What About the Thief?

I promised Friday that I was going to stop blogging about the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ this week, but, then I touched on the (in)famous thief on the cross on Friday, and realized that that topic alone deserved more discussion than I could possibly include in that post, so, once more, but tomorrow, something completely different, I promise.
Luke 23:39-43 gives the account, although Luke is apparently less convinced than Matthew that the individual involved was a thief, he uses the more generic term, malefactor. Basically, the story is this: at the crucifixion, Jesus and two others that had also been condemned to death. At first, the other two mocked Jesus, knowing that He had claimed to be the Messiah, and believing that God would not allow something this horrific to happen to His Messiah. Sometime during the crucifixion, though, one of the men had a fit of conscience, and defended Jesus, realizing that He didn’t deserve the same fate.
Where did this attack of conscience come from? Did this man, knowing that he was going to die, suddenly decide that he wanted to do something noble? Perhaps he thought history would remember him more favorably than the other… I can’t help but think that this was something more along the lines of Matthew 16:13-17, where Jesus asked the disciples who He was, and Peter told Him; leading Jesus to say that flesh and blood had not revealed it to Peter, but the Father. I’m not sure what the thief on the cross prayed, but it seems to me that whatever it was, led the Father to reveal to him that salvation was on the next cross over.
Now, a lot of people theorize that since the thief on the cross clearly believed in his heart, and confessed with his mouth, just as we are told to do in Romans 10:9, that it proves that belief and confession are all that is required for salvation. I have blogged before salvation being more complicated than that. Let us consider for a moment that this was a pretty extreme situation. For one thing, Christianity was a fairly new idea. Jesus’ followers weren’t even known as Christians yet. How many opportunities did the thief have to accept Jesus as his personal savior prior to finding himself dying right next to Him? Further, we know that the thief was a sinner (aren’t we all?); he wasn’t being crucified as a follower of Jesus. Now we have been taught that baptism is for the remission of sins (Luke 3:3, Acts 2:38). Obviously, the thief didn’t climb down off of his cross, get baptized, and then get back on his cross, but it’s equally obvious that he had the kind of sin in his life that would have kept him out of Heaven, so what happened? Surely Jesus knew what kind of man He was talking to… In Luke 5:24 (and Matthew 9:6, and Mark 2:10), Jesus demonstrates that He has the power on earth to forgive sins.
Further, in the book of Romans (often referred to as the book of salvation), Apostle Paul explains to us the mechanism of baptism: When we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into His death, the body of sin is destroyed, for he that is dead is freed from sin. In other words, our baptism represents the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The thief didn’t have to go through a rite representative of dying with Christ, he literally died with Christ.
How many of us can say, honestly, that the first time we ever had the opportunity to accept Jesus was when we were in the process of already dying, that we were dying with Him, and that He personally forgave our sins? Not too many, I would think. Yet, I have heard an awful lot of people use the thief on the cross as an excuse not to get baptized. I don’t think God likes excuses (I’ve certainly never gotten a warm, fuzzy feeling when I have tried to use one on Him). The Bible also tells us that (in James 4:17), to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. So, while the thief on the cross clearly didn’t need to be baptized, the rest of us do; not only would it be a sin to not get baptized, given the opportunity, but we would still face every other sin that we ever committed in judgment…
By the way, one other thing, in John 10:1, Jesus said that if anyone comes up any other way, the same is a thief and a robber. Now I have sometimes wondered if He didn’t say that, knowing that there would be a thief that would end up in Heaven by a little bit different route than the rest of us. Really, though, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, so the thief did make it to Heaven by the same Way. Really, though, too, if you read John 10, Jesus isn’t talking about getting to Heaven some other way, He’s talking about someone coming into the sheepfold (the church) pretending to be the Shepherd, and that’s a whole different situation.