That is where this text leads us, to a man who could not pray in the affirmative. He could not simply ask for what he wanted. He was not yet convinced that the man dying by His side was able to do what he wanted to have done. So he casts his request in the weakened condition of the subjunctive mood. "If You be the Son of God, save Yourself and us." What a weak and timid way to come before God. How can you pray with power when you are stuck behind the word If? How can you find a sweet relief at the altar of prayer when you can go no further than If?

Why bother to pray at all? Prayer has no wings to soar and no power to dig deep, because it is stifled by the uncertainty and indecisiveness of If.

There may be no more tragic scene in all of the Bible than this scene on Calvary. There, in the middle, is the Son of God. On one side is a man whose bold appeal to Jesus has just won him a place in paradise. And on the other side is a man who can only curse his own condition and challenge Jesus to prove to him that Jesus is who others have claimed Him to be. If ....

I find it interesting that Jesus never bothered to answer that dying man. When the penitent man on the other cross turned to Jesus and called Him Lord, that man was heard and he was blessed beyond measure. But this man received absolutely no response from Jesus. The old song has told us that Jesus "Never said a mumbling word." Well, we know that He did say several things during the time of His trial and crucifixion. The song actually wants to suggest that Jesus never complained about His treatment, and He never looked to blame anybody else for what was happening to Him. But He did speak on several occasions. We know that He spoke seven words from the cross. We know that He spoke to a group of women as He carried His cross through the streets of the city, and fell beneath that heavy weight. However, while Jesus spoke to some people during His hours of suffering and pain, there were others to whom Jesus did not speak a word. This man was one of those people.

Why do you suppose Jesus did not answer that man? I think, first of all, that Jesus did not have to say or do anything more to prove to that man, or anybody else, that He was the Son of God. For three years, while traveling throughout Palestine, Jesus had repeatedly proven who He was. If? Let the use of that word strike you with all of the shock and dismay that it must have had for Jesus. What does a man have to do to prove that He is the Son of God?

When Jesus performed His first miracle and turned water into wine, His mother may have requested it because there was no more wine. Jesus did that miracle, because for the first time He was revealing who He was. When He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, made the cripples to walk and even raised the dead back to life, He was proving who He was. When He commanded a howling wind to cease its terrible roar simply by saying, "Peace, be still," He was demonstrating beyond doubt that He was the Son of God. When He spoke in parables and preached with power, so much so that the people had to declare, "Never a man spoke like this man," Jesus was revealing who He was. I suspect that Jesus concluded that He had already done enough to show the world who He actually was.