Christ’s foes were consumed with jealousy and fear and plotted against Him. They succeeded in His crucifixion.
Treated worse than an animal in a slaughter house, lacerated, beaten out of recognition, in agony beyond human endurance, they lifted Him up on a cross naked to shame Him and for public mockery.
But He had said “If I am lifted up I will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32). Alongside Him another victim of Roman atrocity was hanging on nails like a rag in the wind.
The wretched man, out of his mind with searing pain, began cursing everybody. He jeered at Jesus with the spectators. Jesus uttered a few words now and again. Hours dragged by.
Then something about this crucified Jesus began to draw him. He stared. Jesus was horribly disfigured, but the thief sensed something death could not extinguish. In his dying despair, hope sprang up. “Lord’, he said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
Jesus accepted it and treated it as a serious request and promised the man he would be with Him in paradise. The ‘dying thief’ became perhaps the Bible’s supreme example of the faith that sees the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Jesus, “a Lamb on the throne as it had been slain”, will always bear the wounds ‘received in the house of His friends’ as Zechariah prophesied (13:6).
Earth will be known in eternity as the Christ-visited world and mankind as the race He loved, and where love for Him will never die. Are you being blessed?