Luke 23:43

Luke 23:43. Verily I say unto thee. A Divine assurance in response to faith.

Today, i.e., before that day ended. The Roman Catholics, to sustain the doctrine of purgatory, join this with ‘I say unto thee,' but there was no need of asserting that He was speaking ‘today.' The promise implies first of all that both should die that day, instead of lingering long, as was often the case, and then that both should that day pass to the same place: shalt thou be with me in Paradise. Our Lord would that day be in Paradise, and the penitent robber with Him. The man's faith was in Christ as a Person, and Christ's promise was of personal association with Himself. If this is borne in mind we have a check to the many fancies which are wont to gather about the word Paradise as here used. (1.) It means the place (or state) where the soul of Jesus was between His death and resurrection. The clause in the Apostles' creed: ‘He descended into hell,' or ‘Hades,' must be explained or supplemented by our Lord's declaration that He was that day in Paradise. (2.) In choosing a word used by the Jews our Lord designed, not chiefly to indorse the Jewish views on the subject, but to convey to the dying robber a promise of blessedness which he understood, though certainly not to its full extent. The Jews thus termed that part of the world of disembodied spirits which is opposed to Gehenna (or Hell); the happy side of the state of the dead. Comp. chap. Luke 16:22: ‘Abraham's bosom.' Most expositors are content to accept this as the meaning here, although they claim of course that the reality which Jesus promised transcended the Jewish expectations, and that this promise implied necessarily a participation in the resurrection glory of the just. This view distinguishes between Paradise, here and in 2 Corinthians 12:4; Revelation 2:7 (‘the paradise of God'). There is, however, a more extended view: that our Lord went down into the depths of death to announce His triumph and thus transfer those in ‘Abraham's bosom' into ‘the Paradise of God' (comp. 1 Peter 3:18-19), and that as the robber died after Him (John 19:32-33) the former passed at once into this Paradise. This view suggests a solution of some of the difficulties in regard to Old Testament believers, while it does not at all imply conversion after death. Such an event as our Lord's death could have such an effect, and the change could take place in a moment. Both views imply that this Paradise is not the fulness of glory at God's right hand. Our Lord passed to that forty days afterwards, in the body, and thither His people go when they too have been raised. Bliss belongs to ‘Paradise' indeed, but it will be perfect only after the resurrection. Only on these latter points does the New Testament speak plainly; the danger has ever been in going beyond its statements.