"The thief on the cross was never baptized, did no good works, and went straight to Paradise. If baptism wasn't necessary for him, why would it be necessary for me?" Let's give it a full hearing.
Short answer: The thief was saved by Christ, through faith, repentance and confession of Him, in circumstances you do not share: he was nailed to a cross, and he died before the risen Christ commanded baptism. The Catholic Church teaches exactly what his case shows: "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments" (CCC 1257). The thief is an exception God made on Calvary, not a rule He gave to us. For everyone who hears the Gospel and can be baptized, Scripture's answer is Ananias' question: "Now, why delay?"
Key verses on the thief and baptism
- "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43)
- "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19)
- "For a will takes effect only at death; it has no force while the testator is alive." (Hebrews 9:17)
- "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38)
- "Now, why delay? Get up and have yourself baptized and your sins washed away, calling upon his name." (Acts 22:16)
- "This prefigured baptism, which saves you now." (1 Peter 3:21)
Scripture quotations are from the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
What Protestants Believe
Most evangelical Protestants hold that baptism is an act of obedience that follows salvation, not a means of it. The Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message (2000) defines baptism as "the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and calls it "an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour." GotQuestions.org, one of the most widely read evangelical sites, is blunter: "We adamantly reject baptism as being required for salvation," and "Baptism is not necessary for salvation." Yet the same article insists, "We strongly believe that each and every Christian should be water baptized by immersion." These Christians do not despise baptism; they deny that it saves. (Lutherans and some other Protestants hold a higher view of baptism; this article answers the evangelical reading of the thief.)
GotQuestions writes that "One of the thieves responded in faith to the message of salvation and was taken to paradise that very day," and that "it is never too late to repent and accept the free gift of salvation."
At full strength: the thief was never baptized, did no good works, received no sacraments and did no penance. Yet Jesus promised him Paradise "today." So, the argument runs, salvation is by faith alone, baptism is a symbol of a salvation already received, and purgatory is ruled out. That is a serious argument from a real text. Here is why it does not prove what it claims.
What Catholics Actually Teach
"The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation" (CCC 1257). But the Catholic Church states that necessity precisely:
- Who is bound: "Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament" (CCC 1257).
- God's freedom: "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments" (CCC 1257).
- Baptism of blood: those who die for the faith before Baptism "are baptized by their death for and with Christ," and "This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament" (CCC 1258).
- Baptism of desire: for catechumens who die before Baptism, "their explicit desire to receive it, together with repentance for their sins, and charity, assures them the salvation that they were not able to receive through the sacrament" (CCC 1259).
Baptism is also the door into the Catholic Church: Christ "explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door" (CCC 846).
What Catholics do not teach:
- That the thief was lost, or that his salvation was a lesser one. Christ Himself promised him Paradise.
- That baptism is a work we do to earn grace. It is Christ's act: the sacraments "are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes" (CCC 1127).
- That everyone must pass through purgatory. Purgatory is for those who die "in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified" (CCC 1030).
It all points to Christ. The thief was saved by Jesus, crucified beside him, and so is every Christian. Baptism is not a rite that saves apart from Christ; it is how the same Jesus, risen, joins us to His death: "we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death" (Romans 6:3). The thief shared Christ's death on a cross next to His; we share it in the water He commanded.
The Biblical Case
1. Read what the thief actually did
While the other criminal mocked, he rebuked him: "we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal" (Luke 23:40–41). Then: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (23:42).
Count what is there: fear of God, confession of his own guilt, public defense of Jesus against a mocker, faith that a dying man is a King, and hope in His mercy. He confessed Christ aloud where it cost the most. That is the "repentance for their sins, and charity" the Catechism names in baptism of desire (CCC 1259).
2. He died before the command to baptize was given
The Great Commission came after the Resurrection, on a mountain in Galilee: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). The thief never heard it; no one had yet been baptized into Christ's death and Resurrection. (Jesus' disciples had baptized during His ministry, John 4:1–2, but the command to baptize all nations in the name of the Trinity came only after the Resurrection.) The apostles' baptizing in the name of the risen Christ begins at Pentecost: "Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand persons were added that day" (Acts 2:41).
Hebrews gives the principle: "a will takes effect only at death" (Hebrews 9:17). The New Covenant was ratified in Christ's blood, then proclaimed and administered by His apostles. To be exact, Jesus seems to have died before the thieves did: the soldiers broke both men's legs but found Jesus "already dead" (John 19:32–33). So the point is not minutes. The thief died before the risen Christ commanded baptism and the apostles began to give it. You cannot build a rule for people under the command from the one man who died before it.
3. For everyone after him, Scripture makes baptism the norm
Once the command is given, the New Testament speaks with one voice. Jesus: "no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit" (John 3:5). St. Peter at Pentecost: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38). Ananias to Saul: "Now, why delay? Get up and have yourself baptized and your sins washed away, calling upon his name" (Acts 22:16). St. Peter again: "This prefigured baptism, which saves you now" (1 Peter 3:21). St. Paul: "he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). And: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved" (Mark 16:16; this Longer Ending is missing from some early manuscripts, but the NABRE note says it "has traditionally been accepted as a canonical part of the gospel").
Notice Acts 22:16. Saul already believed; he had seen the risen Jesus. If anyone could have called baptism a mere symbol, it was Saul. Ananias tells him his sins still need to be "washed away." That is the norm for us.
4. He received the baptism Jesus Himself called a baptism
Jesus called His own death a baptism: "There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:50). He told James and John, "with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized" (Mark 10:39). The thief died crucified beside Jesus, confessing Him. The Church calls that the baptism of blood (CCC 1258), and St. Cyprian applied it to the thief in the third century.
5. "Paradise" means being with Christ
Jesus did not say "today you will be in heaven." He said, "today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). The NABRE note on this passage says, "The penitent sinner receives salvation through the crucified Jesus," and that Jesus' words "reveal Luke's understanding that the destiny of the Christian is 'to be with Jesus.'" Where was Jesus that day? His body lay in the tomb; after rising He said, "I have not yet ascended to the Father" (John 20:17). St. Peter says He "went to preach to the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:18–19). The Catechism explains that "Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him," the "holy souls, who awaited their Saviour in Abraham's bosom" (CCC 633; see Luke 16:22). St. Thomas Aquinas holds that the thief went with Christ to the realm of the dead, yet "as to reward he was in paradise, because he enjoyed Christ's Godhead just as the other saints did" (Summa Theologiae III, q. 52, a. 4, ad 3). The thief did not go where Jesus would be someday. He went where Jesus was that day, and to be with Christ is Paradise.
Objections Answered
(a) "The thief proves baptism isn't necessary for salvation."
At its strongest: Jesus Himself saved a man with no baptism and no works, and promised him Paradise the same day (Luke 23:42–43). If baptism were truly necessary, Jesus would have made an exception to His own rule, and God does not contradict Himself. So baptism must be obedience after salvation, as the Baptist Faith and Message says, not a means of it.
Answer: The objection proves that God can save without the sacrament. The Catholic Church says the same thing: "he himself is not bound by his sacraments" (CCC 1257). It does not prove that you may refuse the sacrament. The thief could not come down from the cross, and the command to baptize had not yet been given. You can be baptized, and it has. What is an exception for a crucified man is disobedience for a free one. St. Augustine says the lack is supplied invisibly only when baptism is "prevented, not by contempt for religion, but by the necessity of the moment" (see below).
(b) "'Today in Paradise' destroys purgatory."
At its strongest: A criminal who repented in his last hours would be purgatory's most obvious candidate. Yet he went to Paradise "today." GotQuestions argues, "To say that we must also suffer for our sins is to say that Jesus' suffering was insufficient in some way." St. Paul longed "to depart this life and be with Christ" (Philippians 1:23), not to depart to a place of cleansing.
Answer: The Catholic Church has never taught that every saved soul must pass through purgatory, or that it is measured in earthly days. Purgatory is for those who die "still imperfectly purified" (CCC 1030). Whether someone needs it depends on his purification, not on his biography: "A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain" (CCC 1472). And "when the day comes, serenely facing death, the Christian must strive to accept this temporal punishment of sin as a grace" (CCC 1473). The thief did exactly that: he accepted his sentence as just ("we have been condemned justly") and suffered it beside Jesus.
Nor does purgatory make Christ's suffering "insufficient." Purification applies His sufficient work to us; Hebrews speaks of "the spirits of the just made perfect" (Hebrews 12:23). Being made perfect is God's work, and He can complete it in a moment. For the full biblical case, see Where Is Purgatory in the Bible?
(c) "If desire is enough, then baptism is optional."
At its strongest: If faith and the desire for baptism can save, then a sincere believer who never gets around to baptism is safe. Then baptism is an important step of obedience but not a means of salvation, which is the Protestant position after all.
Answer: Desire for baptism means wanting baptism. Someone who knows Christ commanded it and declines it does not have baptism of desire; he has the opposite. Even when the Holy Spirit fell visibly on Cornelius' household before baptism, St. Peter "ordered them to be baptized" (Acts 10:47–48). The Church "does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude" (CCC 1257). Baptism of desire is a hope for the one who is prevented, not a promise for the one who postpones.
The Early Church Agrees
The earliest Christians held two truths together: baptism is necessary, and God supplies it to those who die for Christ, or long for baptism, before they can receive it. Several of them discuss the thief directly.
- Tertullian (On Baptism, c. AD 200), after insisting that baptism is necessary, names the exception: "We have indeed, likewise, a second font, (itself withal one with the former,) of blood." It "stands in lieu of the fontal bathing when that has not been received" (ch. 16).
- St. Cyprian of Carthage (Epistle 72, To Jubaianus, c. AD 256), on catechumens martyred before baptism, says they "certainly are not deprived of the sacrament of baptism who are baptized with the most glorious and greatest baptism of blood." Then he points to the thief: "the same Lord declares in the Gospel, that those who are baptized in their own blood, and sanctified by suffering, are perfected, and obtain the grace of the divine promise, when He speaks to the thief believing and confessing in His very passion, and promises that he should be with Himself in paradise" (sec. 22). For St. Cyprian, the thief does not prove that baptism is unnecessary. He is the model of baptism of blood.
- St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechetical Lecture 3, c. AD 350): "If any man receive not Baptism, he hath not salvation; except only Martyrs, who even without the water receive the kingdom. ... that men, living in times of peace, might be baptized in water, and, in times of persecution, in their own blood" (sec. 10).
- St. Augustine of Hippo (On Baptism, Against the Donatists, c. AD 400) takes up St. Cyprian's argument: "That the place of baptism is sometimes supplied by martyrdom is supported by an argument by no means trivial, which the blessed Cyprian adduces from the thief, to whom, though he was not baptized, it was yet said, 'To-day shall thou be with me in Paradise.'" He goes further: "not only martyrdom for the sake of Christ may supply what was wanting of baptism, but also faith and conversion of heart, if recourse may not be had to the celebration of the mystery of baptism for want of time." And he draws the line: "But the want is supplied invisibly only when the administration of baptism is prevented, not by contempt for religion, but by the necessity of the moment" (Book 4, ch. 22, sec. 30).
To be precise about St. Augustine: the NPNF editors note at the passage above that in his Retractations (2.18, written late in life), he expressed a doubt whether the thief may not have been baptized after all. That doubt concerns the example of the thief, not the principle that martyrdom supplies what is wanting of baptism, which he also taught in City of God (written c. AD 413–426): "whatever unbaptized persons die confessing Christ, this confession is of the same efficacy for the remission of sins as if they were washed in the sacred font of baptism" (13.7).
Conclusion
The thief on the cross is not a problem for Catholic teaching; he illustrates it. He was saved by Christ, through faith that confessed, repented and suffered beside Him, before the risen Lord commanded baptism. The thief had no choice about baptism. You do.
If you were baptized with water in the name of the Trinity, the Catholic Church recognizes your baptism. If you have never been baptized, don't build your hope on an exception made for a dying man. Christ's word to you is the word He sent to Saul: "Now, why delay?"
Come home. The Christ who promised Paradise to a dying thief still gives His saving baptism, His forgiveness and His Body and Blood in the Catholic Church. Christ did not found many churches. He founded one, on St. Peter and the apostles (Matthew 16:18), and that Church is the Catholic Church. "It is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained" (CCC 816). If you are a baptized Christian, you already share "a certain, although imperfect, communion" with her (CCC 838). Every truth you already hold is a call to the rest of the way. Christ is calling you into the Catholic Church.
Your next step: Come to Mass this Sunday at your local Catholic church. You can find one near you at MassTimes.org. Everyone is welcome; if you're not yet Catholic, pray with us but don't receive Communion yet. When you're ready to become Catholic, call the parish office and ask about OCIA, the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. They will walk you through every step. Read our guide: How Do I Become Catholic? Not ready yet? Get our free pocket guide below and keep learning.
FAQ
Was the thief on the cross in purgatory? The Catholic Church has never said so, and Jesus' word "today" suggests not. A conversion "from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner" (CCC 1472). See objection (b) above.
Can Protestants be saved without being Catholic? A baptized Protestant is truly joined to Christ, and every truth he holds comes from Him. But "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body," and those who know the Catholic Church is necessary and refuse to enter her "could not be saved" (CCC 846). Those who, "through no fault of their own," do not know this "may achieve eternal salvation" (CCC 847). That is a "may," not a promise. And even membership saves no one who "does not however persevere in charity" (CCC 837). The safe road is the one Christ laid out: full communion with His Catholic Church.
I believe in Jesus but was never baptized. What should I do? Don't wait. Call a Catholic parish and ask about OCIA. For the full biblical case on baptism, read Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation? and Is Salvation by Faith Alone?
Sources
Scripture (NABRE, bible.usccb.org): Matthew 16:18; Matthew 28:19; Mark 10:38–39; Mark 16:16 and note; Luke 12:50; Luke 16:22; Luke 23:39–43 and note; John 3:5; John 4:1–2; John 19:32–33; John 20:17; Acts 2:38, 41; Acts 10:47–48; Acts 22:16; Romans 6:3; Philippians 1:23; Titus 3:5; Hebrews 9:17; Hebrews 12:23; 1 Peter 3:18–21.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (vatican.va): 633; 816, 837, 838, 846, 847; 1030; 1127; 1257, 1258, 1259; 1472, 1473.
Church Fathers and Doctors: Tertullian, On Baptism 16 (ANF vol. 3, ccel.org); Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 72, To Jubaianus 22 (ANF vol. 5, newadvent.org); Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 3.10 (NPNF2 vol. 7, ccel.org); Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists 4.22.30, with editor's note on Retractations 2.18 (NPNF1 vol. 4, ccel.org); Augustine, City of God 13.7 (NPNF1 vol. 2, ccel.org); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 52, a. 4 (ccel.org).
Protestant sources: Southern Baptist Convention, Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Art. VII; GotQuestions.org, "What can we learn from the thief on the cross?"; GotQuestions.org, "What did Jesus mean when He said, 'Today you will be with me in paradise'?"; GotQuestions.org, "Is baptism necessary for salvation?"; GotQuestions.org, "What does the Bible say about purgatory?".