The Crucifixion

187:4.1One of the brig­ands railed at Je­sus, say­ing, “If you are the Son of God, why do you not save your­self and us?” But when he had re­proached Je­sus, the other thief, who had many times heard the Mas­ter teach, said: “Do you have no fear even of God? Do you not see that we are suf­fer­ing justly for our deeds, but that this man suf­fers un­justly? Bet­ter that we should seek for­give­ness for our sins and sal­va­tion for our souls.” When Je­sus heard the thief say this, he turned his face to­ward him and smiled ap­prov­ingly. When the male­fac­tor saw the face of Je­sus turned to­ward him, he mus­tered up his cour­age, fanned the flick­er­ing flame of his faith, and said, “Lord, re­mem­ber me when you come into your king­dom.” And then Je­sus said, “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you to­day, you shall some­time be with me in Par­a­dise.”

187:4.2The Mas­ter had time amidst the pangs of mor­tal death to lis­ten to the faith con­fes­sion of the be­liev­ing brig­and. When this thief reached out for sal­va­tion, he found de­liv­er­ance. Many times be­fore this he had been con­strained to be­lieve in Je­sus, but only in these last hours of con­scious­ness did he turn with a whole heart to­ward the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. When he saw the man­ner in which Je­sus faced death upon the cross, this thief could no longer re­sist the con­vic­tion that this Son of Man was in­deed the Son of God.

187:4.3Dur­ing this episode of the con­ver­sion and re­cep­tion of the thief into the king­dom by Je­sus, the Apos­tle John was ab­sent, hav­ing gone into the city to bring his mother and her friends to the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Luke sub­se­quently heard this story from the con­verted Ro­man cap­tain of the guard.

187:4.4The Apos­tle John told about the cru­ci­fix­ion as he re­mem­bered the event two thirds of a cen­tury af­ter its oc­cur­rence. The other rec­ords were based upon the recital of the Ro­man cen­tu­rion on duty who, be­cause of what he saw and heard, sub­se­quently be­lieved in Je­sus and en­tered into the full fel­low­ship of the king­dom of heaven on earth.

187:4.5This young man, the pen­i­tent brig­and, had been led into a life of vi­o­lence and wrong­do­ing by those who ex­tolled such a ca­reer of rob­bery as an ef­fec­tive pa­tri­otic protest against po­lit­i­cal op­pres­sion and so­cial in­jus­tice. And this sort of teach­ing, plus the urge for ad­ven­ture, led many oth­er­wise well-mean­ing youths to en­list in these dar­ing ex­pe­di­tions of rob­bery. This young man had looked upon Barab­bas as a hero. Now he saw that he had been mis­taken. Here on the cross be­side him he saw a re­ally great man, a true hero. Here was a hero who fired his zeal and in­spired his high­est ideas of moral self-re­spect and quick­ened all his ide­als of cour­age, man­hood, and brav­ery. In be­hold­ing Je­sus, there sprang up in his heart an over­whelm­ing sense of love, loy­alty, and gen­uine great­ness.

187:4.6And if any other per­son among the jeer­ing crowd had ex­pe­ri­enced the birth of faith within his soul and had ap­pealed to the mercy of Je­sus, he would have been re­ceived with the same lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion that was dis­played to­ward the be­liev­ing brig­and.

187:4.7Just af­ter the re­pen­tant thief heard the Mas­ter’s prom­ise that they should some­time meet in Par­a­dise, John re­turned from the city, bring­ing with him his mother and a com­pany of al­most a dozen women be­liev­ers. John took up his po­si­tion near Mary the mother of Je­sus, sup­port­ing her. Her son Jude stood on the other side. As Je­sus looked down upon this scene, it was noon­tide, and he said to his mother, “Woman, be­hold your son!” And speak­ing to John, he said, “My son, be­hold your mother!” And then he ad­dressed them both, say­ing, “I de­sire that you de­part from this place.” And so John and Jude led Mary away from Gol­go­tha. John took the mother of Je­sus to the place where he tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem and then has­tened back to the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Af­ter the Pass­over Mary re­turned to Beth­saida, where she lived at John’s home for the rest of her nat­u­ral life. Mary did not live quite one year af­ter the death of Je­sus.

187:4.8Af­ter Mary left, the other women with­drew for a short dis­tance and re­mained in at­ten­dance upon Je­sus un­til he ex­pired on the cross, and they were yet stand­ing by when the body of the Mas­ter was taken down for burial.