THIEF ON THE CROSS

Doesn't the story of the thief on the cross prove that salvation can be instant apart from works?

Does that story really show that salvation can come instantly without conditions, without effort, without covenants, without baptism, without knowledge of the Gospel and without striving to obey Christ? Look at what the Bible actually says. To a thief also being crucified who asked the dying Lord to remember him, Christ said, "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). But two days after this, when Christ was resurrected and had taken up a glorious, tangible body, he appeared to Mary and told her, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God, and your God" (John 20:17 - one of many passages, by the way, showing that God the Father and Christ are separate Beings). If Christ had been in paradise but had not yet ascended to heaven where the Father dwells, then what is paradise? It is obviously some other place besides heaven. See also 2 Cor. 12:2-4, where Paul speaks of someone being caught up to the third heaven and of someone being caught up to paradise, as if they were different places. Paradise appears to be a place where the spirits of the dead await the time of resurrection. I don't know what Aramaic word Christ may have used, but according to my non-LDS Greek Bible Lexicon, the Greek word for paradise can mean "the part of Hades which was thought by the later Jews to be the abode of the souls of pious until the resurrection: but some understand this to be a heavenly paradise." This agrees well with what Joseph Smith said that Christ meant: "This day thou shalt be with me in the world of spirits: then I will teach you all about it and answer your inquiries" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.309). Indeed, Peter explained that when Christ was dead, he went as a spirit to preach the Gospel to those who had died (1 Peter 3:18-20; I Peter 4:6). Christ was not offering instant salvation to the thief, who knew little of the Gospel and had not covenanted through baptism to follow Christ. He was simply telling him that they would be in the same place that day, in the world of spirits. There, the thief could learn of the Gospel of Christ and accept it. He would still need to accept baptism, which the early Christians and modern Latter-day Saints offer vicariously to the deceased via the sacred ordinance of baptism for the dead.
So many people have misunderstood the story of the thief on the cross, thinking that it shows deathbed repentance is all it takes for a terrible sinner to get into heaven without baptism or anything else. Remember, though, that Christ did not offer instant salvation or heaven to the thief, only that they would be in paradise that day. It would be at least two days after that before Christ ascended to heaven. (And do we know that the thief was a terrible sinner? The Romans executed him for allegedly being a thief - but that tells us nothing of his real spiritual state. A sinner, certainly, but perhaps he was a penitent soul seeking the truth.)
A related concept is the Biblical teaching that Christ ministered to the dead souls in the spirit world while he was in the grave for three days. Peter writes of this in the New Testament, where in 1 Peter 3:18-22, he speaks of Christ going to preach to the dead while He was physically dead, and further explains 1 Peter 4:6 that the Gospel was preached to the dead in order to offer them life, not torment as some anti-LDS critics have argued.
The theme of Christ rescuing the souls of the dead by descending into Hades is ancient and widespread in Christianity, one that persisted into the Middle Ages but seems to have been more fully lost since the Reformation. Christ's mission of rescuing souls in hell is sometimes called the Descensus or the "Harrowing of Hell." According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,

"Most Christian theologians believe that it [the Descensus] refers to the visit of the Lord after His death to the realm of existence, which is neither heaven nor hell in the ultimate sense, but a place or state where the souls of pre-Christian people waited for the message of the Gospel, and whither the penitent thief passed after his death on the cross (Lk. 23.43)." [F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 395, as cited by Daniel C. Peterson, FARMS Review of Books, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1997, p. 137.]

There you have respected non-LDS scholars discussing the ancient Christian concept of the Descensus, the descent of Christ to rescue the dead in a place where the thief went, a place which was not heaven. These truths were not invented by Joseph Smith - they've been restored. Now quit wasting time and start digging in!
(In response to the above comments, one reader argued that this crucial story would be meaningless unless Christ was offering salvation to the penitent man. But is the story really meaningless unless there was instant assurance of salvation? Jesus was offering the man hope. He would be in paradise, and so would Christ. It appears that the thief was going to have the opportunity to hear the Gospel. But paradise - a word that refers to the waiting place of deceased souls prior to the resurrection - isn't heaven and isn't a final state of salvation, even though some will insist that it is, in spite of Christ not yet having ascended to His Father in heaven three days later.)