Friday | 08 May 2026
When the word of the cross is proclaimed, the Lord first declares, ‘You are not My people’. Yielding to the Spirit of grace and supplication that accompanies the word, a hearer first recognises that they, with their ‘old man’, are co‑crucified and co‑cursed with Christ. Accordingly, they declare, ‘You rightly say that I am not one of God’s people.’ Their old way of thinking is now nailed, with the Law, to the cross with Christ. Evidently, the word of the cross is beginning to sink down into their ears, as it did in the case of the repentant thief who was crucified with Christ on Calvary.
A person who has received this amazing illumination cries out to the King. They have become a God‑fearer and address Christ as ‘the Lord of glory’ who is being crucified with them. 1Co 2:8. Significantly, He is to them ‘the Lord of the dead’. Rom 14:9. This was the illumination and confession of the repentant thief.
A person who recognises Christ as the Lord of the dead, is acknowledging Christ’s work as ‘the Scapegoat’. They are not God’s people because they are being taken out with the Scapegoat to the sea of God’s forgetfulness. As soon as a person acknowledges this, they ask the Lord to remember them. Luk 23:42. A person can only ask this when they recognise the distinction between their death with Christ as the Scapegoat and His death as the ‘Lord’s goat’. The statement ‘remember me’ is a request for true atonement through fellowship in His death. Through His kind of dying, Christ was destroying death. By offering, He emptied to an endpoint all rebellion and unbelief, bringing sin and death into the place of forgetfulness where it has no more substance and power!
Remembrance becomes our reception of reconciliation as Christ replies, ‘Today, you will be with Me in Paradise.’ Luk 23:43. This is the place of first‑love fellowship at the tree of life. Rev 2:7. Right there, in the place where we were not God’s people, the Lord is saying, ‘You are a son of the living God!’ Hos 1:10. Christ has now become to us the ‘Lord of the living’. Rom 14:9.
Further Study:
Psalm 88
References:
1Co 2:8
Which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Rom 14:9
For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
Luk 23:42-43
Then he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.’
Rev 2:7
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.
Hos 1:10
Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there it shall be said to them, ‘You are sons of the living God.’
Rom 14:9
For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.