The story of the Wise Thief (St. Dismas) is indeed one of the most powerful witnesses to Christ’s mercy in all of Scripture.
We Orthodox venerate him as the first to enter Paradise, and we even take his words into the Divine Liturgy: “Like the thief will I confess Thee: Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom.” On Great Friday we sing, “The Wise Thief didst Thou make worthy of Paradise in a single moment, O Lord.”
Yet this does not prove the Reformation doctrine of sola fide as commonly understood.
Look carefully at what the thief actually did while nailed and dying:
- He feared God.
- He confessed his own guilt (“we indeed justly… receiving the due reward of our deeds”).
- He rebuked the blasphemy of the other thief.
- He publicly defended Christ’s innocence.
- He confessed Jesus as the righteous King who would come into His Kingdom.
- He asked for mercy.
These are not “nothing.” They are the works of repentance, humility, confession, and living faith – the only works available to a man whose hands and feet were fixed to a cross.
As St. John Maximovitch observed, it was precisely this thorough repentance, profound humility, firm faith, and open confession (made when almost the whole world was against Christ) that forged the key which opened Paradise to him.
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