What Jesus Said to a Dying Criminal — and What It Means for You
A man running down a road in the heat of Nairobi, diving into a taxi window, grabbing both hands and saying: "If I don't see you again here, I'll see you in heaven." No dramatic buildup. No long goodbye. Just a gatekeeper from a mission guest house who had so little, and yet held onto something unshakeable. That moment stuck. And it points directly to the passage we've been sitting with this week — the words Jesus spoke to a dying man on a cross: "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43 NIV).
Jesus Came for the People Everyone Else Walked Past
Three years before the cross, Jesus spotted a tax collector sitting at his booth. His name was Levi. The crowd probably assumed something confrontational was coming; tax collectors were despised, seen as traitors skimming money off their own people for Rome. Nobody wanted to be in the same room as them.
But Jesus didn't organize a protest. He didn't write a letter. He didn't get on Facebook and blast everything wrong with the man. He just said, "Follow me" (Luke 5:32 NIV).
Levi threw a party. He invited his friends, other tax collectors, the kind of people the religious leaders refused to eat with. The Pharisees noticed and complained. Jesus answered them plainly: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:32 NIV).
Two sentences. Mission defined.
That same pattern runs through everything Jesus did. The woman at the well, alone because her reputation had made her a social exile. The lepers nobody touched. The woman caught in adultery, surrounded by men holding stones. Over and over, Jesus moved toward the people everyone else had written off.
So when he looked at a criminal dying on a cross next to him, it wasn't a surprise. It was completely consistent. The thief had no track record of following Jesus. He hadn't been in the crowds. He hadn't heard the Sermon on the Mount. He was, by every measure, running out of time. And Jesus said, "You're why I came."
If you've ever thought your past disqualifies you — that you've gone too far, done too much, waited too long — this is where you need to pause. We have a God who is far more interested in today and tomorrow than in yesterday.
The Promise Is More Personal Than You Might Expect
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16 NIV). Most of us know that verse. It's the one on signs at football games, printed on bumper stickers.
But read what Jesus told his disciples at their last supper together, just hours before the cross. "In my Father's house are many rooms... I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am" (John 14:2-3 NIV).
Notice the phrase that keeps showing up. Not just "eternal life." Not just "a place." The promise is with me. "I will come back and take you to be with me."
Then in Luke 23, when the thief asks Jesus to remember him, what does Jesus say? "Today you will be with me in paradise." Same phrase. Same promise.
This is the center of what heaven means. Suffering ends, yes. A better place exists, yes. But the point is the presence of Jesus. Sunday's message put it plainly, drawing on a commentator who said: "Paradise is where God dwells with His people."
We tend to picture heaven in the best terms we know. The book of Revelation describes walls of jasper, streets of pure gold (Revelation 21:18-19 NIV). Gorgeous imagery. But consider the comparison we sat with this week: small children who had never stayed in a hotel before arrived at a Motel 6 and were thrilled. Two beds, a TV, soap, a pool. They couldn't picture anything better because they had nothing to compare it to. When we reach for words to describe heaven, we're doing the same thing. The gold and jasper are just the best language we have for something we can't yet imagine.
What we can say for certain: it will be with Jesus. That's the promise.
Heaven Is Beautiful, Perfect, and Permanent. But One Thing Matters Most
Scripture does tell us concrete things about heaven, and they're worth sitting with.
It will be a beautiful place. Revelation 21 describes foundations of precious stone, walls of jasper, a city of pure gold "as pure as glass" (Revelation 21:18 NIV). Even through the limits of human language, the image holds: this is not a place of drab clouds and harps. It is staggering in beauty.
It will be physically perfect. "The Lord Jesus Christ... will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:20-21 NIV). No hearing aids. No Alzheimer's. No cancer. No wheelchairs. Whatever this body struggles with now, that version of you is temporary.
Grief will be gone. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain" (Revelation 21:4 NIV). The "no mores" matter. Every loss that has ever broken you, every goodbye that felt permanent, that whole category of pain is removed.
And it will be permanent. One of the hardest words in English is "goodbye." Anyone who has stood at a graveside knows what that word costs. The promise of heaven is that we don't have to say it forever. The gatekeeper in Nairobi understood this. "If I don't see you again here, I'll see you in heaven." No goodbye. Just "see you later."
But the best part? Heaven will be a Jesus place. When we arrive, knowing everything he did to get us there, one face will matter more than any other. Every saint from Scripture we've imagined meeting, Abraham, Noah, Peter, all of it will be secondary. The moment we arrive, we'll know: without him, I wouldn't be here.
C. S. Lewis once wrote that three things will amaze us in heaven. Who isn't there, who is there, and, most of all, that we made it.
You Can Know You're Going. Not Just Hope
First John 5:13 says, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life" (NIV). Not hope. Not guess. Know.
Many people who have been following Jesus for years, attending faithfully, serving consistently, when asked if they're going to heaven, answer "I hope so." John wrote specifically to address that uncertainty. You can know.
The thief on the cross had no time to get his act together. He had no chance to prove himself, no opportunity to live a better life before the end came. He had a moment, a request, and a response from Jesus. "Today you will be with me in paradise."
You don't have to have your life sorted out before you come to Jesus. You don't have to clean yourself up first, fix what you've broken, or wait until you feel ready. The same Jesus who looked at that dying man with nothing left to offer is the one extending that invitation right now.
What This Means for You
The thief on the cross wasn't a theologian. He didn't understand the kingdom. He just knew he didn't want to be forgotten, and Jesus told him, in plain words, that he wouldn't be. That's still the offer. Not vague spiritual comfort, but a specific promise: you will be with Me. If you're not sure that promise belongs to you, don't leave it unresolved. There are people ready to talk, to pray, and to walk through this with you.
Taking It Into the Week
When you picture heaven, what image comes to mind? How does "being with Jesus" change or sharpen that image for you?
Who in your life right now is the person others tend to walk past, and what would it look like for you to move toward them the way Jesus moved toward Levi?
Is there someone in your life you've said a final goodbye to that this promise of "see you later" applies to? When can you revisit that grief with this truth in hand?
If someone asked you today whether you're going to heaven and your honest answer is "I hope so," who is one person at your church you could call this week to talk through that?
What's the one area of your life where you're letting your past convince you that Jesus' invitation doesn't apply to you, and what would it mean to believe it does?
