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.
And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And, parting out his garments, they cast lots.
Jesus' first words from the cross ask forgiveness for the men killing Him, while the soldiers at His feet gamble for His clothes. Who did He ask the Father to forgive, in what sense were they ignorant, and was the prayer answered?
Luke's account of the crucifixion has a character of its own. It leaves out the agony and the sorrow, and it opens and closes with the Lord speaking to His Father.
But in this gospel we find no trace of that agony and sorrow on the cross. He had already gone through it all in spirit with God, so He is above it all. Luke shows us, more than any other gospel, the perfection of Christ as Man. He is so far above His circumstances that He is taken up with others. His first word on the cross is, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Then He can turn to the poor thief at His side and say, "Today you will be with Me in paradise." And His last word is, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit."
The timing matters. This prayer came at the end of everything men had done to Him, not at the beginning.
He did not pray this prayer at the start. He prayed it after He had served among them for three and a half years. He had shown them His most wonderful love, in words no one could better. He had blessed their children and fed them when they were hungry. He had healed the sick and cleansed the leper. He had opened the eyes of the blind and raised the dead. Then they spat on His scarred face. They tore His back with the whip and crowned His head with thorns. They nailed Him to a cross. That was not enough for them: they sat down to watch Him suffer, to gloat over His pain and to mock Him. The tide of man's hatred rolled over Him, wave upon wave. It was then that His voice rose above the storm.
The prayer does not pretend the crime was small. It asks the Father to weigh their act in a particular way.
The men crucifying Him were in the process of committing the greatest crime ever. They had plenty of evidence of who the Lord Jesus was, and they rejected Him with their eyes open. They were responsible for what they did. But the Lord Jesus, in infinite grace, says the words "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Their hatred made them blind. They did not see how deep their guilt was, or what their actions really meant. So the Lord treats them as ignorant men, as men who killed by accident and not as murderers. Through this prayer He was opening the city of refuge to them (Numbers 35).
A city of refuge was a safe place for a man who killed by accident, not on purpose. Their not knowing was never a defence they could have used themselves. It is the reason He had to pray at all.
They did not know what they were doing, so He prayed for them. But their ignorance could never clear them in God's sight. That is why the Lord had to plead for them… God can be gracious, but He could not pass over a man's wrongdoing. The same is true of those who crucified His Son. By His prayer the Lord showed what their guilt was. At the same time He offered up Himself as the true sacrifice and asked the Father to forgive them.
This prayer did not go unanswered.
The prayer of Jesus as they crucified Him was completely unexpected. That prayer was answered about fifty days later. Peter preached salvation through the risen Christ in Jerusalem, and 3,000 people ran for that refuge. The prayer was unusual because it was the fruit of such divine compassion as had never come to light before.
Luke puts the second half of the verse right there on purpose.
They heard His prayer, yet they did not stop what they were doing. The very next sentence reads, "and they cast lots to divide His garments." By telling it this way, the writer brings out the sharp contrast between His spirit and theirs. He was thinking of others. The soldiers wanted only what they could get, so they took their share of His clothes. The chief priests and the people took the chance to show the bitter hatred in their hearts.
Later, a man named Stephen was stoned to death. He prayed in the same spirit, but not with the same words.
Later Stephen, when he was stoned to death, prayed in a similar way. But he could not say that the Jews did not know what they were doing. He said only, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 7:60). Stephen had told the Jews plainly that this same Jesus whom they had crucified was now raised by the power of God. That was the proof of God's approval of Him. Yet the Jews still rejected Him, even though He was risen from the dead.
- Cause — Men answered years of His kindness with a cross, and out of that came this prayer.
- Plea — Their blindness was real but not a defence; He named their guilt and asked forgiveness for it anyway.
- Refuge — He treated them as men who killed without knowing, so a city of refuge stood open to them instead of a murderer's sentence.
- Answer — Fifty days later, three thousand fled into that refuge when Peter preached the risen Christ in Jerusalem.
- Echo — Stephen died praying in the same spirit. The first word from the cross lives on in those who follow Him.