Tired of Prison? Break the Crime Habit!

It was a hot, sultry Spring afternoon more than 2000 years ago and many of Jerusalem's citizens trudged up a steep incline to the site the occupying Romans had selected for public executions. Two men already hung there in the basking sun as the crowds, clustered behind the Roman guards, followed the third prisoner whose sentence has been determined just that morning. Weakened from the nightlong beating, this prisoner, even with help from an African of Cyrene, struggled mightily with the heavy cross beam. At the top of the hill, it would be lifted into place onto the upright stake, planted solidly in the hard ground of this place called Golgotha. Finally, the three prisoners all hung there on three crosses, each in his own way awaiting release from excruciating pain that death would bring.

Without warning, sometime just before 3pm, these three men--two of them convicted of insurrection against Rome and murder, and the other, hanging in the middle, convicted of claiming to be a king greater than Caesar--began one of the strangest conversations in recorded history. Yet, this ancient conversation, recorded in the Bible in Luke 23:39-43 ,reveals powerful principles of change for more than 10 million criminals in the U.S. today.

"If you are the prophesied Messiah--the Christ--as you claim to be--one criminal whispered through blood-caked lips, then save yourself and us." The man in the middle did not respond. The convicted man on the other side, painfully gasping for breathe, rebuked (renounced) his cohort in crime, saying: "Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said to Jesus, Lord remember me when you come into your kingdom." Turning as much as the pain would allow, Jesus, 33, painfully whispered to that criminal: "Assuredly, I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise."