Can I Be Saved Like the Thief on the Cross?

As John’s Gospel opens, it declares that Jesus is “full of grace and truth” and is the bringer of “grace and truth” (John 1:14, 17). There isn’t a more powerful picture of Jesus bringing grace and truth than the one displayed when Jesus extended salvation to one of the two thieves being crucified with Him. Early on that crucifixion day, both thieves “who were crucified with Him reviled Him” (Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32). However, while the One “full of grace and truth” was dying, He revealed His nature through the way He suffered, and the truth about who He was became clear to one of those thieves. After rebuking the other thief, this thief acknowledged the truth he must have previously heard and sought grace, saying, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom” (Luke 23:39-42). Jesus graciously promised, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Rather than simply be awed by this profound picture of grace-filled, redeeming love, some in the religious world have tried to find in it some kind of pattern to follow, often totally to the exclusion of clearer biblical teaching. When told that baptism “now saves us” (1 Peter 3:21), giving us an opportunity to “wash away [our] sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16) and to be “buried with Him” so that we can be granted “newness of life” (Romans 6:4), some people respond, “What about the thief on the cross? He wasn’t baptized. Can’t I be saved like him?”

The truth is that though the thief’s belief, repentance, and confession of Jesus as Lord are all a part of the typical story of a sinner’s salvation, there is not a single detailed account of a person being saved after the cross that doesn’t include baptism. The Bible explicitly says that the souls on Pentecost (Acts 2:38-41), the Samaritans (Acts 8:13-14), the Ethiopian (Acts 8:38), Saul (Acts 9:18), Cornelius (Acts 10:48), Lydia (Acts 16:15), the Jailer (Acts 16:33), the Corinthians (Acts 18:8), and the Ephesians (Acts 19:5) were all baptized. To seek salvation without baptism seems to be an effort to chase after an exception rather than follow what is very clearly presented as the rule.

There’s a possibility though that it might not be an exception at all. One of the things Bible students have to keep in mind as they study is that the absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. It’s suggested by some that the thief wasn’t baptized because we aren’t told that he was. The Bible says though, “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins” (Mark 1:4-5; cf. Matthew 3:1-6). While Matthew and Mark could have been hyperbolically using the word “all,” isn’t it possible that the word “all” includes the thief?

Whether the thief was or was not baptized though is actually of no real relevance for people living today. On one occasion, Jesus was preaching to a house full of people. As He was preaching, some individuals broke a hole in the roof of the house and lowered down their paralytic friend so that Jesus could heal him. Before healing him, Jesus said, “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mark 2:5). We have no record of the paralytic being baptized, but we also have no record of his belief, repentance, or confession. However, none of that matters, for as Jesus went on to say, “the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10). The thief encountered Jesus while He was “on earth,” during which time He could exercise His authority to forgive sins under whatever circumstances He saw fit.

Those of us alive today are living after Jesus’ death on the cross, and as we said earlier, there is not a detailed story of anyone being saved in the Bible after the cross where that person was not baptized. This is because the New Testament really is a testament; it is a document containing the last will and testament of Jesus Christ that came into effect when Jesus died, just as the Bible says it is (Hebrews 9:15-17). This principle is extremely helpful as we consider this situation: while it was Jesus’ prerogative to forgive sins on any basis while He lived, when He died, His will came into effect. To seek “the riches of the glory of His inheritance” (Ephesians 1:18), we have to abide by the conditions stipulated in His will.

It remains Jesus’ prerogative to forgive sins on whatever basis He sees fit. After all, He has “all authority… in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). However, while He was on earth, He prepared us for the thought that He intended to defer judgment to the conditions stipulated in His will, the New Testament. The One who will one day judge all of mankind (2 Corinthians 5:10) said, “He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day” (John 12:48).

While we can join the ranks of the saved just as the thief did, it would be extremely unwise to seek to be saved as he was. He asked for salvation while on a cross bearing the punishment for his own sin. Do we really want to find ourselves there? Let’s answer the call while we live to hear the Gospel, believe it, repent of our sins, and confess Jesus as Lord just like the thief did. But let’s also be “crucified with Christ” and unite with Him “in the likeness of His death” through baptism (Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:3-5).  

-Patrick Swayne  
patrick@tftw.org