The Thief on the Cross: What Jesus Said to a Dying Criminal With Nothing Left to Offer

Announcer: Welcome to Gospel Sermons from Kingdom Gospel Ministries. Every week, Pastor Cole opens up the good Word and lays it plain, one passage at a time. The message you're about to hear is dramatized and inspired by true accounts. Now, here's Pastor Cole.

Pastor Cole: Mornin'. Before we open the Book today, I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually sit with it a second instead of just noddin' along like we do most Sundays. How much time you figure you've got left? Go on, be honest with yourself. Not the number you'd say out loud to a doctor. The number livin' underneath all your plannin' — the one that tells you it's safe to put off the hard conversations, safe to wait till things settle down, safe to get around to God once life quiets some. Most of us walk around every day like there's a guarantee stitched into the linin' of our chest. Decades, not days. We say it without even thinkin' — "one of these days I'll get right with God." "One of these days I'll deal with that." "I've got plenty of time." Friends, I need to tell you something plain this mornin'. We are all of us walkin' across eternity like it's solid floor under our boots. It is not solid. It is a covering, old and rotted clean through in a thousand places you cannot see from up top, and not one of us knows for certain which board we're standin' on right now. Your good health isn't a guarantee. Your careful drivin' isn't a guarantee. Bein' young, bein' careful, bein' the kind of person who does everything right — none of it is the floor you think it is. The Book puts it this way, Deuteronomy thirty-two, thirty-five — God says of the man who thinks himself safe, "their foot shall slide in due time." Which just means this: the fall isn't announced ahead of time. It doesn't send you a letter. One day you are standin' there sure-footed as ever, and the next, the floor just... isn't there anymore. Now I could stand up here and tell you about some fella I heard about one time, and let his dyin' do the convincin' for me. I'm not gonna do that to you this mornin'. I don't need a stranger's tragedy to make my point. All I need is arithmetic, and you already know it. Some of you have got plans stacked up clean into your seventies — grandbabies you mean to spoil, a boat you mean to finally buy, a version of yourself you keep meanin' to become 'once things settle down.' Every one of those plans is standin' on a number you do not actually have. Nobody handed you a signed guarantee for tomorrow mornin', let alone another forty years of Tuesdays. I know — that is a cheerful way to open a Sunday mornin'. Preacher's supposed to warm you up a little first, tell a joke about his golf game. Bear with me. It does get better. But we've got to walk through the hard part on the way there.

Pastor Cole: Now I bring that up because there's a man in scripture who ran plumb out of his "one of these days" in about the worst way a man can — nailed to a piece of wood, in broad daylight, with the crowd watchin' and the clock most certainly not on his side. Turn with me to Luke, chapter twenty-three. Golgotha. Three crosses up on that hill — Jesus in the middle, and on either side of Him, the Book says, two malefactors. Two criminals. Men the Roman government had decided weren't worth keepin' alive anymore. Listen to what happens between the three of 'em, startin' at verse thirty-nine: "And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Read that again in your head if you have to, 'cause I want you to feel the whole weight of it. A dying criminal — hours, maybe less, from the end of everything — turns his head six inches to his left, says one sentence, and Jesus tells him he'll be in paradise that same day. Now if you doze off somewhere between here and the offering plate — and I have seen it happen — let this be the part that sticks with you. A man who had nothing left to offer God but a single sentence of faith received everything — full, instant, undeserved. And if that door swung open for him in his last hour, it is standin' open for you in yours.

Pastor Cole: Now I want you to understand exactly what kind of man we're talking about here, because I think we've softened him up over the years into something safer than he actually was. The word Luke uses is "malefactor" — a serious criminal, not some kid caught stealing bread. Crucifixion was Rome's worst punishment, reserved for the worst offenses — armed robbery, insurrection, murder. Matthew and Mark both place these two men alongside Barabbas's crowd, the kind of men who'd killed people in the course of their crimes. Somewhere along the way, we went and turned him into a fella who maybe jaywalked in front of a Roman soldier and mouthed off some. That is not who was hangin' up there. If that man had a mugshot, friends, it would not have been flattering. This was not a decent fella who made one bad choice. This was, by every account, a hardened, violent criminal, getting exactly what the law said he deserved, in the last hours of a wasted, bloody life. I tell you that so nobody in here gets to say "well, that's fine for him, but you don't know what I've done." Friend, I don't need to know what you've done. Whatever it is, it is not worse than armed robbery and murder, hanging on a cross he'd earned fair and square by the law of the land. And grace still reached him. If it reached a man like that, in the last few hours of a wasted life, it has already reached far enough to reach you.

Pastor Cole: Now before we get to the thief who was saved, I want us to sit with the one who wasn't — just for a minute — because his words are still being prayed by folks today, near word for word, and most of 'em don't even know it. Look again at verse thirty-nine: "If thou be Christ, save thyself and us." Now on the surface, that could almost sound like faith. He's talkin' to Jesus. He's usin' the right title. But listen close to the shape of what he's actually asking for. He is not asking for mercy. He is demanding a rescue — get me down off this cross, fix my circumstances, and then maybe I'll believe you're who you say you are. That is not repentance. That is a negotiation. He wants the miracle without ever once admitting he's guilty of anything that deserves a cross in the first place. And Jesus — who could have done it, mind you, could have spoken one word and brought that whole hill down — says nothing back to him at all. Not one word. Silence is its own kind of answer, friends.

Pastor Cole: I've heard that same prayer prayed a thousand ways since. A man loses his business, everything he built, and he'll pray, real earnest, "God, if you get me out of this hole, I'll go to church every week for the rest of my life, I swear it." A woman gets a scary word from her doctor and she bargains the same way — fix this, and I'll change, I'll be different, I'll finally take this serious. Nothin' wrong with cryin' out to God in the middle of a hard season — the Book is full of folks doin' just that. But you can hear the difference, can't you, between "save me and I'll believe" and "have mercy on me, a sinner." One's still tryin' to run the negotiation from the driver's seat. The other has let go of the wheel entirely. I think about a fella who spent years praying variations of "get me out of this and I'll straighten up" every time his drinking cost him something — a job, a marriage, a set of front teeth — and every single time God spared him some, he'd go right back to the same well within a season, because he never actually surrendered anything. He just wanted the consequences removed. That is the first thief's prayer. And it is a prayer God does not answer, not because He's stingy with mercy, but because that isn't actually a prayer for mercy at all.

Pastor Cole: Quit askin' God to rescue you from your circumstances as a precondition for believin' Him — it's an easy trap to miss, 'cause it sounds so reasonable on the front end. You don't need Him to fix your finances first, heal your body first, save your marriage first, and then you'll come around. That is the first thief's cross, and I promise you it leads exactly where his did. Ask for what the second thief asked for instead. Not rescue. Mercy. Those are two entirely different prayers, and only one of 'em got answered that day on that hill.

Pastor Cole: Now turn with me to the other cross. Same hill. Same kind of nails. Same handful of hours left to live. But listen to how differently this second man opens his mouth. Verse forty-one: "And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds." That is a man telling the truth about himself with his very last hours. No excuse-making. No "I had a hard childhood." No "the other guy made me do it." Just — we deserve this. That is where it has to start for every one of us, friends, and I mean every one — not with cleaning up, not with explaining ourselves, but with telling God the truth about what we actually are. He even defends Jesus in the same breath — "this man hath done nothing amiss" — meaning that in the middle of his own execution, this thief had the presence of mind to recognize the man dying next to him was innocent, while he himself was not. Same cross. Same nails. Same amount of time left. But where the first thief spent his last hours demanding proof, the second one spent his telling the truth. That's the whole hinge of this story, right there. Not what either of them had done. Where they set their eyes, and what they were finally honest about.

Pastor Cole: And understand — this is not a small thing he's admitting to. Jesus said it Himself, back in Luke twelve: "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him." Which just means — losing this life was never the real danger. There is something past the grave that matters a whole lot more than how many years you get down here. And John three, eighteen says the unbeliever isn't waiting on some future verdict — "he that believeth not is condemned already." Already. Present tense. Not someday, if you keep living like this. Right now, as you sit there. That is the water this dying thief was treading before he ever opened his mouth. He wasn't a good man about to get a fair shake. He was a guilty man, out of time, staring straight down the barrel of exactly what he deserved. Which is, I promise you, exactly where every single one of us actually stands before God, whether we feel it on a given Tuesday or not. The only difference between him and you is he could see the clock. Most of us have just gotten real good at not looking at it.

Pastor Cole: So here's the question that ought to be sitting in your chest right about now — what did this man have to offer, to earn a promise like that? Go on and look. His hands are nailed to a crossbeam. He cannot go build something good with them. His feet are pinned to a post. He cannot go walk a straight road the rest of his days and prove himself changed. He has got no more good works left in him than a corpse does — matter of hours, and he'll be one. And notice — he doesn't even try to offer any. He doesn't spend his last breath promisin' Jesus he'll do better. Doesn't say, "get me down off this thing and I'll spend the rest of my days makin' it right." There is no rest of his days left to put up as collateral. No future good behavior he can pledge against the debt. That's where most of us get it backwards, friends. Somewhere along the way we got the idea that God's up there with a ledger, waitin' on us to produce enough of a track record before He'll act. Waitin' on us to prove we're serious. Here's what nobody tells you plain enough: there was never enough time, for any of us, to fix it all. Your best efforts at cleaning yourself up before God — every good deed you stack up, every apology you finally get around to making, every New Year's resolution to do better — it is a spider's web strung out across a canyon, trying to catch a boulder coming off the cliff face above it. It will not hold. It was never going to hold. Not one strand of it.

Pastor Cole: Quit stalling on getting right with God till you feel like you've earned the right to come. That thief could not lift a finger to fix his record, and Jesus didn't ask him to. He didn't say, "come down off that cross first and go live a better life, then we'll talk." He didn't say, "prove it to me over the next six months." Some of you have been telling yourselves for years — "I'll come to God once I've got my temper handled. Once I've quit the thing I can't seem to quit. Once my life looks a little more presentable." Friend, that thief didn't have hands free to spin a single thread of a web, and it did not stop him from being saved that very day. Stop waiting on a version of yourself that's never going to show up on its own steam. Come now, nail-scarred hands and all, empty-handed exactly as you are.

Pastor Cole: So if it wasn't anything he did — what did he actually have? One thing. He turned his head, and he said one sentence: "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." Now think on how much faith is packed into that one line. This man is looking at another dying man nailed up next to him — beat half to death, bleeding, gasping for breath same as he is — and he calls him Lord. Says when, not if, you come into your kingdom. He can't see a single earthly reason to believe that. There's no crown on that head, only thorns. No throne, only a cross. By every measure a man's eyes could give him, Jesus looked exactly as finished as he did. But something past his eyes told him different. And with the very last strength in his lungs, he didn't ask for his life to be spared. He didn't ask to be let down off that cross. He just asked to be remembered. That word "paradise," by the way — it's an old word for a walled garden, a king's private ground, the kind of place with a gate and a keeper, kept safe from everything outside it. He is asking to be let into a place he has no earthly right to enter. That is faith stripped down to its barest bone — no works attached to it, no time left to attach any. Just a dying man reaching out with everything he had left, which was one sentence, toward the only hope left in the universe for him.

Pastor Cole: And listen to how Jesus answers him. Not "we'll see." Not "let's talk once you've served your sentence." Verse forty-three: "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Today. Not after some waiting period. Not on probation, not on a trial membership, not pending review. That thief had done nothing — could do nothing — to deserve that word. And that is exactly the point, friends, that is the whole point of the gospel sitting right there in one sentence on a Roman execution hill. Paul lays the doctrine out plain in Ephesians two, eight and nine: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast." Which just means — you cannot earn this, you cannot buy it, and you cannot boast about it once you've got it, because it never once ran through your hands. It is a gift, wrapped up and handed over, same as it was handed to a dying criminal who had absolutely nothing to bring to the table but his own guilt and one true sentence of faith.

Pastor Cole: Titus three, five says it from another angle, in case anybody's still trying to sneak their own effort back into the equation: "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us." Not by works. Not partly by grace and partly by your own good record, split down the middle somehow. Not by grace to get you started and works to get you the rest of the way home. Mercy. Start to finish. And Romans ten, thirteen throws the door open wider than most of us are comfortable with: "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Whosoever. That word doesn't check your record at the door. Doesn't ask how long you've been away, how bad it's gotten, how many good church folks might raise an eyebrow if they knew the whole story. Picture the difference plain: some folks think comin' to God is like walkin' into a museum, and you'd best be dressed right, hair combed, credentials in hand, or the guard at the door turns you back around. That is not this. This is a fountain, built right out in the open where anybody walkin' by can get to it. There was an old preacher, generations back now, used to put it plainer than I ever could — said he'd rather bless the soul of the poorest crossing-sweeper or rag-picker off the street than please a prince of the blood, because that fountain was never built for whoever looked the part. It does not run any thinner for the worst sinner in the room than it does for the best one. Thirsty is the only qualification it checks for.

Pastor Cole: I've got a buddy, name of Dale — we've hunted together every November for going on fifteen years now — runs EMS out of Polk County. He told me about a wreck he worked a few summers back, out on Highway 59 south of Livingston, middle of July, heat comin' up off the blacktop so bad you could see it move. Tractor-trailer versus a pickup truck, driver of that pickup pinned bad behind the wheel. Dale said he knew inside of two minutes this one wasn't headed anywhere a hospital could help. Said the whole cab smelled like diesel and hot rubber and spilled coffee — fella'd had a full cup in the console, went everywhere in the wreck, and it was somehow still warm. Dale's half inside that caved-in door, holdin' this stranger's hand through a gap in the metal, and the man looks him dead in the eye, real calm, and says, "Tell my wife I wasn't as good a man as she thinks I was." Then he sort of huffs out this little laugh — Dale swears to this part — and says, "Guess I better tell Him that myself." And he did. Right there, hand still in Dale's hand. "Jesus... I'm sorry. Jesus, help me." Over and over, quieter every time, till he couldn't get the words out anymore. Dale's worked that stretch of road the better part of eleven years now. Says he's seen a lot of faces in a lot of last moments. Says he has never once watched terror turn into somethin' else that fast. Peace — that's the only word he's got for it. Ninety seconds, maybe less. That is not a technique, friends. That is not a bargain that man struck on his way out. That's the same fountain the thief drank from two thousand years ago, still runnin', still free, still catchin' whoever turns their head toward it in whatever's left of their last hour.

Pastor Cole: Now let me say one thing plain, so nobody walks out of here confused about what I just told you. This is not me saying it doesn't matter how you live once you've met Jesus. Grace that actually saves you will go on changing you the rest of your days — that thief just didn't get any days left to prove it, and Jesus didn't need him to. The point this morning isn't that your life afterward doesn't matter. The point is that your life beforehand cannot be the thing that gets you in. Those are two different sermons. Today is the first one. Come as you are, empty-handed — what He does with you after that is His business, and He's real good at it.

Pastor Cole: I want to leave you with one more thought about them two crosses, because I think it holds both halves of what we've said this morning in balance. One thief was saved, so that no one, ever, would have to despair — no matter how late, how bad, how far gone. But only one was saved, so that no one would ever presume they've got all the time in the world to decide. Both halves are true at once. The door was open right up until his last breath — and it was only open because he actually walked through it before that breath ran out. Don't let the first half make you careless, and don't let the second half make you despair. Just let both of them walk you to the same place the thief ended up: today.

Pastor Cole: And I want to bring us back around to where we started, because there's a reason Jesus didn't say "someday you'll be with me in paradise." He said today. That thief did not have the luxury of putting this off till a more convenient hour. Neither, friend, do you. Not because I'm trying to scare you into something — I'm not. But because putting off the most important decision of your life on the assumption that you'll get another shot at it later is exactly the gamble a man loses without ever knowing he's betting. You don't know if you've got another Sunday. You don't know if you've got another hour past this one. Nobody does — that was the whole point of where we started this morning. So don't let today become one more "one of these days." Today has a name on it. It's got yours.

Pastor Cole: If you are sitting there this morning — or driving, or standing in your kitchen — thinking you've let it go on too long, done too much, waited too late, and there's simply no coming back from where you've gotten to... friend, that is a lie, and the man on that cross is living proof of it. He didn't get a second chance at a better life. He got one sentence, and it was enough. You do not need a clean record to pray. You do not need to understand every bit of doctrine, or have your whole life sorted out, or wait for a Sunday when you feel ready. You need what he had — an honest look at what you are, and one turn of your head toward Jesus. "Lord, remember me." That is not a complicated prayer. Any one of us could pray it right now, in the time it takes to say it once.

Pastor Cole: So let's say the whole thing back, one more time, plain. A dying criminal, with hours left and nothing to offer God but one sentence of faith, received everything — full, instant, undeserved — because grace was never for sale in the first place. If that is true — and friends, it is true, it's right there in red and black in your Bible — then it is true for whoever's listening this morning who thinks they've run out of time, or thinks they'd have to clean themselves up first before they'd even be welcome. You would not. He didn't. So if that's you, I want to pray something with you right now, right where you're sitting or standing or driving. You don't have to say it out loud if you can't. Just mean it. Lord Jesus... I am the one on that cross. I've got nothing to bring you but the truth about myself, and I'm done pretending otherwise. I believe you are exactly who you said you are. Remember me. That's it. That's the whole prayer. Same one a dying man prayed two thousand years ago with his last breath, and it was enough for him. It is enough for you.

Pastor Cole: I keep coming back to that hill outside Jerusalem. Three crosses, side by side. Two dying men, same sentence, same nails, same handful of hours left between them. But one of them turned his head, six little inches, and said one true sentence — and Jesus looked back at him, dying Himself, and promised him paradise before the sun ever went down that day. That is how fast grace moves, friends. Not slow. Not measured out over years of proving yourself. Fast as a turned head. Fast as today. If you've got breath left in you this morning, you've got time enough for that one sentence. Go on and say it.

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