What About The Theif on the Cross

"WHAT ABOUT THE THIEF ON THE CROSS? HE WASN'T BAPTIZED,

AND YET JESUS SAID HE WOULD BE WITH HIM IN PARADISE!"

The case of the thief on the cross has to be the most often offered objection to the necessity of penitent believers being baptized in our time. People argue, "The thief on the cross wasn't baptized, and yet Jesus said he would be with Him in paradise." This argument deserves an honest and forthright reply.

First, how do you know the thief on the cross wasn't baptized? What makes you think he wasn't? Remember how John the Baptist preached and baptized in this region, and the gospels tell how he met with stupendous success (Mt 3:1-6; Lk 3:7,12):

Suppose someone could make statements like this about the community where you live, i.e., all the city had gone out to be baptized, that all the region around your city had, that multitudes had, and even the federal employees had! Would you be dogmatic that a certain individual in your community had not been baptized?

Of course, no one knows for sure whether the thief on the cross was baptized by John's baptism. However, the success of John's preaching shows that those who assume the thief was not baptized have no basis to make this assumption.

[ANOTHER POINT COULD BE MADE: The thief evidently had a remarkable understanding of the nature of Jesus and His Kingdom, for notice that despite the imminent death of Jesus Himself, we read in Lk 23:42...

Somehow the thief knew that death itself could not prevent Jesus from coming into His kingdom! Many of Jesus' closest disciples did not understand that, thinking that the death of Jesus ended all their hopes (cf. Lk Lk 24:13-27).

Is it not conceivable that the thief may have been a backsliding disciple himself, having been baptized of John, then going back into his old ways, only to be caught and sentenced to be crucified, but then repenting as he sees Jesus being crucified with him? -- MAC]

Whether the thief on the cross was baptized in John's baptism, he was not baptized in the name of Jesus Christ! Christ hadn't commanded anyone in the world to be baptized in His name at the time Jesus was crucified. The thief on the cross was never commanded to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ!

Not until fifty days later, when the gospel was first preached in fact on the first Pentecost following the resurrection of Christ, were believers told: "Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins." (Ac 2:38) So the thief on the cross couldn't have been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ - he wasn't commanded to! Have you been commanded to?

Suppose that someone refuses to pay his income tax, and when confronted by a federal judge, argues he doesn't have to pay income tax because Abraham Lincoln didn't pay income tax. That judge will inform him the laws have changed somewhat since the times of Lincoln and now demand it.

Similarly, one might argue that he doesn't have to put money in parking meters because his great grandfather didn't. He, too, will be informed the laws have changed since great-granddad's day. We are to obey the laws we live under, not the laws someone else lived under.

Likewise, the thief on the cross lived under the law of Moses. He was not under the covenant you and I are subject to, for Christ's covenant didn't go into effect until He died (He 9:16-17). The thief never heard the words Christ directs to believers today:

Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

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