Paradise. Today!

Respond to the invite.

The sun hung heavy in the sky that day, casting long shadows over a place called Golgotha. Three crosses stood against the horizon, silhouetted against the deepening sky. And on those crosses, three men gasped for breath, their bodies broken, their time running out.

The man in the middle—he wasn’t like the others.

They all looked the same: bloodied, beaten, dying. But there was something about him, something different. The people who watched knew his name—Jesus of Nazareth. The Romans had nailed a sign above his head: King of the Jews. But kings don’t die like this—kings wear crowns of gold, not thorns; they sit on thrones, not hang from wooden beams.

Yet there he was, and the two men beside him—thieves, rebels, criminals—had their own stories to tell.

At first, both men joined in with the crowd’s mockery. "If you are the Christ, save yourself and us!" they sneered. But as time passed, as the agony deepened, one of them began to see something the others had missed.

Maybe it was the way Jesus suffered—not with curses on his lips, but with forgiveness. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Maybe it was the way he looked at those who hated him—not with anger, but with love. And maybe it was something deeper, something unseen.

Whatever it was, it pierced that thief’s heart, and in that moment, hanging there in his own shame and failure, he did the only thing he could do—he turned to the man beside him.

"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

No signs and wonders. No miracles or fantastic, mind-numbing parables. He just saw Jesus and recognised something.

The thief had no good deeds to offer, no time to fix what he had broken, no way to make things right. He wasn’t religious. He wasn’t worthy or ceremonially clean—all he had was a desperate plea to the only one who could save him.

Jesus—bruised, bleeding, every movement accompanied by surging agony and barely able to breathe—turned to him and said something that shook the very fabric of heaven:

"Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise."

Now, if you don’t hear anything else, hear this—Jesus didn’t come for the perfect. He didn’t die for the righteous. He came for the broken, the lost, the failures, the sinners. He came for you.

The world tells us that you get what you deserve: work hard, be good, keep the rules, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll make it. And if you don’t? Well, you’ll get what’s coming to you.

Pause! The gospel flips all of that upside down.

Grace—it isn’t fair. It isn’t logical. It doesn’t make sense.

The thief deserved death, but Jesus gave him life. The thief had nothing to offer, but Jesus gave him everything.

That’s why Jesus hung on that cross—not for those who had it all together, but for those who had lost it all. Not for the strong, but for the weak. Not for the sinless, but for sinners.

For us. For you.

This is the scandal of the cross.

The innocent one condemned, so the guilty could go free. The righteous one rejected, so the unrighteous could be accepted. Jesus, abandoned, so that we could be welcomed home.

Back to the thief—he had only hours left to live, but those hours were enough because salvation doesn’t come through effort or achievement, but through faith in the one who took our place.

And maybe that’s you today.

Maybe you look at your life and see nothing but regret, or think you’re too far gone, too messed up, too broken. Maybe you believe that whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve become, it’s too late. But it is not too late.

The cross says otherwise. It says that grace is bigger than your sin, mercy is stronger than your past, and love has already won.

Let’s not forget what it cost.

It is one thing to say that Jesus died for the broken. It is another to truly grasp what that cost him.

We talk about the cross like it was just an event—something that happened long ago. A tragic injustice. But it was more than that. It was where the full weight of God’s wrath met the full depth of his mercy. The nails would have hurt. The scourging was brutal. And the physical pain... unimaginable.

That wasn’t the worst of it. The worst came when the sky turned black, when Jesus, who had only ever known perfect communion with the Father, suddenly felt the unbearable weight of separation and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

That moment—right there—that was the cost.

The thief hanging next to him deserved to be forsaken. You and I deserve to be forsaken. But Jesus took that forsakenness upon himself, absorbing the full weight of judgment so that sinners could walk free.

Take another glance at the scene as darkness falls—there were two thieves. Both were guilty, dying. Both heard the same words, saw the same man, watched the same grace unfold before their eyes. But only one turned to Jesus. Only one reached out in faith. Only one was saved.

Grace is offered, but it must be received. And maybe that’s what we miss—the urgency of what is happening as God reaches out to us, extending grace and mercy. The cross is not just a story to be admired. It is an invitation to be accepted.

Jesus doesn’t wait for you to get your act together. He doesn’t ask for your CV of righteousness. He doesn’t bargain, and he doesn’t beg.

He simply says, Come.