The Thief on the Cross

Question:

Is it right to move the comma in Luke 23:43? Many use the thief on the cross as proof of the soul’s immortality and argue that changing the punctuation is wrong.

Answer:

As is the verse reads: “And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). When we change the comma placement after “thee” to after “To day,” it reads: “And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee To day, shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

There are several conditions in the understanding of this text:

1. What did the thief request? —“Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (v. 42). But when would Christ come into His kingdom? —“When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory” (Matt. 25:31). In Luke 19:11-13 He tells us by a parable that He would not take His kingdom when He ascended on high, but instead He went to do a work at the close of which He would receive the kingdom, and then come again. In Daniel 7:13, 14, we learn that the receiving of that kingdom takes place in connection with the judgment and that at the end of the world, He takes the kingdom under the whole heavens, which is the earth, and reigns. (See also Luke 1:32, 33; 2 Tim. 4:1). Doubtless, the thief had heard our Lord teach about these very things, and with utter abandonment of soul, he throws himself on the mercy of Christ and pleads, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom,” that is, when Christ should come again.
2. Our Lord’s answer is, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Where is Paradise? According to Revelation 2:7, it is where the Tree of Life is. According to Revelation 22:1, 2, that tree is near the throne of God the Father and will eventually descend again upon this earth when the New Jerusalem comes down from above (Rev. 21:1-5). Yet Jesus told Mary, the third day after his death, when in glad greetings she was about to clasp His feet, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20:17). Therefore, Jesus did not mean that the thief would be with Him that day in Paradise.
3. Furthermore, it was rare for an individual to die on the cross the day he was crucified. When the soldiers came to break the legs of the criminals lest they should get away, they found Christ already dead and wondered at it. They broke the legs of the criminals, as they had doubtless often done before, and left them to die in lingering agony. Therefore it is not likely, in the very physical nature of the case, that the thief passed that day. What, then, is meant by the text? The thief, knowing of the glorious kingdom of Christ to come and that the Master would come back to earth to take that kingdom, asked that he be remembered of the King at that time. The King, dying upon the cross as a malefactor with no power seemingly to fulfill a single promise on a day when His disciples had lost faith in Him, promised the dying man that his wish should be gratified: “Verily I say unto thee To day [the day above all days when seemingly I can not keep the promise that I shall make, the day when My professed disciples have forsaken Me and fled, the day when I am dying as thou art dying, as thou hast faith to ask I have confidence and assurance to promise, that when that time shall come that I enter My kingdom], shalt thou be with me in paradise.

This text would be fine if it had not been wrongly punctuated. There should be no comma after “thee;” it should be after “to day.” The adverbial phrase “to day” modifies the verb “say” rather than the verb “shall be.” There is no inspiration in commas. For centuries there was no division, even between words, to say nothing about the parts of sentences. Of course, the men who punctuated the Bible punctuated it according to their understanding. Still, investigation of this subject, as our brief study clearly shows, indicates that the comma should be after “to day” and not before. Doing so allows the verse to agree with the biblical view on the state of the dead and not remain a singular outlier.