This is a proposition to you: Your reaction to the cross determines your eternity.
The other rebel, the second criminal on the cross, calls Jesus “Lord!”. The Rebel recognized the Savior. As He watched Jesus carry His cross up the pathway to the skull, perhaps it occurred to the career criminal that this man, “whatever He may be, is no criminal. Even though He is condemned, He couldn’t possibly deserve this sentence.” As the rebel watched the centurions pierce Jesus’ hands and feet with nails, perhaps he remembered the Psalm he was taught as a child that declares, “They pierced my hands and feet, they cast lots for my clothes”. When the rebel heard Jesus whisper a prayer for his own murderers: “Father forgive them for they know now what they do”, he must have thought to himself, “Who, but the son of God, would do such a thing?”I met my murderers with a curse, He meets them with a blessing.” He heard the mocking of the crowd: “He saved others, let him save himself”. He saved others? If thats true…maybe he could save me. “Lord!”, he declares Him…For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Jesus responded to the rebel, “Today, join me in paradise.”
There is no such thing as a moderate reaction to Jesus. As the theologian C.S. Lewis argues., “You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.
Today, what will your reaction to Jesus be?