![]() Would any Christian agree that the gospel can be boiled down to asking to be remembered in Jesus’ kingdom? Moreover, if the good thief is a standard-setting example, why not others? Jesus forgave the sins of many people in a wide variety of circumstances that few consider normative today. Further, treating this “edge case” as a general principle actually proves too much. What God does for someone in an extremely unusual context should not reassure anyone outside those same conditions. 9:15-18, Acts 19:1-6).Īnother problem with the analogy is that the good thief’s situation was unlike virtually any person’s in history. The sacraments, such as Christian baptism and the Eucharist, are part of the New Covenant, which was not fully in place until Jesus died (Heb. One issue is that the thief lived and died under the Old Covenant. The second and much bigger problem is that even if the good thief had never been baptized, the analogy between his life and most other people’s is insufficient to support sola fide. If so, it’s likely that he would have been baptized. It is possible, then, that the thief on the cross was a fallen-away disciple (cf. He knew Jesus had done nothing wrong, that Jesus was Lord, and that Jesus was going to his kingdom after he died (something Jesus made clear only to his disciples-see Matthew 13:10-11). ![]() It is also noteworthy that the good thief seems to have been catechized to some level. We certainly would not want to argue a positive case from silence, but neither should those who assume the thief was not baptized (the Bible doesn’t report the apostles’ baptisms either!). How do we know he wasn’t baptized? The Bible doesn’t say he was-but it doesn’t say he wasn’t. Dismas in this manner.įirst, a rather large assumption is being made concerning the thief’s sacramental record. But there are several problems with proof-texting St.
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