NOTES for Luk 23:35-43
Every person has to endure severe physical pain at least once in life. In such a state a person becomes irritable, angry at everything and everyone, dreaming only that everyone would leave him alone and that the pain would finally stop.
The physical pain of a person crucified on a cross is hard even to imagine. And that makes it all the easier to understand why one of the robbers is yelling and cursing. And all the more astonishing that the other, also a robber and a murderer, behaves in an entirely different way.
And the fact that Jesus promises him paradise tells us once again about the God of Mercy, not the God of justice. Because what matters to Him is not when we make the choice in His favor, but that we make that choice.