much as he is, posing as the Messiah; no wonder he felt anguish, anger and ridicule for the so called ‘King of the Jews’. “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise” what pure nonsense! Does today feel like paradise?
What kind of god would allow puny people to do that? God-fearing Jews will no doubt remember the stories of Moses, what a deliverer He was, powerful enough to put the might of Egypt out of commission; powerful enough to bring food raining down from the skies. So who is this Jesus to say that He is the Christ, the Messiah, like a new Moses? Pretender! Bogus! A wanna-be! Blasphemy! What shame it was, where’s the power if He is really on the side of good, a true prophet of God? In fact the Scriptures the Jews believed in said that “anyone who is hung on a tree is under GOD’S CURSE. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance” Deuteronomy 21:23 (NIV). This Jesus is under God’s curse! Now that’s a twist here. God-forsaken, yes! Certainly not God’s man, and not God’s Son for sure. Curse, yes! A desecration, yes! Unholy, gory, death written all over it, totally! Apparently as Yancey noted (1995,p.202), that it was “not until the fourth century did the cross become a symbol of the faith.” The reason – it has the stigma of shame! It was only until the memory of anyone who ever witnessed a cross execution has finally died away did the cross became a symbol of faith.
Indeed, there is little if any show of god-like power here. As Philip Yancey once noted, the Romans who grew up with stories of powerful gods such as Jupiter and war-like gods such as Mars could see little that resemble a god in the naked crumpled body hanging on the place they call the Skull. All they could see is a Jewish guy who is perhaps under some sort of psychotic delusion that he is a God. If He really is God, surely He would have struck them down like Jupiter would! So as the record shows
36 The soldiers mocked him, too, by offering him a drink of sour wine. 37 They called out to him, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 A signboard was nailed to the cross above him with these words: “This is the King of the Jews.”
NO wonder emotions ran high that day for both the Jews and the Romans!
My emotions were stirred watching innocent animated chickens being killed in another Gibson movie called “Chicken Run”. With this movie by Gibson, to watch a person being beaten up and lifted up and killed through a torturous cross, I can understand why many could not stand or rather sit through the movie. What’s the fun in that? No wonder the Jews and the Romans that day could not see God there on that hill called the Skull or Calvary.
Today, the same objections reverberate. Really, what’s the fun here in watching an execution? That’s what I gather from all the negative reviews of Gibson’s movie – what’s the point of all the excessive violence and prolonged death scene? How can God be seen in all that gore? Isn’t this really all about the blaming game – that the Jews were killers of the Christ? Why focus on this death scene, the critics say? Where’s the entertainment value? Why not focus in on the life of Christ, the lessons He taught? Why, as the critics charged, does Gibson want to promote anti-Semitism, division and strife and hatred?
Part of the answer, I believe, is because the written record itself dictates such a view. The Gospels, that is, the books authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all described in detail the sufferings and the death of Christ. Only two mentioned the birth of Jesus but are unanimous when it comes to the death of Christ. They are also unanimous in mentioning the post-death accounts of Jesus – that is His resurrection story. Philip Yancey’s book The Jesus I Never Knew (1995,p.188) picked up on this, and he noted, of the many biographies he had read,
“few devote more than ten percent of their pages to the subject’s death – including biographies of men like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, who died violent and politically significant deaths. The Gospels, though, devote nearly a third of their length to the climatic last week of Jesus’ life. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John saw death as the central mystery of Jesus.”
Yancey’s words, “a third of their length” shows us that perhaps even a two-hour plus retelling of the story, ala Gibson, will not do justice to the whole story of the passion of the Christ.
Theologian RC Sproul (1988.p.27), in his book Surprised by Suffering, correctly stated, “The Great Passion of Jesus was the focal point of His divine vocation.” I am sure that is why the Gospels zeroed in on the Passion of the Christ, and not the birth story. It was the final moments of Jesus’ life that summarized for us the meaning of His life. When the disciples of Jesus finally understood that Jesus is the Christ way before the execution, it was then that Jesus revealed the gruesome thing that He must do “He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this…” (Mark 8:31-32, NIV).
Hence, it is quite natural that Gibson is captured by the enormity of this story of the sacrifice of the crucifixion of Christ. It was the plain teaching of Christ Himself – He was sent for this suffering. No wonder Gibson felt like this was a movie he had to make, that it was, as if a divine appointment for him, that he felt driven to do it, is not merely a matter of just editorial choice or a director’s artistic nuances but a desire to stay as close to the emphasis the Gospel writers themselves make. The sacrifice of a good man, an innocent man, a man sent by God, a man who is God in the flesh, is a story that must be told.
Yes, the story that must be told, right from Luke’s account we know Jesus was hung on a cross, along with him, there were two others.
32 Two others, both criminals, were led out to be executed with him. 33 Finally, they came to a place called The Skull. All three were crucified there—Jesus on the center cross, and the two criminals on either side. Luke 23:32-33 (NLT)
Why were there two others executed along with Jesus? According to Craig S. Keener (1993,p.254) writing in The Bible Background Commentary, observed “It was less work for the soldiers if they could execute several convicts at once.” It was a matter of expedience, a convenience for the Romans but it was matter of the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, specifically, Isaiah 53:9,12(NIV) – The Messiah would be “assigned a grave with the wicked…was numbered with the transgressors.” That Jesus suffered through this horrible death shows the hand of God was intimately involved; it was not a chanced event, not an accident, not merely a plot hatched by some wicked wiseguys. God’s sovereign hand was all over this.
That Jesus would die with criminals is an amazing thing – because it was done to Him, He did not ask for it, it was done to Him. And yet through the pages of prophecy, written way before the events of the crucifixion, we can see that it was part of a plan of redemption, ordained by God. It was by design; it was not a fluke thing that occurred. God was in absolute control of the whole mess that led to Jesus’ hanging shamefully, like a dead dog, like a criminal. No wonder Jesus could utter the words He uttered, “Father forgive them.” Because He knew it must happen. Because He was the One who is in charge, in control. NO wonder he said, as it is written (v.34),
“Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing.”
And then these words were recorded by Luke “And the soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice.”
Again, through the pages of prophecy, God’s plan of redemption was opened to anyone who have eyes to see. After all, Psalm 22:18 predicted that the soldiers would gamble for the clothes of Christ. Can you see how God ordained it - the suffering of the Messiah must occur? As last Sunday’s message indicated, it seems the Bible claims it was God the Father, who offered up His Son to be sacrificed. Isaiah 53:6 (NIV) says “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all”. As I mentioned last week, was it a race of people that laid on Christ the burden of our sin? Does the Bible not say, “the LORD has laid on him (Jesus)” our sins?
Romans 4:25 (CEV) clearly implicates that God the Father was very much involved in giving up His Son to die on that cross: “God gave Jesus to die for our sins, and he raised him to life, so that we would be made acceptable to God.” And the resurrection of Christ from the dead was vindication of what Jesus did. Is it not clear to us then, that God was the One who planned it all so that WE would be acceptable to a holy God? This was a plan to rescue us!
To be very sure, let me repeat, as the Bible points out “God gave Jesus to die for our sins…” Our sins! There is a bigger plan involved; there was a bigger deal, there was a love that God had for us that He couldn’t let go. The redemption of the world that was at stake. Sin had to be dealt with. It cannot be just swept under the rug of the universe as one person pointed out. It was the only way possible for our sins to be forgiven so that the prayer Jesus uttered “Father forgive these people” could become a reality. That reality was embraced by one person that day while Jesus hung on the cross with two criminals.
Three things that the second criminal believed in Jesus:
1. The innocence of Jesus (v.41) “but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.”
2. The ability of Jesus to take him to heaven (v.42) “Remember me”
3. The royalty of Jesus (v.42) “when you come into your Kingdom”
The two thieves that deserved the death penalty heard the same things, witnessed the same Jesus hanging on the cross with them, one continued cursing, heaping insults but the other eventually, repented, turned around at the throes of death. The shimmering hope of the Gospel is shouted out to us God will remember us even if this world would nail us to the cross, God will not forget us, God will not because of what Jesus did.
This story illustrates for us the pivotal points we can make about the Passion of the Christ.
1. Rejection: By letting our preconceived notions of God cloud our judgment. Just like the crowd and Romans who were swayed because all they saw was gore, violence, weakness, helplessness, what God? Certainly not hope there, pain, yes, certainly not God.
2. Redemption: Or we can be like that second criminal and believe “this man hasn’t done anything wrong.” In fact this man is very good. Remember me! I believe Jesus can take me to heaven. Believing in the Bible’s prophecies regarding Jesus, believing that this was no accident, that this is God’s redemptive plan, this is God doing a rescue job no one could have guess would happen unless God meant it to happened. As a result of this, this is no need to fear God’s wrath anymore. God will redeem us! Thomas Merton said: “Quit keeping score altogether and surrender yourself with all your sinfulness to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ.” No need to hide, no need to fear God will redeem us in Christ, when we cry to Him helplessly in the midst of us gasping for breath, “remember me”! Here we will find a love that keeps no score of wrongs! Here we will find what the second criminal found, the promise of paradis it, the question have you? Do you want it? Will you put your faith and trust in Christ? The power of Christ’s love comes on those who like the criminal have no other recourse, no other hope, hanging shamefully, yet now loved with the promise of redemption.
3. Reception: we can receive the Kingdom of God as one who is poor in spirit, realizing that He died for me. When we receive this offer, Jesus words will be true for us “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” For anyone who believes there is paradise. Hope is reborn! The resurrection of Jesus from the dead proves there is such a place called paradise.
For me, this whole passion of the Christ event summarizes what God specializes in. Turning what is dark into light! It gives hope in world that’s turning ugly, where there are suicide-bombing campaigns, where the ugliness of hate and unforgiveness reigns as revenge after revenge is perpetrated, where drugs, booze and sex are peddled as substitutes for God, where depression is mounting. No amount of spiritual make-up can cover up our ugliness. O Lord, have mercy! Praise God, He is showering mercy on us because of the passion of the Christ.
If a criminal can received paradise through Jesus, as our scripture text reveals, certainly there is hope for anyone, certainly you and I will be pardoned if we choose to believe. What God has revealed is His love on that cross and that there are no hopeless cases here, no one is beyond the reach of God, unless we refuse to see what Jesus offers.
Thank You God for turning what people clearly meant for evil, into something good, no, wait, beautiful, no! Awesome, no! Wonderful, no! Glorious, no! I am lost for words, trying to describe the worship and gratitude I feel. I agree with Brennan Manning (2003,p.8) who said in his book The Rabbi’s Heartbeat, “No thought can contain Him, no word can express Him; He is beyond anything we can intellectualize or imagine.” For nothing can separate us from the love of God which is shown in Christ Jesus!
