Thursday, March 6, 2008
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Luke 23:42 Then he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom."
*WHOEVER* BELIEVES IN HIM SHALL NOT PERISH
Public executions have always brought together the most diverse of people -- from those whose duty brings them there to those whose inner urges will not let them stay away to those whose hearts go out to the executed and those who remember the victims of the condemned. And whether the scene is out of our own time or the Old West or first century Judea, we who observe from armchair and couch are sometimes startled to find we have a kinship with someone at such a place of violent death.
That is surely true when we find our hearts and voices one with the Roman legionnaire who confesses regarding the Man on the center cross: "Surely this man was the Son of God!"
But we are jolted out of any apathy that might still linger in us when it strikes us how much we have in common with the condemned man nailed up next to Jesus, the one who prays his new-found Lord to remember him there on the last day of his life.
After all, we also must join this man in his confession . . . of guilt. We are also each in line to "receive the due reward of our deeds." Thank God we can join the condemned and dying thief in turning also to his only Source of hope. We too call out from the depth of our hearts: "Lord, remember me . . ."
We do have an advantage over the repentant thief on the cross next to Jesus, but it is not in some imagined lesser guilt. We have a word not yet recorded when he was executed. A single blessed word of divine invitation and holy power. A word that the Spirit of God has enabled us each to claim as our own. A word on which we stand and to which we hold. A single inspired word from the pen of the Apostle John which makes our hearts sing as we stand beneath the cross of Jesus:
"Whoever."
