by Elyse Fitzpatrick
Remember me.
Luke 23:42

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are really only three kinds of people in the world, and they were all represented there by those miserable creatures hanging on Golgotha’s mount. There they were, hands and feet pinioned to wood, naked, shamed, in excruciating agony, with no hope of anything other than hours that would seem like a millennia, waiting while the life drained out of them. Two of them faced a reality that they had made a mistake from which they would never recover. And one of them hung there dying out of love for hopeless wretches who have about as much ability to changes themselves as those other two men hanging on the cross.
One of them is angry. He says, “If you’re so great, then why don’t you get up off the cross and help me.” (Now, I’m going to be really honest: there are days in my life when I’ve been like that.) And then there is someone else there on a cross who is begging for mercy. He says to the angry man, “Why don’t you just shut up? I’ve been listening to people like you talk about injustice in the world my whole life, and now we’re finally getting justice.” And in his pain and helplessness and hopelessness, the man mutters these words to Jesus: “Remember me” (Luke 23:42). Then, in the most astounding demonstration of one-way love, God washes that poor, wretched soul.
Remember me. That’s all we’ve got.
And then, the last one of the three hanging there on Golgotha had already done His begging. He had already asked that there might be some other way for Him to free us from the condemnation we deserved. And God gave Him grace and strength, not in His deity, but in His humanity, to stand. Think of the love that worked in the heart of that forsaken, doubting, human man, who was at that moment walking by faith and not by sight, who in His humanity said, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” That wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was your Savior suffering in your place so that you would never be deserted, so you would never be exiled, so you would never be isolated.

Thought to Remember for Today

What does the fruit of one-way love look like? It looks like the ability to be transparent and to say, “I have nothing except ‘remember me.’ And the only reason I have that is because You gave it to me.”

Fitzpatrick, E. (2016). Grace untamed: a 60-day devotional. Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook.