“And he said unto Jesus, Lord remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” ( Luke 23:42)

  Everyone who is not a Christian (and some who are) ought to be interested in this man, to know how he was saved.  Some may argue that one must be baptized to be saved, others may say you must be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues to be saved.  I don’t know either way so I’ll just leave that for Jesus to sort out, that’s His business.  I’m just telling you a story and my prayer is that Holy Spirit speak through it to the encouragement of those who are in despair, who feel that they have no where to turn!  But I have to tell you, I believe Jesus was more interested in saving this man on the cross than He was interested in conforming to the rules of the religious.

  Anyone who objects to sudden conversions should give attention to how this man was converted.  If conversions are gradual, this poor thief could not have been converted, he wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance at being saved.  If it takes six months, six weeks, or six days to convert a man, there was no chance for this thief.  If he had to be baptized first, he’d been doomed forever!  Turn to the 23rd chapter of Luke, and you’ll see how the Lord dealt with this man, who was not only a thief, but the worst kind of a thief.  It was only the worst of the worst who were condemned to die the death upon the cross.  We find this man was condemned to that most humiliating death.

  When an important person dies, we are anxious to ‘hear’ their last words and ‘see’ the last thing they did.  We ask, What did he do?  What were her last words?  The last act of the Son of God was to save a sinner.  He started His ministry by saving sinners, and ended it by saving this poor thief.  ”Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered? But thus saith the Lord: Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered.” (Isaiah 49:25)  He snatched this captive from the snare of the fowler and eternal damnation.  He was on the very edge of hell, and Christ snatched him right out of the hands of satan.  We are told by Matthew and Mark that these thieves came to curse the Son of God; they both reviled (hated) Christ.

  Notice the single fact that our Lord should die in the company of two vile criminals, the worst of the worst.  It was probably planned in order to bring Him shame and it was regarded by those who called out for His death as an additional humiliation.  Their hatred ordered that He should die as a criminal and with criminals, and in the center, between the two, to show that they thought Him the worst of the three.  But God…. Hallelujah! But God… in His own special way, confused the anger of the enemy and turned it to the triumph and glory of His Son, (what satan means for evil, God will turn it around for good) for had there been no dying thief hanging at His side, then the story of one of the most powerful testimonies of His love would not have been told!

  They were not only thieves but haters and were hated!  There were none to pity them.  Perhaps they might have had a mother in the crowd, but no one else had any pity for them. Justice cried out.  ”Let them be put to death; they are not worthy to live” but mercy said….“This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise!”.   Oh how often has mercy overruled justice in mine or your lives!  Lord when I mess up (as I do often) remember Thou me!  I find my heart singing.. ♪ ♫ “Pass me not, O gentle Savior, Hear my humble cry; While on others Thou art calling, Do not pass me by.” ♪ ♫   Remember Thou me!

  The question is…what was it that converted one of these thieves?  I haven’t a clue, I can’t say but I have an idea that it was the love showed by Jesus when He cried on the cross, ”Forgive them, for they know not what they do!” I can imagine that did what the scourging didn’t do.  They had gone through the trial, and their hearts had not been broken; they had been nailed to the cross, but their hearts had not been changed; they raised no cry to God for mercy, but they instead cursed the Son of God.  But when they heard this dying man cry, ”Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” they are hearing this…the Son of God crying to His Father to have mercy on them.  O how merciful is the Savior!  It’s remarkable that, while in the excruciating and mind numbing torment of the cross, the Son of Man had the heart, mind and will to pray for others.  Two heard with their ears but only one ‘heard’ with the heart and responded with….”Lord, remember Thou me”.  When we’re listening for the Lord to speak, we must listen with our hearts, not just our ears.

  I can imagine that perhaps the thief had a praying mother (thank God for the praying mommas out there), and that when he was a little boy his mother taught him the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, and he learned that verse, ”Seek ye the Lord while may He be found; call ye upon Him while He is near.” When he realized this was the Lord, he called upon Him at once.  He prayed out of the heart!  His prayer was short but to the point, ”Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”  This does not seem to ask much; but as he understood it, it meant all that an anxious heart could desire.  There is something remarkably touching in the trust implied in the form of the plea. He asks for no special blessing, no place on the right hand or on the left; no room in the King’s palace.  He is content to just not be forgotten, certain that if the King remember him at all, it will be with thoughts of tenderness and pity.  As he thought of the kingdom, he had such a revelation of the glory of God, that he felt that if the Lord would just think of him, he would be saved. O’ if we could exhibit such faith!  He asked the Lord to give him, right then and there, what he wanted and He did….Jesus said to him, “This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise!”  My friends you don’t have to pray a long drawn out prayer to get the attention of the Savior, just two words will get the attention of His ear…Remember me!  When we cry out to Him, He remembers us and He prays… “Father forgive them”.

  You see, in the conversion of this thief, salvation is quite different and separate from ‘works’.  Now some people tell us we have to earn our salvation, do this, don’t do that.  But I wonder what the one who believes that has to say about the salvation of this thief?  How is one able to explain this?  How is he able to work, when he has nails through both hands and both feet?  He cannot work with his hands or run with his feet.  He can barely get a breath from the pull of the nails.  But even when he had the use of his hands, they weren’t lifted up to praise God but to shed blood; and when he had the use of his feet, they weren’t used to carry the gospel but were used in the service of satan. What on God’s green earth could he have done to to earn his salvation?  The only thing he could do… acknowledge Christ for who He is and believe in his heart that only through Him he can be saved.  He took the Lord at His word, and believed.  It’s with the heart one must believe, not with their bodies.  O’ how I wish I had a witness!  God is a heart God and nothing done in the flesh can please Him. (Romans 8:8)  He is Spirit and searches to and fro for someone who will worship Him in spirit and in truth!  That means from the heart and with complete honesty!  No masks, no barriers, no pretense.  The thief came to Jesus just as He was, a dirty rotten scoundrel of a thief and Jesus accepted him just as he was!  He didn’t say go and clean yourself up and then come to Me.  He said, wherever I am, you will be there also.  Salvation comes by trusting in Jesus.  When the thief said to Jesus “Remember me” he was saved.  There was no altar call, no sinner’s prayer; there was no guide line to follow of our Christian religion expressed by baptism or any other fleshy ritual; there is merely an appeal for mercy from God.  When we pray, when we admit our brokenness, when we confess our need for a Savior, He saves us.  Pure and simple.  Just like that!  Jesus “remembers everyone who calls on Him.”

  You have to know Jesus died before the thief.  I can imagine He wanted to hurry home to get his mansion ready for him, and to welcome him when he got there so that he wouldn’t feel like a stranger.  (In My Father’s house are many mansions and I go and prepare a place for you and if I go, I will return and receive you to Myself so wherever I am, there you may be also.)  The Lord loved him, because he confessed Him in his darkest hour.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)  How many of us wait until our darkest hour to cry out…“Remember me”.

  It was a dark hour for all of those who said, “Who is this that claims to be the Son of God, He’s a blasphemer, kill Him”.  Only the thief asked to be remembered; he believed Christ has a kingdom (when You come into Your kingdom).  Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people believe Christ has a kingdom; yet they will not seek Him, they will not cry out, ”Lord, remember me.”  I believe the thief’s faith was even more remarkable because he was himself in great pain, and dying.  Yet, now, all of a sudden, he wakes up to the reality that the man who is dying at his side is something more than just a man.  Maybe he reads the title over his head, and believes it to be true, “This is Jesus the King of the Jews.”  Thus believing, he makes his appeal to the Messiah, whom he had just found, and commits himself to His hands.  But however he came to the conviction, mark what it was that he believed and expressed, I am a sinful man; all punishment that comes down upon me is richly deserved.  This man is pure and righteous, ‘Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom!’  That is all! That is all!  That is the thing that saves a man.  Listen my friends, do you not see this truth, that the moment someone recognizes Jesus to be the Christ he may at once put his trust in Him and be saved?  It’s not easy to exercise faith when you are tortured severely and are dying.  When we are the subject of extreme suffering it’s not easy to show that faith which we profess we possess at other times.  This man, suffering as he did, and seeing the Savior in the same state that he was in, nevertheless believed in eternal life.  Such faith as this is rarely seen.  I believe that if every unsaved soul would cry out, from the very depths of their heart and soul, ”Lord, remember me,” the answer would come that very moment “This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise! ”

  I know the thief’s soul leapt for joy when he heard Jesus cry, ”It is finished.” I believe, when the soldiers came to break his legs, he couldn’t wait to go.  He was a condemned man that morning, dying, hanging from a cross but “Hallelujah” that evening he was dancing around the throne of God.  If we could catch a glimpse of the throne we would see the Father there and Jesus at His right hand; but there by the throne you would also see that thief.  He is there now…today… just because he cried, ”Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”

Lord, remember Thou me!

In His love,
Elizabeth

NOTE….From MacLaren’s Exposition

  Finally. Here is the Cross as revealing and opening the true Paradise.-’This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.’ We have no concern at present with the many subtle inferences as to the state of the dead, and as to the condition of our Lord’s human spirit before the Resurrection, which have been drawn from these words. To me they do seem fairly to bear the broad and single conclusion that the spirits of the saved do enter at death into a state of conscious presence with their Saviour, and therefore of joy and felicity. But beyond this we have no firm ground for going. It is of more practical worth to note that the penitent’s vague prayer is answered, and over-answered. He asks, ‘When Thou comest’-whensoever that may be-’remember me.’ ‘I shall stand afar off; do not let me be utterly forgotten.’ Christ answers-’Remember thee! thou shalt be with Me, close to My side. Remember thee when I come!-this day shalt thou be with Me.’