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Did Christ Promise Paradise to The Thief on The Cross Upon Death? – Luke 23:43

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Was The Thief on The Cross Promised Immediate Entry to Paradise Upon His Death in Luke 23:43?

[with substantive answers given by Gem Acquah and Dave Rogers]

Hello!

After having turned the afore subject and scriptural verse in my head along with the given array of scriptural resources, here is how the dots connected on it.

The Emphasized Bible by Joseph B. Rotherham renders this scripture to produce the meaning:

“Verily I say unto thee this day: With me shalt thou be in Paradise.”

And the footnote for Luke 23:43 in Lamsa’s translation admits:

“Ancient texts were not punctuated. The comma could come before or after today.”

The Concordant Literal New Testament renders it: “Luk 23:43 And Jesus said to him, ‘Verily, to you am I saying today, with Me shall you be in paradise.'”

2001 Translation – An American English Bible: 43 And [Jesus] replied, `I tell you this today; you will be with me in Paradise.’

A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament by E.W.Bullinger renders:

“‘And Jesus said to him, Verily, to thee I say this day, with Me shalt thou be in the Paradise.'”

Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible (EBR 1902) — And he said unto him—Verily, I say unto thee this day: With me, shalt thou be in Paradise.

Luk 23:43 (CV) And Jesus said to him, Verily to you am I saying today, with me shall you be in paradise.

Given the intended rendering of Luk 23:43, the verity of the Word of God, i.e Christ, bespeaks that we attain Paradise – Christ – THROUGH “..falling to the ground..” (Joh 12:24) and “dying daily” (1Co 15:31) THROUGH the sanctifying regenerating judgment process of God, which is living by every Word, our chastening, chastising scouring grace:

Luk 22:32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. Grace does not exclude the cross. Our cross IS CHASTENING, SCOURGING GRACE.”

It is the enduring of the trials and going through death which indeed brings the victory over “this death” which qualify those in the first resurrection (Col 1:22; Heb 2:14).

Mat 4:4 “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Luk 4:4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

Act 14:22 Confirming the souls of the disciples, [and] exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

Rom 2:7 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:

Joh 8:31 If ye continue in my word, then [and only then] are ye my disciples indeed;

Luk 21:19 By your patient endurance you will gain your lives.

Mat 24:13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

The truth is that Christ’s experience on the Cross ‘Is, Was and Will Be’ a part of the life for all of us:

Col 1:24 Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church:

Gen 3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way [Joh 14:6 I Am the way the Truth and the Life no one can come to the Father except BY (THROUGH) ME, the Word], to keep the way of the tree of life.

The Lord Jesus Christ IS the Paradise; and Paradise is simply being in Christ:

Rev 2:7 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life [Christ Himself], which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

In a nutshell, we attain Christ, God’s Right Hand, by GOING THROUGH His Left Hand of Judgment which takes place and IS TAKING PLACE NOW [1Pe 4:17] by any means employed by The LORD.

The foregoing is my understanding on the subject. Please do correct, counsel, admonish, scourge and instruct me as necessary.

Your younger brother in Christ thinking of you and praying with all Christ’s Family here along with you,

Gem

Thank you for this question, and thank you for this answer, Gem.

Applying the principle of ‘line upon line and precept upon precept’ (Isa 28:9-13) and the principle of ‘the sum of thy Word is truth’ (Psa 119:160), we can know for certain the comma is in the wrong place in the King James Version in Luke 23:

Luk 23:43  And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

As Gem has shown with many other translations, the comma should have been placed after the word ‘today’, as Rotherham’s has it:

Luk 23:43  And he said unto him—Verily, I say unto thee this day: With me, shalt thou be in Paradise.

Stated in this way, Luke 23:43 accords with the sum of God’s word which teaches us clearly that we are made of dust and that we return to dust:

Gen 3:19  In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

The Word of God consistently teaches us that mankind is a mere beast which dies as a beast, and without a resurrection we would at the moment of death perish:

Ecc 3:18  I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.
Ecc 3:19  For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath [Hebrew: ruach, spirit]; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.
Ecc 3:20  All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

‘A man has no preeminence above a beast’ in death, but mankind is “in Adam”, and all “in Adam” will, at a resurrection, be given life again.

1Co 15:16  For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
1Co 15:17  And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
1Co 15:18  Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

The soul that sins dies; it does not live on as a spirit without even experiencing a resurrection from among the dead:

Eze 18:4  Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

Eze 18:20  The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

So the thief and Christ both died, and both were dead that day, and had Christ not been resurrected from the dead, then both would have perished. But Christ was raised up from among the dead, and through His death and resurrection the thief on the cross will also be given life “in his own order”, which will, of necessity, be in the second resurrection, simply because the holy spirit, which converts our hearts and minds, was not available to even unconverted Peter and all the other apostles until the day of pentecost:

Luk 22:31  And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
Luk 22:32  But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
Luk 22:33  And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.
Luk 22:34  And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.

Peter spent over three years with Christ and was not converted simply because the spirit was not yet available to accomplish that task.

Paul also points out that being dead is like being asleep.

1Th 4:13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
1Th 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep [die] in Jesus will God bring with him.

I hope we have clearly shown that the comma is in the wrong place in the King James Version of the scriptures. Along with Gem’s timely contribution, I hope this helps to clarify Luke 23:43.

Your brother in the resurrected Christ,

Mike

Here’s a snippet from a Greek-Language scholar’s website about “Ancient Language”:

The ancient Greeks did not have any equivalent to our modern device of punctuation. Sentence punctuation was invented several centuries after the time of Christ. The oldest copies of both the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament are written with no punctuation.

In addition, the ancient Greeks used no spaces between words or paragraphs. Texts were a continuous string of letters, with an occasional blank line inserted to mark the end of a major section, though even this was not always done.

They also had no equivalent to our lower case letters. Texts were written in all capitals.

While this clearly creates some challenges for Bible translation, those challenge are seldom very large. As a simple test, try reading the English text in the following line:

WHATDOESTHISSAY

With very little difficulty you can probably tell where the spaces should be and what kind of punctuation belongs at the end. You can tell this because you are a native speaker of the language in which the text is written, so you can easily recognize the words as well as the implication of the word order. Native speakers of Ancient Greek, in the same way, could recognize where one word ended and another began even though the spaces were not written. They could also distinguish a question from a direct statement without the need of punctuation.

YBIC,

Dave

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