Luke 23:40 Commentary and Bible Study

But suddenly there is quite a different attitude from the other thief. We need to realise that these thieves were not gentle characters but hardened and desperate men. It is likely that years of cruelty and perhaps murder had made them callous individuals with even natural human sensitivities long since eroded away. And yet one of the thieves began to consider again who it was that hung next to him. ‘The other answering rebuked him, saying, Does not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?’ and he makes quite a long address. As you read through this, these are probably not the precise words he used, but a summary of them. The record here is very neat and tidy, whereas, of course, we can well imagine that these words, jerked out in the middle of gasps of pain, would hardly have been put together in a perfectly grammatical manner. But the essence of it is this: that suddenly this thief has come to realize that the man hanging next to him is someone of a kind that he has never met before in his life. He is overwhelmed by Christ next to him on the cross. He can't understand this man; he is amazed at him, his bearing, his manner. Somehow he is picking up something of his power, his majesty, and he feels himself to be so unclean, so foul, and so wretched. Even as his companion hurls abuse, this thief is beginning to be amazed and overpowered by a sense of the holiness and the uniqueness of this one who hangs between them. He begins to speak to his fellow thief, stumbling, stuttering out something of what he is beginning to realize. ‘How can you shout at him?’ he says. ‘How can you speak to him in that way? Don't you realize what is going on? Look at the pair of us: we deserve to be here. But look at him.’ It is coming home to him that this is no ordinary person. Now why should Christ have this effect on him? Probably it is not just what he is feeling from being close to him. More likely it is an accumulation of things which he has noticed over the previous minutes and hours. He has begun to be aware of the great majesty of Christ, because as he has been watching him, from the very time they had to carry these crosses up the hill, dragging them behind them. Normally executions did attract a modest sized crowd. There were always people who would turn out to watch an execution. It was a very degrading affair though. This was society's way of saying, ‘You are a nobody. You deserve to be cast out and hanged up like a dog.’ Your life is going to be publicly ended in this way, and you know it's going to happen. There's no hope for you. There's no escape for you. No one's going to rescue you. Your companions are way out of town, trembling for their own lives – they are not going to come near – and you are going to have to drag this cross up the hill. Then you're going to be nailed to it in agony, and it's going to be dropped into a socket in the ground, and there'll be a few people, strange people, who turn out to watch an execution. But this execution seems to be totally different. There is somebody here whom the whole city has turned out to watch. There is such a commotion. People who would not normally be anywhere near death have come. The religious leaders, so sanctimonious, so bigoted and special in their own estimation; they would not normally be anywhere near an execution, and yet here are these high and mighty religious leaders with their flowing robes, shouting and full of hatred. Naturally, your attention is going to be caught by this person who is the focal point of it all. Who is he? Why have so many come to watch? Why do these religious leaders seem to be hell-bent on getting rid of him? Isn't this the one whose reputation has spread around the country? Isn't this the one who works miracles, so they say? Isn't this the one who we have heard has healed the sick? They say he has even resuscitated the dead, restored sight to the blind, and people travel far to listen to him. We have heard many people say that no one teaches like him. Even with the terror of death hanging over them, there would have been a great deal to attract the attention of these men; they would have watched and noticed. This particular thief may have been struck from the very beginning, even before he began to change his attitude. He had never seen a man like this, never seen a man with such dignity and grace. They were spitting on him and cursing him and shouting at him, and he seemed to walk through it. And he said such amazing things: ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’ Even before that, he had turned to the women lining the route, and he had spoken most sympathetic words to them as though he was much more sorry for them, than they could possibly be for him. But then when he was nailed to the cross and they were screaming and shouting abuse and obscenities, there was this extraordinary man in between them who had such composure. Never could they have ever imagined a person who would bear this death and this punishment in this way. They had not been scourged, anything like he had been scourged. When a man was executed in this way, he was always scourged, but Christ had been scourged up to three times, and yet for all that he showed not resentment, no outrage at the injustice, or craving for revenge. Then also the thief heard Christ refer to God as His own Father. He prayed with great assurance that He would be heard. Who could refer to God in this way but one who claimed a special relationship for himself with God. And there were others who told the thief about the one hanging next to him. Voices of mockery conveyed to him a very different message from the one they intended to convey. From their words he learned of Christ's claim to be the Son of God, 'If thou be the Son of God come down from the cross'. How could it be that the Son of God could die a humiliating death on a cross? How could God allow it? What purpose could it serve? Without receiving answers to all these questions, the thief now understood these words in an entirely different light. Through the tones of derision, he heard the truth about the one beside him.Eventually he was broken down, because he realized that this was the Son of God. He put it all together: miracles, majesty, sinlessness – this must be the Messiah. ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ This dying thief was a Jew himself. He hadn't worshipped for years. He had been thrown out of the synagogue. He was a thief and possibly a murderer, but he was brought up a Jew, and he knew that the Jews were supposed to be waiting for their King who would come, the Messiah. If the chief priests and the religious leaders can't see it, this man can see it: ‘He must be God's anointed one.’ If he couldn't see it from the words written on top of the cross, he could see it from his majesty and bearing, and what he had heard about his miracles. He had almost heard a sermon preached, as those chief priests and those rulers hurled in Christ’s teeth the things he had taught – ‘You said you had come to save.’ That the dying thief plucked up every one of these words, even though they were spoken in scorn. To him, they were like promises in his ear. He has come to save. He has come to forgive. He has come to bless. And even as they hurled Christ's words back at him in scorn and abuse, the dying thief took them. The picture for him becomes complete: this is the Saviour of the world.