Who he really was, what he asked, what Jesus promised him, and why a dying man with nothing to offer is the clearest picture of salvation in the Gospels.
The thief on the cross was one of two men crucified beside Jesus, and he was very likely a violent rebel rather than a petty thief. He mocked Jesus with the others, then turned, admitted his guilt, and asked to be remembered in Jesus' kingdom.
Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” No baptism, no good works, no time left. Just trust in a dying King, and a promise that did not wait.
Almost every detail of this story pushes against something we have been taught about who gets in and how.
The word “thief” makes most of us picture a man who lifted a purse in the market. The Gospels point somewhere darker. Matthew and Mark call the two men lēstai, and Luke calls them kakourgoi, evildoers. Neither word describes a shoplifter.
A robber or bandit who takes by violence or the threat of it. Not someone who steals quietly, but someone who takes by force, usually as part of a band.
Matthew 27:38 and Mark 15:27 use it for the two men beside Jesus. The NIV translates it “rebels” in both places.
Luke uses kakourgoi, evildoers or criminals. A broader word, and just as far from petty theft.
The same word describes Barabbas, and Mark 15:7 places Barabbas among the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising.
The American Bible Society's study of the term describes lēstai as “armed bands of marauders who are intentionally brutal when they carry out their activities”, and notes that Josephus uses the word some forty-two times. In first-century Judea those bands often blurred into armed resistance against Rome. Rome did not crucify people for small theft. It crucified slaves, rebels and anyone it wanted to make an example of.
So it is fair to say these were likely men from the same world as Barabbas, the man the crowd chose to free that morning. That detail matters. The man who received the most direct promise of paradise in all of Scripture was not a decent person who made one mistake. By his own admission, he deserved his sentence.
Two unnamed men, one on each side of Jesus. Luke 22:37 has Jesus applying Isaiah 53:12 to Himself, that He would be numbered with the transgressors.
The names Dysmas and Gestas come from the Gospel of Nicodemus, an apocryphal work written long after the Gospels. Later tradition spelled it Dismas.
The Gospels leave him nameless, which is fitting. He could be anybody.
Most sermons skip this. The repentant man did not start out repentant.
“In the same way the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.”
Luke places Jesus' prayer for His executioners at the start of the crucifixion, a line missing from some early manuscripts. Both men hung close enough to hear it.
“Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” A demand to be rescued from the cross, with no interest in the one hanging on it.
The other rebukes him, admits that the two of them are being punished justly, and says of Jesus that “this man has done nothing wrong.”
He asks to be remembered. Jesus answers with today.
Some read Luke as contradicting Matthew and Mark. The simpler reading is that Luke moves forward in time. Both men began with mockery, and somewhere in those hours one of them changed. Scripture does not say what turned him. If you want more, read my study on the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy.
“Don't you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
Luke 23:40 To 41 · NIVNotice the shape of what he says. He fears God. He tells the truth about himself without excuses. He tells the truth about Jesus when nobody else on that hill would. That is what repentance looks like in the Bible: a turn in how you see God, yourself and Jesus, before it is ever a list of changed behaviors.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Consider how strange this sentence is. He is talking to a man who is naked, bleeding and a few hours from death, under a sign that mocks Him as King of the Jews. Everyone else on the hill reads that sign as a joke. This man reads it as true.
He did not ask to be taken down. He asked to be remembered. In Scripture, when God remembers someone, it is never just recall. God remembered Noah and the waters receded. God remembered Rachel and she conceived. To be remembered by the King is to be acted on.
He called Jesus “Lord” and that confession was his ticket in.
Most modern translations read “Jesus, remember me.” The King James reads “Lord,” following later manuscripts. Either way, what saved him was trust, not a title.
There is something else in his words. He seems to expect the kingdom later, maybe at a resurrection at the end of the age, the way many Jews of his day did. Jesus does not correct his theology. He moves the date. “When you come into your kingdom” gets the answer “today.”
That fits everything Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God. It was not a far-off reign at the edge of history. It was arriving in Him, and on that hill it arrived through a cross.
The dying man asked for someday, and Jesus answered with today. The Kingdom he hoped for later was already standing next to him.
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Luke 23:43 · NIVThe word paradeisos is a borrowed word for an enclosed garden or park. The Greek Old Testament used it for the garden of Eden. It shows up only three times in the New Testament: here, in 2 Corinthians 12:4 where Paul is caught up to paradise, and in Revelation 2:7, the paradise of God with the tree of life. It is garden language for being with God, as we unpack in what paradise is in the Bible.
Now the comma. The earliest Greek manuscripts have no punctuation, so the sentence can be read two ways.
“I tell you, today you will be with me.” The promise is for that same day. Almost every translation reads it this way.
“I tell you today, you will be with me.” The promise is spoken today and kept later. Held by those who believe the dead sleep until a future resurrection.
The argument is real, and honestly it is not decisive either way on grammar alone. What tips it for us is the rest of the New Testament. Paul says a believer who dies is away from the body and at home with the Lord, and that departing to be with Christ is better by far. We walk through that more fully in do we go to heaven when we die. Most translations keep “today” with the promise, and so do we.
People sometimes ask how this squares with the idea that Jesus descended somewhere dark after He died. He told a dying man they would be together in paradise that day, and He told His Father “into your hands I commit my spirit.” Neither sentence sounds like torment. We look at that question in where Jesus went after He died, and at all seven sayings in what Jesus said on the cross.
Look at what this man did not have. Scripture records no baptism, and from a cross he had no way to be baptized. There was no time to pay anyone back or prove himself. He had a request and a dying King, and that was enough.
Salvation is a gift received by trusting Jesus. It is not earned by rituals, performance or a long record of good behavior, and this is the plainest picture of that in the Gospels. We teach it without hedging.
Baptism matters. Jesus commanded it, Acts treats it as the immediate next step, and we will gladly baptize you. But the water is not what saves. Anyone who teaches that a believer who dies unbaptized is lost has to explain this man, and we do not think they can. We lay out the fuller picture in how to be saved and in what baptism is.
The strongest objection deserves a fair hearing. He died before the resurrection and before Jesus gave the command to baptize, so, the argument goes, he is a special case under the old covenant. The timing point is fair. But in Acts 10 the Spirit falls on Cornelius and his household before anyone brings water. God keeps showing that He saves first and the sign follows.
This also cuts the other way. Some people treat the thief as a loophole: live how you like, turn at the end, and it all works out. That misreads him completely. He did not plan a late turn. He met Jesus late. Grace is never a strategy for delaying grace, a point we make about the workers hired at the eleventh hour in the last shall be first.
And we refuse the error on the other side too. Some Christians quietly treat late conversions as second class, or doubt the family member who came to faith in a hospital bed. The man on the cross was hired at the last possible hour and received the same promise as the apostles. Nobody in the Kingdom gets a smaller seat for arriving late.
What did the thief on the cross offer Jesus in exchange for the promise of paradise?
He admitted his guilt, defended Jesus and asked to be remembered. He had nothing to trade and did not try to trade. Jesus answered trust with a promise, which is how grace works.
Some of you are reading this because someone you love died, and you are not sure where they stood with God. That is a heavy thing to carry.
Here is what this story gives you. Luke shows us a conversation between a dying man and Jesus that no one else on that hill understood. You were not present for every moment between your loved one and God, and none of us are. Leave them with the One who answered a dying man's whisper with today. If you want someone to pray with you, our team is here at need prayer.
There is something striking about who Jesus chose to be His companion that day. Not Peter, not John, not a priest or a scholar. A convicted rebel who had spent part of that same morning insulting Him.
That is the Gospel in one picture. Jesus does not wait for us to clean up. He meets us where we are, and He speaks life into it.
Luke does not tell us what became of the other man, and we will not write an ending Luke left blank. What we know is that the invitation hung right next to him the whole time.
The same Jesus is King now. His Kingdom is present, not postponed, and the promise still works the same way. You bring nothing, you tell the truth about yourself, and you ask Him to remember you. He does.
For more on this ground, read where Jesus was crucified, what we believe, or come find us in Deer Park and plan a visit.
A violent man who deserved his cross turned from mockery to trust in his last hours, asked the dying King to remember him, and was promised paradise that same day, with no baptism, no works and no time left, because salvation has always been a gift.
It is not. Tell us where you are, and someone from Sound of Heaven will pray with you and walk the next step with you.
He was one of two men crucified beside Jesus outside Jerusalem. Matthew and Mark call them lēstai, a word for violent bandits that the NIV translates rebels, and Luke calls them criminals. He was likely not a petty thief but a man from the same world as Barabbas. At first he joined in mocking Jesus. Then he rebuked the other man, admitted he deserved his sentence, and asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingdom.
Jesus said, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43). Paradise is a borrowed word for an enclosed garden, used in the Greek Old Testament for Eden, and in the New Testament it means being with God. The man asked to be remembered someday, and Jesus answered with today. It is one of the seven sayings from the cross and the only one spoken to a condemned criminal.
Scripture records no baptism, and from a cross he had no way to be baptized. Jesus still promised him paradise that same day. That is why we teach that baptism matters and is commanded, but it is not what saves a person. Some argue he is a special case because he died before the resurrection. Yet in Acts 10 the Spirit falls on Cornelius before any water, and God keeps showing that He saves first and the sign follows.
The Bible never names them. The names Dysmas and Gestas come from the Gospel of Nicodemus, also called the Acts of Pilate, an apocryphal work written long after the Gospels. In that text Dysmas is the one who rebukes the other. Later tradition spelled the name Dismas and honored him as the good thief. These names are later tradition rather than Scripture, and nothing about the story depends on them.
Yes, at first. Matthew 27:44 and Mark 15:32 both say that the men crucified with Jesus heaped insults on Him. Luke 23:39 to 43 then shows one of them continuing while the other stops, rebukes him and turns to Jesus. The simplest reading is that the accounts do not contradict each other. Luke moves forward in time and shows that over those hours one of the two men changed his mind about who Jesus was.