Luke 23:43

Luke 23:43

I. There was something of prophecy even in the word today.For crucifixion ended not, commonly, with the twelve hours, or the twenty-four; it was protracted often, in its horrors and its anguish, till the second day, the third, the fourth. There was a sound of mercy in the very today,promising a speedier end to those sufferings. In Paradise.That name of rest and felicity, appropriated in the Greek Bible to the original home of man's innocence, is thus transferred by our Lord Himself to a state or region immediately beyond death, into which He Himself would enter that very day; so soon, therefore, as the warfare was accomplished, and the burden of the flesh laid aside. The todayso powerfully emphasised leaves no doubt whatever upon this interpretation. Like other figures of Holy Scripture, Paradise is capable of more than one application; here to the intermediate, there to the final, home of the blessed dead; here to that presence of Christ which is instant upon dissolution, of which St. Paul says that he has a desire to depart and to be with Christ, elsewhere to that presence of Christ which waits for resurrection, for the glorious adoption and manifestation of the sons of God.

II. "Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Wheresoever the Christian soul is while the body sleeps in dust, thither journeyed the Lord, brightening our Hades, as He also consecrated the grave. Whatsoever be the unseen home for us, between death and glory, such was it for Him. One mysterious passage seems to tell us that in that intermediate state the Spirit of Christ was not inactive; that the putting to death of the body was the quickening of the soul, and that in some errand of love and power He journeyed in that interval, carrying hope and salvation to some inmates of a less than perfect world. The text is a word of blessed hope for such as are mourning the blessed dead; for such, also, as feel that natural, that inevitable, human shrinking from a journey in the dark into an undiscovered country and an unrealised world. Christ is there in a sense in which He is not here; there are they, and there shalt thou be in thy season, with Him in Paradise.

C. J. Vaughan, Words from the Cross,p. 15.

References: Luke 23:43. J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week,p. 258; J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,3rd series, p. 26. Luke 23:44. J. Wells, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 421.Luke 23:45. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 267.