King of Thieves – A Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King

Jesus Christ is King of Thieves, though He never stole. He is savior of sinners, though He never sinned.

Today’s Gospel chosen presents Jesus as reigning from the cross. Nothing could be more paradoxical. Let’s look at it from four perspectives:

Vision –Today’s Gospel presents a vision or image of the Church.We like to think of more pleasant images: the Church is the Bride of Christ or the Body of Christ. Today’s image is more humbling to be sure: the Church is Christ, crucified between two thieves.

Yes, this is the Church too. In a way, we are all thieves.We are all sinners and have used the gifts and things that belong to God in a way contrary to His will. To misuse things that belong to others is a form of theft.

Consider some of the things we claim as our own and how easily we misuse them:our bodies, our time, our talents, our money, the gift of our speech, and the gift of our freedom. We call them ours but they really belong to God, and if we use them in ways contrary to His intention we are guilty of a form of theft.

Variance –Consider, also, that the two thieves were very different. In the Church we have saints and sinners, and in the world there are those who will turn to Christ and be saved and others who will turn away and be lost.

One thief (the “bad thief”) derides Jesus and makes demands of Him.Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!The text says that this thief “reviles” Jesus, treating him with contempt.

The other thief (the “good thief”) reverences Christ and rebukes the other, saying,Have you no fear of God?The good thief recognizes his guilt: We have been condemned justly. He asks, Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom, but he leaves the terms of it up to Christ. He acknowledges that he is a thief and now places his life under the authority of Christ the King.

Christ came to call sinners—thieves, if you will.Yes, we are all thieves, but pray God that we are the good thief, the repentant thief, the thief who is now ready to submit himself to the authority of Christ, who is King of all creation.

Heaven is a real steal, something we don’t deserve; it is only accessed through repentance and faith. The bad thief wants relief but will not open the door of his heart so that Jesus can save him. Mercy is offered and available to him, but it is accessed only through repentance and faith. The good thief does open the door of his heart and thereby is saved.

III. Veracity –Is Christ really your king?A King has authority, so another way of posing this question is, “Does Christ have authority in your life?” Consider whether you acknowledge that everything you call your own really belongs to God and think about how well you use those gifts.

It is one thing to call Christ our King, but it is another to be truly under His authority. The Lord is clear enough in telling us that he expects our obedience: Why do you call me, “Lord, Lord,” but do not do what I tell you? (Luke 6:46)

Victory –The thief who asked Jesus to remember him manifested repentance, faith, and a kind of baptism of desire. In so doing, he moved into the victor’s column. Jesus’s words, Today you shall be with me in paradise,indicate a dramatic shift in the thief’s fortunes.

To be with Jesus—wherever He is—is paradise and victory. Soon enough, the heavens will be opened, but the victory is now and paradise begins now.

Thus the good thief claims the victory through his choice for Jesus Christ. Will you have the victory? That depends on whether you choose the prince of this world or the King of the Universe, Jesus. Some think that they can tread some middle path, choosing neither Jesus nor Satan. But if you do that, you’ve actually chosen the prince of this world, who loves compromise. Jesus says, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters(Matt 12:30).

As for me, I’ve decided to make Jesus my choice. I pray that he will truly be my King in all things and that my choice will be more than mere lip service. Come, Jesus, reign in my heart. Let me begin to experience victory and paradise, even now!

Luke 23:32-43

32Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 35The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” 36The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” 38There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews. 39One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” 42Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Yep, He was on the Cross.

Yep, He's ruling.

-Yep, He was on the Cross.

To voluntarily endure both the unjust death-dealing mangling inflicted on His entombment-slated Body by Satan-deputized perpetrators to whom He had yielded earthly authority, as well as the pouring out of His life-infused Incorruptible Sin-negating Blood willingly, to assuage the Consuming Fiery Wrath of the Mighty God, that was occasioned by the wholly unacceptable failure of each and every descendant of Adam to uniformly meet His Father's Righteous Demands, and to Whom Jesus had completely yielded His Own Will (Php. 2:7-8; Mt. 26:39 [3X]; Mk. 14:36; Lk. 22:42; Jn. 6:38-40 etc.), and thus His Own Divine Authority; that on the Cross He Be the Object undergoing a process of Regaining Universal Authority and Judicial Pardonability for each and every descendant of the First Adam, that for each of whom through full Spirit-persuaded commitment of one's body, soul, and spirit the entry into the God-promised agreed-upon eternal ownership under the authority of Lord Messiah Jesus as proprietor, yhat redeemed person is imputed forever with The Son's Righteousness without lapse.

It is in that individual's place, without any authority of any kind, that Jesus of Nazareth, God-Incarnate, totally suffered even for that converted thief, both of whose souls according to the Creator's dictates, partitioned away from the body and spirit, and apart from either's will, instantly transited into the predetermined residence in the Believer's Compartment of Sheol, which was then known as "Abraham's Bosom," or to Jesus and the redeemed thief, as "Paradise." (His Spirit to His Father's keeping, Lk. 23:46, Jn. 19:30) Doubtless, the unbelieving thief's soul to Hades (Lk. 16:22-23).

Neither of them, while the Still-Integrated-God-Incarnate Human was yet impaled on the cross, by The Father's Determined Will reigned over nothing there. The crucified ones were merely companions together in the same predicament, including the other thief who also had no authority but only over his own preferences.

Yep, He's ruling.

On earth while impaled on the Roman engine of abject public agonized torture and death? Nope, it was the civilian authorities with determined but limited permission by the Mighty God, His Heaven-ruling Father; while He, Jesus, was counted with the transgressor by both God and man as a Sin-disabled powerless depraved condemned human, worthy of never-ending excruciating punishment, and got it in my place, something that through God's present mercy and promised future, neither I nor any saved believer will ever get.

You said . . . what, DoodleBob? annalex?

What saith The Spirit in His Inspired Words?

I believe that your assessment of the verses that you posted is a misinterpretation of them.

(Remember, this is about your theology; not an attack on Romanism or Charles Pope, much of whose ruminations I often find insightful. So don't take offense.)

I have, daily, and regularly submit the translators' versions and commentators' notes to a common-sense literal, grammatical, contextual, historical, cultural, and linguistic analytic which finds and exposes Biblical truths to the spiritually reborn reader, nuggets of God's counsel to the maturing disciple that are sometimes hard to understand, and in which trying to manufacture allegories out of illogical assemblies of scripture verses utterly fails. This I have learned from other Bible-tained disciplers that teach likewise.

Included such obvious failures are the nomination of Simon bar Jonah as "pope" on the basis of his nickname interpreted "Rock" in English, and devising a "sinless Mary" myth out of an "immaculate conception." Belief in those naive accreditations can only be supported by unlimited forcefully applied repetitious illogical dogma that can be displaced by intelligent Spirit-led memorization and meditation of His Word, word by word.

You say "read" more than once, but to read and read and read without understanding is indicative of a lack of regeneration of the reader. Simon speaks of that for the congregation the dispersed Jews only, not including Gentiles (Gal. 2:7-9). The audience of his pastoring was limited, and false prophets were harming even that effort:

2 Peter 3:14-18 (AV):

¹⁴Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.
¹⁵And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
¹⁶As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned^undiscipled and unstable^{doctinally inconsistent} wrest^misinterpret, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
¹⁷Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.
¹⁸But grow in grace, and in ~~the~~ knowledge^{legitimately obtained} of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.

Have your readings supplied you enough truth to engage in criticism of those who do diligence to be prepared as Jesus, in training his disciples, spoke of the use of figurative-literal language that unspiritual hearers cannot grasp?:

Matthew 13:10-16 (AV)

¹⁰And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
¹¹He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
¹²For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
¹³Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
¹⁴And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
¹⁵For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
¹⁶But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.

Was not simply stating to the one thief that his change of mind that showed his change of allegiance to the person of Jesus and shedding a trust in the sinful things of the world had right then had alone caused a shift of his post-cross residence from the Hades compartment of Sheol to the comfort zone of it, where the soul of Jesus will be there also, not at all needing Him to abandon the sacrifical substitutionary offering of Himself in atonement for the aggregate sins of all, including those of the theif, presently converted by faith alone in Jesus alone?

Did you not see that aspect, annalex, of Jesus dying as the blameless, sinless, blemishless, powerless Lamb of God?

You can believe whatever you want. You are, after all, Protestant.

Actually, I was born and raised in a "Protestant" family as the first-born of a very faithful man of God, of the Methodist Episcopal flavor (Episcopalian with a methodical approach,a clergy-dominated para-church denomination); a student training to be a minister, and a mother who supported her husband with every fiber of her being, bless her existence, for bearing a sinful child in her service to her Heavenly Father and my own consecrated father, and va;iantly attempting to train me in it.

I did not choose holiness as a way of life, particularly after passing through puberty. Challenged by the worldly things and persons of the world, especially pretty, self-serving girls, I became the kind of man that Blessed John described:

1 John 2:15-17 (AV):
¹⁵Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. ¹⁵If any (hu)man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him^{or her}. ¹⁶For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. ¹⁷And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

To cut this tale severely short, At the age of 34, after ruining my life and my marriage to one of those girls who bore four wonderfully beautiful, healthy children and diligently mothering them, I saw what John warned: the world passes away, and without being rescued in it and from it in heart and mind, the balance of my life of depravity in thought and act was not at all worth living.

But I had once more read through the New Testament, and confirmed the principle upon which it is based. The entire Gospel is completely contained in two words--a Person and a Process:

Jesus Saves

Without knowing much more than accepting from the Bible that Jesus was alive and listening from somewhere to my sorrow for living a very wrong life, and persuaded that He exists and was the only place to go for a meaning to exist, if He would carry out the promises made by Him and His Father in the Bible, and the Spirit urged me to ask. Without one muscle moving consciously I admitted my depravity and worthlessness, and begged to be saved from this rotten existence.

Now hear this:

In my deepest self, I knew that instantly the transaction of being accepted by God was finished for all time on May 24, 1971; and the process had already begun. And now I can say after 51 years, the process has never ceased. I thank the Savior every moment, the evidence of it to me increases more and more, and brings a gratitude that I cannot suppress, as you see.

I am not a Protestant, nor do I profess allegiance to any earthly religious person, organization, or religion. I am not a Wesleyan, Lutheran, Gideons, Knights of Columbus, Mason, Presbyterian, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist, Roman Catholic, or denomination that uses and misuses the trite identifying term "Christian" that was originally slapped on known believer disciples in Antioch, by their mockers.

If you want to think of me as a Christist"--well, then do that--my membership is in the Church of the First-Born, which is in Heaven, and the only titled ekklesia there (Heb. 12:22-24) where I'm told by Scripture that my name is on the book. And I have met a lot of other saved people like me, and have spiritual union with them soon after meeting the first time, no matter where or with whom they are gathering regularly as summoned by the Spirit of God to do His Will and His Work according to the apostles faith and doctrine.

I am Catholic so I read the scripture.

But you are a Roman Catholic (not a Lutheran or Episcopalian or Dutch Reformed that confess catholicity, as they use the Apostles Creed as a statement of "faith") which says that if you understood what you were reading, you might prefer to attend some other catholic assembly exercises a better, more Christ-given doctrine, hmmm?

Msgr. Pope confronted that very puzzlement of yours:

As I demonstrated by Scripture and experience, I have no puzzlement. And while some of his article shows similarity to mine, we separate at the idea that Jesus did not lay down His authority, His Will, to carry out His Father's Will (as we humans all should have, but didn't) for all of Adam's flesh to receive the punishment for bringing serpent-provoked sin and death into the World that God had created without it. Including Adam and the Eve without Adam's Y-chromosome.

Yes, He ruled from the Cross.

You think that? I never ruled from the cross, but He was being qualified for taking my place there, wasn't He--having voluntarily denying the power to rule over anything in order to become the target of God's wrath.

Same for every other human whose sorrow led to God's forgiveness, new spiritual birth, and adoption by the Heavenly Father as His child, forever. Jesus was there, stepping into all the punishment for all the sins of all of us; completely laying down the power to prevent it when the civil authority Pilate ordered His death and Jesus submitted to it. He only resumed it upon His resurrection and ascension when the Mighty Judge accepted the offering of His Blood in payment for our sins.

You can stop insisting on this asinine theory dreamed up to glorify Christ as King, which on the Cross He was not, being mocked of it in three languages by the authority which God allowed to rule over the Jews, including the execution of Jesus when He was being crucified. Gee whiz! Give it up, annalex! you are arguing against the truth inscripturated that you claim to read! Show me the Scripture that says without ambiguosity "Jesus as King ruled from the Cross!" I asked you to do that, and neither you nor Pope has. Or can, I'll bet. And I showed you why you can't. He was bearing my sins in His Body there (1 Pet. 2:24)

Read it again.

Why? I read it once and see that he is trying to tell you that doing those things are the only way to prove to yourself that you have been accepted by God as His subject, that you are "saved." Pope is fallible, and in this is wrong in its emphasis. Believing Pope instead of infallible Scripture is not the approach of a mature following servant of the Messiah Jesus.

My time is valuable.

Maybe to you, but worthless to others when you put your idle erroneous musings into print.

I count mine valuable if and when someone reading what I write you benefits them by deepening their confidence in the First-born-from-the-dead-ones-seated=at-His-Father's-Right-Hand Messiah Lord Jesus.

Yes, kings despair at times. Read the Bible every once in a while.

He was not being a king on the Cross. He was being me.

By the Will of a gracious Father, He could have been there for you.

Was He?

Did you read and understand the Bible. The reading alone without any guide is not supported by the Roman Catholic traditional hermeneutic. Nor is it by the Holy Spirit, either. Without His guidance, your personal take on a passage is likely to fall into error quite soon. That is how heretics are formed. Thinking that Christ was King while impaled on the Cross, and ruling from there when the Mighty God is imputing the world's sin to be borne by Him in His Own Body, is fantastically heretical, to say the least.

I told you, quit it. The advice is for your own benefit, not for any satisfaction on my part to see that the light of Biblical truth has broken through your own shroud of spiritual blindness, annalex.

==============

Once He was me, but now I am free,
Atonement fulfilling Lord Jesus.

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