The thief and the comma

The promise on the cross

A dying thief, with hours to live and no chance to make amends, turned to the man on the next cross and asked to be remembered. The answer Jesus gave him is one of the most beautiful sentences in the Bible, and one of the most frequently used to argue that the saved go to heaven at death.

Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

As printed, the sentence seems to settle the matter: that very day, both would be in Paradise. But three facts need to be laid beside the text before we conclude anything.

First fact: the punctuation is not inspired

The Greek manuscripts of the New Testament were written without punctuation, and largely without spaces between words. Every comma in your English Bible was placed there by a translator, centuries after Luke wrote. The words Jesus spoke could be read in two ways:

“Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

“Assuredly, I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”

The second reading is not a trick. The expression “I say to you today” is a well-known Hebrew idiom of solemn emphasis. Moses uses it again and again in Deuteronomy: “I command you today”, “I testify against you today”, “I set before you today”. The thief had asked Jesus to remember him at some undefined future time, “when You come into Your kingdom.” Jesus answers with a solemn assurance today, on the darkest day in history, while He hangs apparently powerless: you will be with Me. The emphasis is on the certainty of the promise, given now, not on the timing of its fulfilment.

Which reading is right? Punctuation cannot tell us; only the rest of Scripture can. So we turn to the second fact.

Second fact: Jesus did not go to Paradise that day

On the third day, Mary Magdalene met the risen Jesus at the tomb.

Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’ ”

“I have not yet ascended to My Father.” Three days after He died, Jesus had not yet been to the Father. Where is Paradise? John tells us in Revelation: the tree of life is “in the midst of the Paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7), and the tree of life is beside the throne of God (Revelation 22:1-2). Paradise is where the Father is. If Jesus had not yet gone there on Sunday morning, then neither He nor the thief was there on Friday afternoon. On Friday, Jesus was in the tomb. He “was dead”, as He Himself says (Revelation 1:18). He went into the grave as a man and lay there until the Father raised Him.

Third fact: the thief did not die that day

The Roman practice was to leave the crucified to die slowly, sometimes over days. Because the Sabbath was approaching, the Jewish leaders asked Pilate to have the legs of the victims broken so that they would die quickly and could be taken down (John 19:31-33). The soldiers broke the legs of the two thieves. Jesus was already dead. We are not told when the thief died, but the request itself suggests that, left alone, the men would have survived the day. Even so, the point is not whether the thief died before sunset. The point is that the promise could not have been fulfilled “today” in the sense of a conscious entry into Paradise, because Jesus Himself did not enter it that day.

What Jesus actually promised

Put the three facts together and the second reading is the only one that fits the rest of the Bible. Jesus, on that day, gave the thief a solemn assurance: you will be with Me in Paradise. When? When Jesus comes into His kingdom, which is exactly what the thief asked for. And Jesus had already told His disciples when that would be:

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

“I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” Jesus did not say, “When you die you will come to where I am.” He said, “I will come again and receive you.” The thief will be with Jesus in Paradise at the same time as every other believer: when He comes. On that Friday, the thief received the promise and then fell asleep. His next conscious moment will be the face of the One who promised. From where the thief stands, the promise is kept the instant he wakes.

A word about the strength of this promise

Nothing in this chapter weakens the thief’s hope or ours. If anything, the second reading makes the promise stronger. Jesus did not give the thief a vague hope of something after death. On the day when all seemed lost, with no kingdom in sight, He gave a solemn oath: today, I tell you, you will be with Me. The cross looked like the end of every kingdom Jesus had spoken of. The thief believed anyway, and Jesus honoured that belief with an assurance that holds until the morning.