Matthew 27:38

You saw how the Creator and Lord of all corrects his nature: bringing it back to what was in the beginning by becoming as we are, he underwent our sufferings for us, through us. Two robbers were hung with him when he hung on the cross — an insult, admittedly, as far as the Jews’ aim went, yet also a reminder of the prophecy that says, “And he was reckoned with the lawless.” But through his sufferings the goods run to us; for it is true that “by his bruise we were healed.”

These two robbers were outlining the two peoples. One displayed senselessness to the end and would not even confess that the last captivity he underwent under the Romans was being borne as requital for the outrages against Christ. The other, at the very end, did not despair of forgiveness, but corrected the rawness of evils by theology. And the Lord’s undergoing the cross in the middle of the robbers revealed <his voluntary death as> his presence toward the two peoples — toward whom he was coming willingly, having willed to renew both by his own incarnation — even if the former people refused like the one robber, saying, “We have no king except Caesar,” demanding the guiltless blood on their own head and exulting in the murder as just, from which both they and that robber alike fell out of the kingdom.