Now two others also, malefactors, were led with him to be put to death.
That morning two criminals walked the same road to the same death as Jesus. Commentators see design here, not accident: men planned it, God had foretold it, and the two men beside Him still stand for two kinds of people.
The men who set up this execution acted out of their own hatred. Yet it matched words written centuries earlier. One writer notes both God's overruling hand and the speed of it:
Two things strike me here. First, God's overruling hand so guided their malice — and the malice was all their own — that they fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53 by putting Jesus among the criminals. Second, how fast it all went. They seized Him unlawfully one night, and, despite all Roman law and justice, executed Him the next day. Men did not treat Barabbas like this. Nor were James, Peter or Paul allowed to be treated like this later. They at least got a longer wait — a wait denied to Him who was the Prince of life.
The prophecy is Isaiah 53:12: "and was numbered with the transgressors." One commentator marks the moment it came true:
They had to add one more insult, so that the words of Isaiah would come true: "and was numbered with the transgressors." (Isa. 53:12.) "Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him." What a sight! He who was God was walking with two thieves to the place where the great work of the preparation day had to be done. That work would bring lost sinners into the sabbath, the rest of God.
The pairing was not random. They picked the companions and placed the crosses to send a message about who Jesus was:
That morning they searched the prison cells of Jerusalem for the most debased criminals the city held. They led them out to die along with Jesus. These men had been guilty of appalling crimes. That is why they picked them to hang one on His right hand and the other on His left. That is why they put Him on the centre and highest cross. They meant to proclaim by their well-considered and malicious plan that He was the worst of the three. So they heaped shame on Him, adding deepest insult to deepest injury.
Another writer sums up the whole treatment in one line:
Jesus was spared no insult. As He was the song of the drunkard, so He made His grave with the wicked.
One commentator pictures the group that walked out of the city:
The procession, as we might call it, consisted of the Lord bearing His cross, with Simon from Cyrene forced to carry the lighter end of it behind Him. Two others, criminals, no doubt each carrying his own cross, formed part of the group, and the soldiers on duty completed it.
One writer is glad that the men beside Him were criminals and not James and John:
But I am glad that men like these, and not James and John, became His companions that day. In this the devil showed his lack of foresight, and in this he was outwitted. Suppose they had crucified the sons of Zebedee, one on His right hand and the other on His left. People would then have said that these men were helping Him finish His work of redemption.
The two men shared His punishment, but not on the same terms:
Those murderers who hung with Him could have no hand in the work He was doing. They were suffering for their own crimes; He, the sinless One, for yours and mine.
One writer reads the two thieves as a picture of all humanity:
The two thieves represent the two great classes into which mankind has been divided, from the days of Cain and Abel down to this very moment. God's Christ is the one great and all-deciding test in every case. Think of every shade of moral character, every level of society, and every caste, class, sect and party the human family has been, is, or ever will be divided into. All of them are absorbed in this one great point: "In or out of Christ."
- Numbered. Being led out with two criminals fulfilled Isaiah 53:12 — He was counted among the guilty.
- Overruled. The hatred was all man's own, yet God steered it to do what He had promised.
- Designed. They picked the worst criminals and gave Him the centre cross, to announce Him as the worst of the three.
- Alone. They suffered for their own crimes; He suffered for ours, and no one shared the work of redemption with Him.
- Dividing. The two men who hung beside Him became the picture of all humanity, split by one question: in or out of Christ.
And when they came to the place which is called Skull, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, the other on the left.
Luke names the place, states the death in three words, and sets two condemned criminals on either side. The name, the manner of death, and the company each carry meaning.
Luke gives the plain meaning of the site, not the local name. Older English Bibles used a Latin word instead.
"Skull," that is, Golgotha — a name avoided, like Gethsemane and others, in view of Gentile readers. "Calvary" in the Authorized Version comes from the Latin Vulgate.
One writer reads that grim name as a picture of what man has come to.
Now, Calvary means "the place of a skull" — a sign of the end of humanity on its own side. This is what man is reduced to, an empty skull. If you look at him in his natural state, he is morally nothing but a sightless skull. What emptiness marks man in his own condition at his best. It seemed fitting that they should come to this place, Calvary.
The place that exposed what man is became the place where God's love came down.
Calvary was a witness to the moral condition of the whole world, and also to the love and grace that would come down to the very place where the ugliness of sin was displayed, to triumph over it there. From the skull of Calvary springs the beauty of the resurrection — not only for the Son of God, over whom death had no power, but for the whole family of the redeemed who are risen with Christ, eternally beyond the power of death to spoil or disfigure.
(Ridout, Notes on the Four Gospels — see the passage.)
The word "cross" sounds familiar and safe today. One writer insists on facing what the object really was.
We speak of the cross, and God speaks of the cross; but I sometimes think there is very little grasp of what the cross means. The cross has become a fashionable ornament in the Christian world. People decorate themselves with it. Yet what was the cross but a gallows, the Roman way of carrying out the death penalty — a cruel, shameful, scornful, hateful kind of death? ... Hanging was not the Jewish way of punishing criminals. The Old Testament shows that when the Jews put an offender to death, he was stoned. But to be hanged, to be put on a gallows, was a Gentile way of execution. That is why they handed Christ over to the Romans.
Scripture itself refuses to linger over the physical horror.
We are spared the pain of the details of the actual killing of the blessed Sufferer. It is described in brief words: "They crucified Him." We know from other Scriptures that it was by nailing Him to the cross. The cross was lifted up from the earth with Him hanging on it, hanging on the tree.
His enemies did not place the two criminals at random. They planned it for the greatest possible insult.
That morning they searched the prison cells of Jerusalem for the most degraded of all the criminals the city held. They led them out to die along with Jesus. These men had been guilty of appalling crimes. That is why they chose them to hang one on His right hand and the other on His left. That is why they put Him on the centre and highest cross. By this deliberate and malicious plan they meant to announce that He was the worst of the three. In this way they heaped shame on Him, adding the deepest insult to the deepest injury.
His companions that day were criminals. That guarded a truth: only one Person did the work of redemption.
But I am glad that men like these, and not James and John, were taken to be His companions that day. In this the devil showed his lack of foresight, and in this he was outwitted. Suppose they had crucified the sons of Zebedee, one on His right hand and the other on His left. Then people would have said that they were helping Him to finish His work of redemption... Those murderers who hung with Him could have no part in the work He was doing. They were suffering for their own crimes; He, the sinless One, for yours and mine.
The two men beside Him did not end the same way.
To humiliate the Lord Jesus, they crucified Him between two robbers, and in this way they numbered Him with the transgressors... Luke 23:39-43 shows us that God's sovereign power and grace was over this. He used it to bring one of these men to genuine repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. He used it also to show the solemn fact that Christ crucified is the great Divider between the lost and the saved.
One preacher pressed the same balance on his hearers as he closed his Bible:
Remember, one robber was saved, so none need despair; but — only one, so none may presume.
- The place. "The Skull" is Golgotha; "Calvary" came into English from the Latin. The name pictures what man is reduced to on his own.
- The death. Scripture states the crucifixion in three words and spares us the details. The cross was a gallows, a Gentile execution, not an ornament.
- The insult. They picked the worst criminals they could find and put Him on the centre cross, to brand Him the worst of the three.
- The work. No companion could share it, so redemption is His alone.
- The divide. Of the two beside Him, one was saved, so none need despair; only one, so none may presume.