The story of the thief on the cross in Luke 23:39–43 is a fan favorite in Churches of Christ because of our belief in the essentiality of believer’s baptism. A common rebuttal to a high view of baptism is to go to the thief on the cross and say, “See! The thief was never baptized. So, baptism cannot be as important as you say.” 

As a result, we have come to love the story of this thief because of all the arguments we have created to harmonize it with our view of baptism. “We don’t know whether or not the thief was baptized. He could have easily been one of the many people who were baptized by John the Baptist.” “The thief died under the Old Covenant. Baptism is for people under the New Covenant. Therefore, the thief did not need to be baptized.” And the arguments go on and on. 

However, when the extent of the thief’s story is a foil to other theologies of baptism, we have entirely missed the point Luke is making by telling the story in the first place. Luke’s Gospel is the only one to include the story, and he does so for a very specific reason, which has nothing to do with the necessity of baptism. 

Therefore, my encouragement in this article is that we revisit the story of the thief on the cross with fresh eyes and reinterpret it within Luke’s context. 

Who Is the Thief?

To understand what Luke is doing with this story, we first need to address the question, Who is the thief on the cross. We get the term “thief” from older translations of the Greek word ληστής (lēstēs) in Matthew 27:38, 44 and Mark 15:27, which says that Jesus was crucified between two “bandits” (NRSV) or “rebels” (NIV). It is a term that can refer to a thief or robber but can also refer to an insurrectionist (this is the way the term is used by Josephus). In the older Bible translations, this translation in Matthew and Mark gets carried over into Luke, who uses the word κακοῦργος (kokourgos), a term literally meaning one who does evil deeds, to refer to the thief on the cross. 

Historically, it is unlikely that the thief was a typical robber or evil doer; rather, he was likely an insurrectionist or “rebel” (NIV). Crucifixion was not a punishment meted out by Rome upon common criminals but was reserved for those who committed acts against the Empire. Crucifixion was not merely extremely gruesome and painful, but also public. Crosses were oftentimes placed along highly traveled roads so that the public could look upon the crucified as a symbol of what happens when you go against Rome. Therefore, crucifixion was a public execution by the Romans to prevent resistance. 

Contextualizing the Thief

The thief/insurrectionist aligns with two major themes in Luke’s Gospel. The first is Jesus’s relationship to sinners. Throughout the Gospel, one of Jesus’s major conflicts with the Jewish leaders is his table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners. (For example, the sinful woman who anoints Jesus’s feet [7:36–50] and Zacchaeus [19:1–10].) Unlike the Jewish leaders, Jesus does not see the sinners as worthy of exclusion from his restored kingdom, but rather worthy of inclusion. 

However, the second major theme is that Jesus’s interactions with sinners are for the purpose of repentance. In Luke 5, after the Pharisees complain to the disciples about Jesus’s eating habits with sinners, Jesus responds by saying, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

Luke brings these two themes together in his story of the thief. The two insurrectionists on the crosses beside Jesus are the types of sinners Jesus spent his ministry surrounded by. It should come as no shock to readers of Luke’s Gospel that Jesus finds himself in such company, though these criminals respond to the predicament differently. One says that if Jesus is the Messiah, then he should save them and himself, the same mocking sneer thrown at Jesus by the Romans. The other insurrectionist fears God, recognizes that their punishment is just, that Jesus has done nothing to deserve the cross, and simply asks that Jesus remember him in his kingdom. We might even want to call these words an act of repentance. So, it is to this second criminal that Jesus proclaims, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (23:43). 

The thief can, and should, be seen as a culmination of Jesus’s ministry to sinners and his call to repentance. The thief is not only the epitome of the type of person Jesus chooses to surround himself with, but also the correct response to Jesus, particularly to Jesus on the cross. The whole purpose of Jesus’s life and ministry can be seen in his interaction on the cross with the thief hanging next to him. 

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