thieves crucified with Jesus

187:0.1Af­ter the two brig­ands had been made ready, the sol­diers, un­der the di­rec­tion of a cen­tu­rion, started for the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. The cen­tu­rion in charge of these twelve sol­diers was the same cap­tain who had led forth the Ro­man sol­diers the pre­vi­ous night to ar­rest Je­sus in Geth­sem­ane. It was the Ro­man cus­tom to as­sign four sol­diers for each per­son to be cru­ci­fied. The two brig­ands were prop­erly scourged be­fore they were taken out to be cru­ci­fied, but Je­sus was given no fur­ther phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment; the cap­tain un­doubt­edly thought he had al­ready been suf­fi­ciently scourged, even be­fore his con­dem­na­tion.

187:0.2The two thieves cru­ci­fied with Je­sus were as­so­ciates of Barab­bas and would later have been put to death with their leader if he had not been re­leased as the Pass­over par­don of Pi­late. Je­sus was thus cru­ci­fied in the place of Barab­bas.

188:1.5Af­ter plac­ing the body in the tomb, the cen­tu­rion sig­naled for his sol­diers to help roll the door­stone up be­fore the en­trance to the tomb. The sol­diers then de­parted for Gehenna with the bod­ies of the thieves while the oth­ers re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, in sor­row, to ob­serve the Pass­over feast ac­cord­ing to the laws of Moses.

187:3.3Many who passed by wagged their heads and, rail­ing at him, said: “You who would de­stroy the tem­ple and build it again in three days, save your­self. If you are the Son of God, why do you not come down from your cross?” In like man­ner some of the rulers of the Jews mocked him, say­ing, “He saved oth­ers, but him­self he can­not save.” Oth­ers said, “If you are the king of the Jews, come down from the cross, and we will be­lieve in you.” And later on they mocked him the more, say­ing: “He trusted in God to de­liver him. He even claimed to be the Son of God—look at him now—cru­ci­fied be­tween two thieves.” Even the two thieves also railed at him and cast re­proach upon him.

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.”

188:0.1The day and a half that Je­sus’ mor­tal body lay in the tomb of Joseph, the pe­riod be­tween his death on the cross and his res­ur­rec­tion, is a chap­ter in the earth ca­reer of Mi­chael which is lit­tle known to us. We can nar­rate the burial of the Son of Man and put in this rec­ord the events as­so­ci­ated with his res­ur­rec­tion, but we can­not sup­ply much in­for­ma­tion of an au­then­tic na­ture about what re­ally tran­spired dur­ing this epoch of about thirty-six hours, from three o’clock Fri­day af­ter­noon to three o’clock Sun­day morn­ing. This pe­riod in the Mas­ter’s ca­reer be­gan shortly be­fore he was taken down from the cross by the Ro­man sol­diers. He hung upon the cross about one hour af­ter his death. He would have been taken down sooner but for the de­lay in dis­patch­ing the two brig­ands.

186:4.4Much of the de­lay in start­ing off with Je­sus for the site of the cru­ci­fix­ion was due to the last-minute de­ci­sion of the cap­tain to take along two thieves who had been con­demned to die; since Je­sus was to be cru­ci­fied that morn­ing, the Ro­man cap­tain thought these two might just as well die with him as wait for the end of the Pass­over fes­tiv­i­ties.

186:4.5As soon as the thieves could be made ready, they were led into the court­yard, where they gazed upon Je­sus, one of them for the first time, but the other had of­ten heard him speak, both in the tem­ple and many months be­fore at the Pella camp.

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.