Luke 23:42-43, The thief with Jesus in the afterlife the day of his death

“And he was saying, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!’ 43 And He said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise,'” (Luke 23:42–43).

The majority of the conditionalists hold to the doctrine called soul sleep which is the vague doctrine that a person is unconscious after death.  Other conditionalists hold to the idea that when the human physically dies, he ceases to have life. Please consider the following quotes.

1. “soul sleep,” the view that death is a state of total unconsciousness, rather than survival in heaven, hell, or purgatory.” ¹Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism (Kindle Locations 503-504). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
2. “When death occurs, then it is the soul that is deprived of life. Death cannot strike the body or any other part of the soul without striking the entirety of the soul.”²Fudge, Edward William. The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, Third Edition (p. 27). Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In light of this, Luke 23:42-43 is important because it is where the thief is being crucified with Christ, and Jesus says to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise.” The implication of Christ’s words is that the thief, upon his death, would be with Jesus in Paradise.  This supports the idea that very soon both of them would be together. And, it stands in contradiction to Edward Fudge’s false view that the human soul is deprived of life upon death. Nevertheless, one conditionalist response is to focus on a single ‘,’.  That’s right, a comma.

1. “, today”   ‘Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.'”
   1. ESV, ISV, KJV, LEB, NASB, NCV, NET, NIV, NRSV, RSV, YLT, etc.
2. “today, ”   ‘Truly I say to you today, you shall be with Me in Paradise.'”
   1. NWT (Jehovah’s Witness Bible)

On line 1 Jesus is saying that the thief and he would be together that very day in Paradise. On line 2, the interpretation is that Jesus was saying those words that very day. In other words, it as though Jesus was saying, “I’m telling you this right now, today, right now I’m telling you that you will be with me in Paradise…”  Now, the latter approach is the same as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a non-Christian cult.  But, this in no way means that conditionalists are not Christians just because some of them happen to use the same argument as the JW’s who also are annihilationists. The point is that the translations show the English to represent line 1, not line 2, and this effects interpretation.

I’ve provided a small table below listing different Greek texts. You don’t have to understand Greek to make sense of this. λέγω (lego) is Greek for “I say” and σήμερον (sameron) is Greek for “today.”  I placed the commas in red that are found in the Greek text as I copied them. You’ll notice that the second Greek text does not have a comma in it.

I suppose the conditionalist who holds the soul sleep could agree with line 1 above and say that the person is alive after his death and will be with Jesus in paradise, though the person is unconscious. I find this to be weak, but it is a possibility from their perspective. However, line 2 is seriously problematic in light of the view held by the well-known annihilationist Edward William Fudge’s position found in the second quote near the beginning of this article. Not only is Mr. Fudge’s position heretical because it necessitates that the human soul of Jesus ceased to exist upon his death, thereby denying the hypostatic union in the incarnation, but it is also a manifestation of reinterpreting Scripture to make it suit one’s presuppositions.

Conclusion

Luke 23:42-43 is where Jesus speaks to the thief on the cross who is next to him and says that the thief would be with Him in paradise that very day. At the very least, this refutes the conditionalist idea that the person who dies ceases to have life in his soul (per Edward Fudge). Also, the words of Christ challenge the weak notion of soul sleep imposed into this Scripture by the conditionalists. Finally, when we see that there are other verses in the Bible that speak of consciousness after death such as Samuel (1 Sam. 28:11-19). Moses and Elijah (Matt. 17:2-4), Lazarus and Rich man (Luke 16:19-31), Paul (2 Cor. 12:2), the saints (Rev. 6:10), we can easily conclude that Jesus was saying that the thief would be with him, conscious, in paradise shortly after both of them died.