Didn’t Jesus assure the thief on the cross that he would be with Him in paradise that very day?

Some believe from this verse that people go to their reward immediately after death, a teaching that goes contrary to many other Bible texts. There are two main problems with this assumption. First, even though Jesus told the thief, “today you will be with Me in Paradise,” three days later He told Mary, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father” (John 20:17).

Where is the Father, and where is paradise? The Bible tells us, “To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7). God’s throne is shown in Revelation 22:1, 2, to be in heaven near the tree of life.

The second problem comes from when Jesus and the thief died. When the soldiers came just before sunset to take the bodies off the crosses, Jesus was already dead (John 19:32–34). Since the thieves were still alive, the soldiers broke their legs to speed up their deaths. It is very possible they lived until past sundown and possibly longer. So how could Christ assure the thief of “being with Him” in paradise “that day” when they both did not die on “that day”?

The solution to this dilemma is most clearly resolved by studying what the Bible teaches about the state of the dead. I won’t take time to cover that topic here, but the Scriptures clearly state that until the coming of Christ, the dead are in their graves, not in paradise (see John 11:11–14; 1 Thessalonians 4:15, 16).

It’s also important to remember that uninspired men added punctuation to our English Bibles when they were translated. The commas in this verse were not in the original manuscripts. Someone simply placed a comma before the word “today” instead of after it. The verse is more clearly translated as, “I assure you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”

Key Bible Texts

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43 KJV)