Luke 23: Jesus Declares Even a Yakuza Not Guilty

Introduction

"Jesus loves yakuza too." Yasuhiro Kanazawa is not trying to shock anyone. He spent ten years in the yakuza world himself before becoming a pastor. Invited to preach at Onnuri Church Osaka (大阪オンヌリキリスト教会), he opens Luke 23:32-43 under a deliberately provocative title: "Jesus Declared a Yakuza Not Guilty."

Born in Osaka in 1964, he joined a motorcycle gang at 16, then a yakuza organization at 18. After his conversion, he studied the Bible and theology. Today he is the senior pastor of a neighboring church in Osaka, a chaplain at the Kobe prison, and the head of Mission Barabbas.

His starting point is simple: the last man Jesus led to salvation before dying on the cross was a criminal condemned to death. The pastor follows the text verse by verse, tells how that same Jesus found him, and then shows what it means to be declared not guilty before God.

Outline of the Message

1. Instead of the Skull, Jesus at the Center

• "There were also others, two criminals, led with him to be put to death" (verse 32). The pastor calls them gokudō, men who went all the way to the end of evil. Condemned to death for their crimes, they are executed.
• The place called the Skull, Calvary in Latin and Golgotha in Hebrew, is an execution site on a small hill. There, men crucify the one and only Savior, the one who has received all authority in heaven and on earth. "How ignorant man is!"
• Jesus is crucified in the middle, one criminal on his right and the other on his left. The center of this execution is Christ.
• He is placed there as the greatest of criminals, because he bears on himself the sins of all humanity, from Adam's fall to the end of the world.

2. "Father, Forgive Them"

• Jesus received thirty-nine lashes, blows, a crown of thorns, and nails through his hands and feet. But beyond the physical or emotional suffering, he goes through a spiritual suffering: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?", forsaken by the Father.
• In the midst of this pain, he prays for the salvation of men: "Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing" (verse 34).
• This prayer is first of all for the two criminals, at his right and at his left. They were men so violent that their conscience was probably paralyzed: they no longer knew what they were doing.
• It also concerns the crowd, the Jewish leaders, and the Roman soldiers who cast lots for his clothes. And its effectiveness, the pastor says, lasts to this day and until the end of the world.

3. Those Who Despise the Savior

• The people stand watching, as mere spectators, onlookers (verse 35). The rulers scoff: "He saved others. Let him save himself." They do not believe in him. For the pastor, those who had Jesus crucified are the worst of murderers.
• The soldiers follow orders like "robot men." They lead Jesus to Golgotha, raise the cross, drive in the nails, and fix the sign "king of the Jews." With a long stick, they hold sour wine up to him, "the way you tease an animal."
• What they share: pride, stubbornness, contempt, and mockery. The Savior is right in front of them and they do not recognize him. This, the pastor says, is the typical portrait of a person who is not saved.
• One of the criminals insults him: "If you are the Christ, save yourself and us!" (verse 39). The pastor puts it this way: "If you are the Christ, you can surely work a miracle. Pull out your nails and get us out of here."
• This man insulted the Savior to the very end. He died with a hardened heart, never seeing his sin as sin or evil as evil.

4. The Second Criminal: The Fear of God and Confession

• "Don’t you even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation?" (verse 40). Both are on a cross, but one of them is being led to repentance.
• Because he fears God, he understands how serious his sin is: "we receive the due reward for our deeds" (verse 41). His death sentence is the wages of his actions.
• At first, though, both robbers were insulting Jesus (Matthew 27:44). What changed one of them was Jesus' intercession: "Father, forgive them."
• He also recognizes that Jesus is without sin: "this man has done nothing wrong." Christ means the one whom God appointed as Savior. Born of the virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, he came without stain and without sin.
• Then he says to Jesus: "Remember me when you come into your Kingdom" (verse 42). In the Japanese text the pastor read, he addresses him as "Jesus," which means Savior: he confesses his faith. It is by believing with the heart and confessing with the mouth that a person is saved (Romans 10:10).

5. "Today You Will Be with Me in Paradise"

• Jesus' answer (verse 43) is a declaration of forgiveness. Paradise is the place where those whose sins are forgiven go to be with God. It is where those who died believing in Christ wait for the resurrection.
• "Today": for this criminal, it is the day of his death. For his body, it is the worst day, a day of despair.
• But just before dying, he receives from Jesus a verdict of acquittal. He dies under the punishment for his deeds, and yet he is saved.
• "Jesus loves yakuza too. He pronounces acquittal for them."

6. "I Was a Yakuza Too"

• At 18, the pastor enters the yakuza world: "I wanted to live as a man and die as a man." At the sake cup ceremony, he swears loyalty to his boss: "If the boss says white is black, it is black." He makes clear that neither he nor the church has any connection with that world today.
• He is a fourth-generation Christian in his family. His grandmother, a devoted believer, prayed tirelessly for him to leave the yakuza. She also made a large gift toward the building of a church, despite her children's anger: "This is for your blessing." The pastor sees in this the greatest blessing of the family: a yakuza who became a pastor.
• As a child, he went to Sunday school and sang at Christmas, but he did not believe in Jesus. As a teenager, he left the church, joined a motorcycle gang, went through a juvenile detention center (鑑別所), and then entered the yakuza.
• His boss went bankrupt with billions of yen in debt and the group was dissolved. The members moved to the most powerful organization in Kobe, in the middle of a clan war: you had to go out wearing a bulletproof vest. For taking over another man's debt, he had to cut off a finger.
• One day, while going to rescue a kidnapped comrade, his group was attacked with swords and pistols. The others were wounded. As for him, while fleeing, he found himself "set down" by a strange force in the middle of a road full of cars, which all braked. He was the only one to get out without a scratch: "God protected me."
• He moved to Tokyo with his wife and their three children to go straight, but sank into alcohol and drugs. In Ueno Park, he came across Christians singing and proclaiming Jesus in the street. They seemed radiant to him, and he found himself "too dirty to be saved."
• The drugs caused a heart attack. Barely saved, he went home, turned on the television, and came upon Jesus carrying his cross on the Via Dolorosa. He was frightened, threw away his drugs, quit gambling, and started out washing dishes in a grilled meat restaurant. At 28, he received his first honest paycheck: 180,000 yen. "I understood the value of money and the joy of working."
• Shortly afterward, his father became seriously ill. He prayed: "Take my life in exchange, but save my father." Believing he had ruined everything by taking part in an ancestor rite, he thought God had rejected him. One Sunday morning, a Christian friend of his father took him by the hand and brought him to church.
• He wept as he sang, and prayed: "Can a sinner like me be saved?" The pastor preached that day on: "I will remember their sins and their iniquities no more" (Hebrews 10:17). The cross touched him to the core. He believed in Jesus that day, March 14, 1993. His father died three days later.
• He quotes Pascal: nothing can fill the emptiness of the human heart except God alone. Neither power, nor money, nor pleasures had managed to do it. That day, he received "not the peace the world gives, but the peace of God's forgiveness."

7. From Accused to Child: Declared Not Guilty

• "It is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). On that day, the question will be: verdict of guilty or verdict of acquittal?
• In the courtroom, God is the judge and man is the accused. But whoever believes in Jesus Christ, whatever his past, receives from God a verdict of acquittal, by a pure decision of grace. This is justification by faith, "more than a doctrine, it is the Bible itself."
• The pastor quotes Martin Luther: we bring to the cross our heavy sins, the ones we can no longer carry, the ones we would like to hide. We repent, Jesus takes them and gives us the righteousness of Christ. This exchange of sin and righteousness is "an exchange of joy."
• Then the relationship changes: the judge becomes Father and we receive the status of children. God declares us holy, whatever our past, and then keeps sanctifying us all our lives, because our nature still pulls us to the right and to the left.
• At the end, at the final judgment, God will publicly pronounce the acquittal of those who believed. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
• The message ends with an appeal: believe with the heart and confess with the mouth (Romans 10:10), for "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). The pastor also calls those who want to devote themselves to serving God, because the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.

Key Takeaways

• Jesus was crucified among criminals, as the greatest of criminals, because he carried the sins of all humanity.
• The prayer "Father, forgive them" was first aimed at the two robbers. It is what led one of them to repentance.
• The fear of God opens your eyes to your own sin, and faith says: "Remember me."
• Even on the darkest day, Jesus can pronounce a verdict of acquittal. No past is too heavy for him.
• Justified by faith, you are no longer an accused person before a judge: you become a child before a Father.

Personal Application

1. Do you count yourself among the spectators of the cross, or do you recognize that Jesus died there for you?
2. Is there a sin in your life that you no longer see as sin?
3. Do you think, like the pastor in Ueno, that you are "too dirty to be saved"? What does Jesus' answer to the criminal say to you?
4. Who are you praying for with perseverance, like that grandmother who prayed for her grandson?
5. Are you living like an accused person waiting for a sentence, or like a child whom the Father has declared not guilty?

Verses Cited

• Luke 23:32-43
• Matthew 27:44
• Matthew 27:46
• Romans 10:10
• Hebrews 10:17
• Hebrews 9:27
• John 3:16
• Romans 6:23
• Matthew 9:37-38

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the pastor talk about a yakuza in connection with the criminal in Luke 23?

Yasuhiro Kanazawa uses the Japanese word gokudō, which refers to someone who has gone all the way to the end of evil and which is also used to describe yakuza. The two criminals crucified with Jesus had been condemned to death for their crimes. The pastor, himself a former yakuza, stresses that the last man Jesus led to salvation before his death was one of them.

What does "today you will be with me in Paradise" mean?

For the preacher, it is a declaration of forgiveness. The day the criminal dies is the worst day of his life, but before dying he receives from Jesus a verdict of acquittal. Paradise is the place where those whose sins are forgiven wait for the resurrection, before being declared not guilty at the final judgment.

What is justification by faith according to this message?

Before God, we are the accused and God is the judge. Whoever believes in Jesus Christ receives, by pure grace, a verdict of acquittal. The pastor quotes Martin Luther: we bring our sins to the cross and Christ gives us his righteousness, an exchange that is an exchange of joy. The judge then becomes a Father, and we receive the status of children.