The familiar words of our Authorised Version - When Thou comest into Thy Kingdom' - convey the idea of what we might call a more spiritual meaning of the petition. But we can scarcely beleive, that at that moment it implied either that Christ was then going into His Kingdom, or that the penitent thief' looked to Christ for admission into the Heavenly Kingdom. The words are true to the Jewish point of vision of the man. He recognised and owned Jesus as the Messiah, and he did so, by a wonderful forthgoing of faith, even in the utmost Humiliation of Christ. And this immediately passed beyond the Jewish standpoint, for he expected Jesus soon to come back in His Kingly might and power, when he asked to be remembered by Him in mercy. And here we have again to bear in mind that, during the Life of Christ upon earth, and, indeed, before the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, men always first learned to believe in the Person of the Christ, and then to know His teaching and His Mission in the forgiveness of sins. It was so in this case also. If the penitent thief' had learned to know the Christ, and to ask for gracious recognition in His coming Kingdom, the answering assurance of the Lord conveyed not only the comfort that his prayer was answered, but the teaching of spiritual things which he knew not yet, and so much needed to know. The penitent' had spoken of the future, Christ spoke of to-day'; the penitent had prayed about that Messianic Kingdom which was to come, Christ assured him in regard to the state of the disembodied spirits, and conveyed to him the promise that he would be there in the abode of the blessed - Paradise' - and that through means of Himself as the Messiah: Amen, I say unto thee - To-day with Me shalt thou be in the Paradise.' Thus did Christ give him that spiritual knowledge which he did not yet possess - the teaching concerning the to-day,' the need of gracious admission into Paradise, and that with and through Himself - in other words, concerning the forgiveness of sins and the opening of the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. This, as the first and foundation-creed of the soul, was the first and foundation-fact concerning the Messiah.
This was the Second Utterance from the Cross. The first had been of utter self-forgetfullness; the second of deepest, wisest, most gracious spiritual teaching. And, had He spoken none other than these, He would have been proved to be the Son of God. [6116]
Nothing more would require to be said to the penitent' on the Cross. The events which followed, and the words which Jesus would still speak, would teach him more fully thatn could otherwise have been done. Some hours - probably two - had passed since Jesus had been nailed to the Cross. We wonder how it came that St. John, who tells us some of the incidents with such exceeding particularity, and relates all with the vivid realisation of a most deeply interested eyewitness, should have been silent as to others - especially as to those hours of derision, as well as to the conversion of the penitent thief. His silence seems to us to have been due to absence from the scene. We part company with him after his detailed account of the last scene before Pilate. [6117] The final sentence pronounced, we suppose him to have hurried into the City, and to have acquainted such of the disciples as he might find - but especially those faithful women and the Virgin-Mother - with the terrible scenes that had passed since the previous evening. Thence he returned to Golgotha, just in time to witness the Crucifixion, which he again describes with peculiar fulness of details. [6118] When the Saviour was nailed to the Cross, St. John seems once more to have returned to the City - this time, to bring back with him those-women, in company of whom we now find him standing close to the Cross. A more delicate, tender, loving service could not have been rendered than this. Alone, of all the disciples, he is there - not afraid to be near Christ, in the Palace of the High-Priest, before Pilate, and now under the Cross. And alone he renders to Christ this tender service of bringing the women and Mary to the Cross, and to them the protection of his guidance and company. He loved Jesus best; and it was fitting that to his manliness and affection should be entrusted the unspeakable privilege of Christ's dangerous inheritance. [6119]