Trick question:
You see a cross standing in a Christian church. Whose crucifixion does it represent?
Jesus?
Sometimes!
Sometimes there are three crosses, as you have no doubt seen. That is, there are two other crosses, in addition to the cross of Jesus. Perhaps there is a white cross flanked by gray ones, or a tall cross flanked by shorter ones. Three crosses symbolize the fuller scene of Jesus’ execution, in which he was crucified with robbers on either side (Matthew 27:38). Such a display thus memorializes two people whose names we do not even know. What little we do know is that one of these men turned to Jesus in that moment and asked for forgiveness. Jesus gave it to him, promising a place in Paradise. Luke 23:40-43 records the exchange.
This exchange is among the most radical scenes in all of the gospels. In this one scene, Jesus decimates the prevailing religious belief of the time. He decimates what might still be the prevailing religious belief in our own time. In this scene, he lays to rest the notion that good people get into heaven.
Instead, the message to the thief—the message to us all—is that bad people get into heaven.
After all, that robber had no chance to “make good.” His limbs were secured to wood. He was breathing his last breaths. And he was guilty—he said as much (Luke 23:41). In short, there was no opportunity for this man to commence a righteous life that might be pleasing to God.
However, faith is a substitute for being righteous. Paul’s letter to the Romans explicitly makes this point. Indeed, this point is arguably the main take-away of the entire Bible. None of us has any hope of actually being righteous, but we do have the hope of exercising faith. We can lay our burdens before the Christ and ask him to pick them up. And if we do that, then that very act of heart is allowed to take the place of the righteousness we do not have.
God gave his Son so that whoever believes in him can have eternal life. John 3:16.
By contrast, God did not give his Son so that people who are at least 10% as good as Jesus can have eternal life. Or at least 5% as good. Nothing like that. God opened a door, and bad people are invited to walk through. See Matthew 22:10, in which both the bad and the good are explicitly included.
Jesus provides more than this as well. He provides more than what he could give to the robber. The kingdom of heaven does not have to wait for death. Eternal life starts now.
But there is also, as Jesus said, Paradise. There is the realm and the state of higher existence that transcends earthly life completely.
If anything we could do in our earthly life could ever earn us a place in Paradise, then surely we would have squandered that privilege. Each of us would have already missed the chance. Therefore, the loving God does not even ask us to earn the way. Forget it. He just asks for a choice: Turn to him and believe. Turn to the incarnation of the infinite being who made the world. Turn to Jesus in love, to whatever extent your beaten-up human heart is still able to love.
Stare into the eternal in surrender. Give the eternal your attention. Look to this, and look away from other things. Believe. Do this much, and you are free.
This is the choice represented by the three crosses. Love won for all time not just with a double-cross, but with a triple-cross. God was betrayed into death, death was defeated, and along the way, during the last moment of suffering breaths, the idea was finally refuted that anyone has to ever worry about being good enough to qualify.
