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When the Lord therefore said to the malefactor "Thou shalt be with Me in paradise",
He was looking to the end of the age and the consummation of His great work. There,
this poor dying rebel will find a place. Before we go further with this aspect of the
subject, we must consider the bearing upon all this of the words "To-day". It is assumed
that the Lord assured the dying malefactor that on that very day of crucifixion he would
be in paradise. Let us look at two passages in Luke's gospel, where there is no shadow of
doubt as to the meaning.
"And He began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears"
(Luke 4: 21).
No one would dream of detaching the words "This day" from the rest of the Lord's
utterance. They form an integral part of what He said. Moreover, He Himself did not say
the preceding words "And He began to say unto them" they are the words of Luke.
"And Jesus said unto him, This say is salvation come to this house" (Luke 19: 9),
and again, we must understand that the words "This day" form a part of what the Lord
actually said to Zaccheus.
Now these two passages taken from the same writer differ in one essential particular
from the wording of Luke 23: 43. In both passages, the actual words spoken by the
Lord are prefaced by the particle hoti "that", and the presence of this particle in
Luke 4: 21 and 19: 9 proves that the words "This day" belong to the remainder of
the sentence. When we examine Luke 23: 43, we discover that the particle hoti is
not used. The common Hebrew idiom is fully represented by the Lord's reply in
Luke 23: 43.
"I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly
perish from off the land" (Deut. 4: 26).
This idiomatic use of the phrase "this day" occurs forty-two times in Deuteronomy,
and the forty-two passages are given in "The Companion Bible" at Deut. 4: 26. What
the Lord said therefore, was indeed a reply to the dying man's request:
"Lord, remember me, WHEN THOU COMEST IN THY KINGDOM."
"Verily I say unto thee today, THOU SHALT BE WITH ME IN PARADISE."
We have yet to consider the way in which the apostle Paul has used the word
sustauroo "to crucify with", but we must defer that study until the next article of this
series.