Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer talks about the thief on the cross. Welcome back to Summit Life with J.D. Greer, Pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.
As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Have you ever come to a crucial moment in life when you realize that one way or another, the decision you were about to make was going to change things forever? Maybe it was your wedding day or when you took the plunge and launched a new business or moved the family across the country. Well, today we're looking at a crucial moment that changed not the course of just a single life, but the course of human history. And the real takeaway from today's teaching is how you respond to this moment will change your eternity as well.
So let's not wait any longer. Here's Pastor J.D. Luke chapter 23, verse 32. Let me jump back to verse 26 real quick. As they led Jesus away to be crucified, two others, verse 32, who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him. Verse 33, when they came to a place that is called the Skull, it was there that they crucified him and the criminals, one on his right and the one on his left.
And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, verse 34, for they know not what they do. These three crosses are a microcosm of human history that tell the entire story of the human race. You're going to see a cross of redemption, you're going to see a cross of rejection, and you're going to see a cross of repentance.
First, let's talk for a minute about Jesus's cross, the one in the middle, the cross of redemption. You see, from the beginning, God had told his people that he would send a savior to take their place under the curse of death. Genesis 3 15, he said, but that serpent of death is going to bite the heel of the deliverer.
He's saying that, yes, there will be a guy who will come who will crush death, but he's actually going to be bitten by death and die from it. It's a promise that God would absorb the arrow of his judgment, the death sentence into himself, rather than firing that arrow down into us. On the cross, he became our sin so that from the cross, he could forgive our sin. So that from the cross, he could look out at those who had rejected and failed him and pray what he did there in verse 34. Father, forgive them. He could extend forgiveness to them because he was being punished for them. Jesus died instead of you.
He took your place. Now we turn to the other two crosses on either side of him, burying the two criminals, because they're going to demonstrate for us the division, the dividing line of the entire human race. Verse 39, one of the criminals who were hanged railed at him and said, Are you not the Christ?
Save yourself and us. Verse 40, but the other rebuked him. Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds.
But this man, this man has done nothing wrong. Verse 42. And then he turns to Jesus and he says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Verse 43.
And Jesus said to him, truly, I say to you today, today, you will be with me in paradise. Now, first, let's talk about what these two guys have in common. First, they're both equally bad. We know that both of them are minutes away from dying. We know that both criminals would have been happy for Jesus to have delivered them from death. But one thief began to understand some things, things that are necessary for a true conversion.
And understanding these three things I'm going to give you is the dividing line of the human race. Number one, he knew the difference, this repentant thief in seeking help from God and seeking God for himself. Do you see how verse 40, the repentant thief doesn't ask to be taken down from the cross? I'm sure y'all, he would have been happy if Jesus had offered that. But when he called out on Jesus for help, he doesn't mention being taken down off the cross.
All he says is, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Because the thief realizes, listen, that what he needs is not a change in circumstance. What he needs is a change in what his life has been centered upon. So instead of asking God for the life he wants, he wants to make God his life. Do you understand the difference? Do you understand the difference in seeking God to give you the life you want and wanting God to become your life? It's the difference between loving God for himself and finding God as a useful means to some other end. Because ultimately what salvation is about is not changing the circumstance of your life, it's about reconnecting you and restoring you to God regardless of the circumstance of your life.
Have you truly repented before God or have you just tried to arrange a deal with God? Number two, he understood his guilt before God. He understood his guilt before God.
Tim Keller says that this second thief says something that is impossible to admit without God's help. Verse 41, he looks at this other criminal and he says, we are punished justly getting what our deeds deserved. He's not talking primarily about Rome's punishment of him on the cross. What he's saying is we deserve to be abandoned by God to be punished for our sins.
We deserve before God to die. You see, repentance recognizes that sin is first and foremost against God. King David committed what had to be one of the most egregious public sins in history. When God after a year finally brings him to repentance, David writes a Psalm recording his repentance, Psalm 51, and right at the beginning of that Psalm, David says, against you Lord and you only have I sinned.
How could he say that? How could he say against you and you only have I sinned? It's not because he didn't recognize the wrong he'd done to others or that he needed to repay them. It's because God was so big in his heart that this was the most important one he sinned against.
You see, repentance has to be first vertical before it's horizontal. There's a difference between feeling remorse for the mess that sin has made of your life and feeling actual repentance toward God because of it. Second Corinthians 7 10 says that there's actually two kinds of sorrow for sin. This is very important to understand because a lot of times we think any sorrow is good sorrow and anytime there are tears in church, oh, that's got to be a sign that God's working in their life.
Paul says not at all. He says a lot of people weep over sin. They weep over regret, the shame that it brings on them, the harm they've caused somebody else. He said that's a worldly sorrow that ultimately will not lead anywhere. He says godly sorrow is directed toward God and godly sorrow is not measured by the amount of tears that flow out of your eyes.
It's measured by the change that happens in your hearts. That sadness that you feel about your sin, is it because of what your sin has done to others? Is it because of what your sin has done to you? Is it because of the mess you've made or is it because you actually understand your responsibility to God that he is the main one you sinned against? He was your creator. He's the one that filled your life with goodness.
He's the father you spurned and who you pushed out of your life. You see, as long as you think only about the horizontal dimensions of your sin, I hurt my wife, I embarrass myself, I failed my kids, you'll never really change. This thief recognized first and foremost his relationship with God that he had spurned and torn apart.
Have you repented toward God because of your sin? Here's the third thing we see about him. He boldly dared upon Jesus' grace. Now, when you think about it, what this thief asks is crazy, right?
I mean, think about it. I know that you're the perfect Lord from heaven, but whenever you get to wherever you're going, into whatever reward you're coming into, would you stop and remember a guy you met for about 15 minutes who was being executed because of treason and murder and who had done nothing worthy in his life? That is a crazy request. The only thing crazier than the request is that Jesus grants it. Why would Jesus do that? What did Jesus have to gain from granting this request? This guy's got nothing to offer Jesus. He's got a few minutes to live. That's it. Yet Jesus grants the request.
Why? Because God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world so that the world through him might be saved. We beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten, the father full of grace and truth.
You see, grace is what you show when you really love somebody. Here we see the father in Jesus's parable of the prodigal son welcoming home his lost son. He's not evaluating what his son's going to be able to do for him.
He's not evaluating what it's going to cost to bring him back. He's just so in love with his lost son that all he thinks about is the joy of having him back. I'm telling you, just watching this interaction, I feel I got to take off my shoes. This is holy ground, marvelous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. Yonder on Calvary's mount outpoured there where the blood of the lamb was filled. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that is somehow greater than all my sin. You may not have anything else.
You may have spoiled your entire life away. You may have nothing left to offer to God, but you still have the ability to reach out to him. You have the ability to call out for mercy to him and that you find is enough. Now verse 43, look specifically at what Jesus says in response, because there are some really important things you can learn there too. Jesus's response is one line. Today, today you will be with me in paradise. The key point of emphasis in Jesus's statement is the phrase with me because the essence of salvation you see is being united with Jesus.
Write this down. Christian conversion is not a change of circumstance. Life doesn't suddenly become better.
The guy stayed on the cross. Christian conversion is not a change of circumstance. It's not even primarily a change of behavior. You don't immediately become a perfect person. It's a change of status.
It is a change of position. You are now identified with Christ. And Ephesians 2 six, Paul describes salvation this way. I love this verse.
Watch this. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him. Now I know it's not English class, but what tense is that verb in?
Past tense. He seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Shouldn't it be we'll be seated? Like one day I'll be seated with him in the heavenly places. No, no. According to this verse, we are already positionally seated in the heavenly places because salvation is a position change.
That's what conversion is. He took our sin. We got his position before the father. It's as sure as if it's mine as if I were already seated there. I'm already seated in the heavenly places. I mean, I'm literally at the right hand of God with him. So Jesus says to this thief, as of right now, you're with me from this point on, whether living or dying, you're going to be identified with me and what I have belongs to you. So today when you die, you're going to have as much access to paradise as I do. You're listening to summit life with JD Greer.
You can always find more resources online free of charge by visiting JD Greer.com. We'll finish up our teaching for the week in just a moment, but I wanted to remind you of our new featured resource for the month of March. It's a brand new devotional prayer guide based on one of pastor JD's most impactful sermon series from the past called smoke from a fire. It's all about our emotions and what's at the root of them. St. Augustine once said that our deepest emotions often function like smoke from a fire. They can indicate what is going wrong in our hearts before we can articulate it.
In other words, where there's smoke, there's fire and we need to pay close attention. The aim of the Bible's teaching on emotions isn't to suppress them or even to manage them, but to read them accurately, express them honestly and allow the gospel to reshape them completely. This five week digital prayer guide will help you evaluate those emotions from a biblical perspective each day. It's sure to be a spiritually nourishing season of study that'll help you grow closer to your heavenly father. We'll send the smoke from a fire digital prayer guide to you immediately as our thanks for your gift to the ministry right now.
So give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgrier.com. Now let's finish up the week strong. Once again, here's pastor JD. When you get this concept that conversion is essentially Jesus giving his identity to you as your own, a few radical changes are going to happen in your life without you trying to even make them happen.
It just happens. In fact, I would say these almost serve as tests for whether you've really understood salvation. Here's the first one, letter A. You'll be assured of your salvation. You'll get assured of it. There's no more, I hope I can make it. I hope I've been good enough.
I hope he grades on the curve. You realize that you're as sure of heaven as Jesus is. 1 John 2, 1. John says, he says, we have an advocate before the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Advocate, all it means is lawyer. That's the word they would use by then, a lawyer. Whenever I read that verse, here's what I always thought it meant.
This was like me in high school. I always pictured Jesus as my advocate before the father and the conversation would go like this. They'd pull out a big case file, Mark Greer, and it would have all the stuff that I'd done wrong that week.
And, you know, Jesus would lay it down and he'd be like, okay, I got Greer's case filed. It's been a rough week. Father, I'm just going to go ahead and tell you, it's not been pretty. And they started going through it. He's like, yeah, he did this again and all this is wrong. And this one, I know this files back in here.
It's been here a hundred times, but we're going to put it back in there and all this stuff. And he lay it all out there. And then Jesus, my advocate would say, but dad, I want you to go easy on him. I want you to go easy on him because you know, he's a good kid.
He's trying his best. And I tell you what, don't unleash the wrath on him. Just give him one more chance. Have mercy on him. Do it for me, dad, because you know, I went to the whole, went to our thing and you know, so you owe me.
So do it. That's what I, how I thought the conversation went. Um, until I read the three or four verses right before first John two, one, first John one, nine, if we confess our sins, he is faithful. And you know, this word, what word is it? Just not merciful. It didn't say he's faithful and merciful to forgive our sins. He's faithful. Just means he couldn't do anything else and still be righteous.
Here's how that works. When the subject of JD Greer comes up before the father, Jesus Christ says, there ain't no file. There ain't no file that's got anything about him because everything that he's ever done was put upon me and it would be unjust for the father to bring back up a sin I'd committed because it would be unjust for God to punish the same sin twice. And if God has put on Jesus the penalty for all my sin, it would literally be unjust for him to hold me accountable for it. So Jesus at the right hand of God does not plead for mercy. He pleads for justice. You see, when you understand that you become assured of salvation because no longer is it resting upon you. You say, well, okay, so I know he's seated there, but how do I know that he belongs to me?
The easy answer is because I've claimed him. I put my hand on the head of that lamb. If you place your hand on the head of Jesus and say, that's my sin bear, Jesus will never move it off. If you're like, well, I'm still a little unclear on that. I wrote a book called Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart. Okay. And I would never use a church service to promote a book because every time you promote a book like that, an angel loses his wings and a puppy dies in heaven.
So I would not do that. Those who cannot answer the question of whether they know for sure they are saved quite often are not saved because they don't understand salvation. They still think that whether they go to heaven is at least partially based on them. It's not about you. It's about him. It is finished. The one work that needed to be done has been done. And it's offered to you as a gift. If you will receive it, you are saved by works, just not your works. It's saved by his work that you receive as a gift. And see, when that happens, letter B, you'll lose your fear of death. Can you imagine how this thief's outlook on life changed in that moment? Up until that moment, this had represented the end of everything for him.
Now this is simply the gateway into a new existence. You know, listen, I don't want to die. I don't want to leave my kids. I don't want to leave my wife. I don't want to leave you, but I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of death because in Jesus, it's nothing but a gateway into this very afternoon I'll be in paradise. When you get that, letter C, you'll gain a new confidence in life.
When you get that, you're going to gain a new confidence. I know this thief doesn't have long to live, but can't you imagine that he quit caring about all the people around him? Who cares if all the people around me are taunting me or the religious leaders are condemning me?
When you embrace your position in Christ, criticism quits bothering you as much. Here's what I think about it. Say you're a billionaire, I mean like a legitimate, full-on multi-billionaire. Let's say you're in a taxi cab and you get out and you're going to pay the driver and it's $20 and you pull out a 20 and as you're pulling out a $10 bill, you know, blows in the wind and starts blowing down the street and it blows across the street and you can't go get it because you die trying to get across the street. Are you going to be depressed for the rest of the day because you lost that $10? Are you going to be upset for the rest of your life because you lost $10? Of course not. You're a billionaire.
What's $10? Let me ask you, are you a Christian? Do you toss and turn at night because somebody snubbed you? You're like a billionaire on their knees looking for that $10 bill. When you've got Jesus the King and his love and support of you, what's the matter with you if you're worried about a $10 criticism? When you know who you are in Christ, whether or not you succeed in life becomes less important to you. Who cares if I make it big? Who cares if anybody knows my name or thinks of me as a success?
Who cares if I make lots of money? I got his approval and I got a stake in his never-ending kingdom. When you become a Christian, you positionally take Jesus' place and suddenly this thief looks up and he's assured of heaven.
He's not afraid of death and he's no longer dependent on the praise of others for success in life to feel meaningful. That's what it means to become a Christian, have you? You see here at the cross, we see a microcosm of the whole story of the Bible, the whole story of humanity. Each of us is going to be one of these two criminals and we're going to share in the destination of one of these two. These two look identical in life, but right now as we speak, one of them is in heaven with Jesus, but the other one right now is in hell and it all goes back to what they did with Jesus. You see, like these two thieves, we're guilty.
Like them, we're dying. We may not be hanging on a cross just a few hours from death, but death is as certain for us as it was for them. Like this thief, we cannot possibly hope to earn God's salvation. Like this thief, we really have nothing to offer to God.
I mean, you may have a few days longer to live than he does, but what you have is just as worthless to offer to God as what he had. And just like with these two thieves, he's right there. In fact, he's right there looking at you if you'll choose him. Now, you got to seek him not as a means to change in circumstance in life, not as an end to something else. You got to seek him for him, but he's right there. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day and dare may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away. You got to choose him.
He's there and he won't force himself on you. One of my professors in college, I didn't go to a Bible college, but one of my professors in college was a Christian who was an African American gentleman who had spent the first few years of his adult life in prison for several armed robberies. He told me that for three months after he got released, every night he would lay in bed considering whether or not to go back to his old lifestyle. He couldn't get a job. He was a convict, an ex-convict.
He wasn't married. He just felt like he had nothing to live for. And every night he would think, should I go knock off another convenience store?
Maybe this is the only way I could make it. He said, I finally got a job at a hotel making minimum wage. He said I was barely making ends meet. And late one night I got assigned to go clean up a bathroom that was covered in the vomit of what he said looked like had to be 15 people. He said the walls were covered. It was an inch thick on the floor. He said, I was furious.
I'm down there on my hands and my knees. And there's this voice inside of me telling me, the only reason they're having you do this is because you're an ex-convict. You're never going to get any respect in life. Then he thought, he said, no. He said, it's because I'm black. I've never been given a fair shake because of that.
And I'll always be thought of as second class. This professor said, as I stood there just fuming with bitterness, cleaning up that vomit, the spirit of God came upon me and made me realize that in this moment I had a choice. I could keep making excuses and go back to my old lifestyle or I could repent of my sin and give myself to God. He said somewhere in the middle of cleaning up somebody else's vomit, my life forever changed. God broke me. I admitted that yes, while I had certainly faced discrimination in my life, I deserve what I had received. I knew God had better for me.
And I say, he said, here's what he said. I quote, I was arrested by the Holy Spirit that night and my soul was set free. On my knees in someone else's vomit, I was broken and then put back together. God released me from my captivity to sin and I stood up free to serve and live for a new master.
We got people like that here this week. We have people who need to make that same decision. You might not be a recognized criminal, but you and I are under the same condemnation of death for your sin. Ultimately you're dying and you will face judgment, but he's here. He's ready to save you. And if you simply turn to him and you say, Lord, remember me, remember me, I surrender to you. I repent of my sins and I trust you as my savior. He will save you. Are you ready to turn to Jesus in faith today? If so, we'd love to help you take the next steps.
Visit us at JD Greer.com. You'll find resources and you can send us a note to let us know how we can be praying for you. You can also call and we'd be happy to share more with you about a relationship with Jesus. I'd also love to tell you once again about our featured resource this month, we pray our brand new smoke from a fire digital prayer guide will be a lifeline for anyone seeking to understand and process their emotions through a biblical lens. This five week guide inspired by one of pastor JD's impactful sermon series provides a framework for daily prayer and reflection on some of the most intense emotions we all face at times.
Anger, depression, anxiety, envy, and shame. You'll delve into the roots of your emotions and discover how only the power of the gospel can transform us from the inside out. You can give by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or give online at JD Greer.com.
That's J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R.com. By the way, if you haven't checked out pastor JD's podcast called Ask the Pastor, you'll want to do that today. Pastor JD gives quick, honest answers to tricky questions and you can find it online at JD Greer.com or through your favorite podcasting app.
I'm Molly Vidovitch. Be sure to join us again next week as we continue our series called The Whole Story. We all crave a greater purpose and want our lives to leave an impact, but how do we make that happen? How do we find our calling? We'll address those questions next time on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
