Father, Forgive Them

During this season of Lent, leading up to Good Friday and Easter, it is important that we remember again the suffering that Jesus endured to pay the price for our sin. Last Sunday, Carl introduced us to “The God Who Bleeds,” a reminder of Jesus’ humanity and vulnerability as He was beaten and humiliated by the Roman soldiers. Today we will consider His crucifixion, especially these incredible, universe-altering words that He spoke from the cross: Father, forgive them.

I’m sorry I missed last Sunday. I needed to head up to Washington DC to work on my next Afghan visa. On the long drive I listened to an excellent audio book, “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.” It’s the amazing testimony of Nabeel Qureshi, who was converted out of strict Islam and went on to work with Ravi Zacharias, among other people. He talked a lot about the two main stumbling blocks that Muslims have with Christian theology: 1) Jesus as the Son of God, and 2) Jesus’ death on the cross. Muslims have a major problem with the concept of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. But even as a prophet it would have been too shameful for Jesus to die on the cross. They have a number of theories about what might actually have happened: Jesus didn’t actually die (he just swooned and was later revived), God put the face of Jesus on someone else (thought to be Judas Iscariot or even Simon of Cyrene), or some other way in which Jesus avoided death. The story as we believe it (and which has the most historical evidence) is simply repulsive to them, mainly because they do not accept the resurrection and the ultimate victory that that represents. It reminds me of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.—I Corinthians 1:18

The message of the cross only makes sense when one understands how a perfect God must be loving and just at the same time, not overlooking sin but covering the punishment Himself. How is the message of the cross powerful? This could be a sermon on its own, because we can see the many ways in which Jesus’ sacrifice reveals truth, sets captives free, and brings true healing and peace. Last Sunday, Carl highlighted the passage from Isaiah that prophesies how the Suffering Servant would pay the price for our salvation: “The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” As with the Apostle Paul and his “thorn in the flesh,” God’s power was made perfect in Jesus’ weakness. It was the power to snatch people out of the grip of Satan, where they are bound by lies, conflict, emotional wounds, compulsive sin, self-righteousness, fear, and shame. The message of the cross brings freedom from all those things.

We are going to read two parallel accounts today, from Luke and John. I have put them alongside each other to highlight the similarities and differences in these accounts.

As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus.  A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him.  Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’ For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”—Luke 23:26-31

Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.  Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).—John 19:16-17

So this comes right after Pilate gives in to the crowd which was demanding that Jesus be crucified. Jesus has already been severely beaten. He is weak and bleeding, so though he begins carrying his own cross, as was the Roman custom, he likely falls under the weight of it, and the soldiers grab a foreign bystander from North Africa to carry it for him. In Mark’s account, Simon of Cyrene is identified as the father of Alexander and Rufus, as though these men would have been known to his readers. Perhaps they were all early believers in Jesus.

Women play a key role in the account of the crucifixion and resurrection, perhaps because the male disciples were too afraid to be identified with Jesus. Jesus warns them of harder times yet to come, when people will despair of their own lives and those of their children.

Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.  When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left.  Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar ³⁷ and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.—Luke 23:33-38

There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: jesus of nazareth, the king of the jews.  Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.  The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”—John 19:18-22

This place of the Skull may have been a hill that looked like a skull or it may just have been a place for frequent executions. It was near the city in an intentionally visible location. Jesus was hung on a cross between two criminals. Luke mentions His clothes being divided up, something that John goes into more detail about later. Luke describes the mocking of the rulers and the soldiers who challenged Jesus to save Himself now. They could not comprehend the meaning of the salvation that Jesus could and would bring. Their hoped-for Messiah would never have ended up like this.

John goes into more detail about the sign above Jesus that identified him as the king of the Jews. You may have noticed the picture of what this sign may have looked like as the title slide for this series. Pilate had it written in three languages to make sure that everyone would be able to read it. This was his way of mocking the Jewish leaders and shaming all the Jews, actually. Look at their “king” now, dying the most shameful death imaginable. Rome was once again asserting its brutal authority.

The next sections do not have any parallel narrative, so we’ll look at them separately. Next in the John passage,

When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

 “Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.”

This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said, “They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.”

So this is what the soldiers did.

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.--John 19:23-27

Jesus did not have many possessions, just the clothes he had been wearing. He was stripped naked to add to the shame of the crucifixion. The four soldiers involved were entitled to take whatever he had. The way that they divided the clothing had been foretold by David in Psalm 22. This was a description of David’s distress when he was feeling persecuted. He had spoken of a “pack of villains” encircling him, piercing his hands and feet, people staring and gloating over him, and this division of his clothing. Had that actually happened to David? He was certainly being given quite a clear picture of how Jesus would suffer and die, several hundred years after him.

John is the only gospel writer to add this incident here at the end involving these four women who had stayed near the cross. John was the disciple whom Jesus loved and so Jesus entrusted the care of his mother to John. John evidently had been courageous enough to approach the cross at this point, and his love for Jesus would extend to Mary for the rest of her life.

Now returning to Luke,

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?  We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”—Luke 23:39-43

Matthew and Mark’s accounts describe the criminals being crucified with Jesus heaping abuse on Him as well. Luke notes that it was actually just one of them doing this. The other man recognizes that Jesus is being unjustly punished, and he sees something in Jesus that transcends the current hopeless situation. Perhaps he had heard of some of the things Jesus said earlier about His kingdom being “not of this world.” He makes his amazing request by faith, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” The other was asking in a mocking way to be physically saved. This nameless believer realized that Jesus offered spiritual salvation that was so much more important. And Jesus responds to this spark of faith and welcomes this hopeless criminal into paradise. This captures the essence of the gospel: someone who can do nothing to make up for all the wrong things that he has done calls out to Jesus in faith and is forgiven and saved. Maybe he had heard Jesus forgiving the people responsible for His death, even when they were completely unrepentant, and he realized that God’s forgiveness could reach to his desperate heart, too.

So these are the first two sayings of Jesus while on the cross. You probably remember that there are seven all together. We don’t know the exact order, but this is how they are traditionally arranged:

1.       Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

2.       Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

3.       Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.

4.       My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

5.       I thirst.

6.       It is finished.

7.       Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.

This list of sayings has been summed up by the following words: forgiveness, salvation, relationship, abandonment, distress, triumph, and reunion. The first three are from our passages today, and the last three are in the continuation of Luke and John’s accounts that we will look at next time. Number 4 is found only in Matthew and Mark.

I would like to spend a little more time today looking at the first: “Father, forgive them.” I skimmed over it earlier in our Luke passage, but this is Jesus’ first response to being hung on the cross, and in a way it sums up why He is there. Jesus had spoken of forgiveness many times in His ministry. During the Lord’s Supper shortly before He was arrested He had emphasized how forgiveness would be related to His death. As recorded in Matthew 26:

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.—Matthew 26:27-28

Jesus’ death was to provide for the forgiveness of sins. The Old Testament laws clearly taught – and this would be later restated by the author of Hebrews in chapter 9 – that there was no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. In His death, therefore, He could ask His Father to forgive those who were putting Him to death – as well as those who had condemned Him, rejected Him, beaten Him, and mocked Him through the process. “Father, forgive them.”

Notice that Jesus did not say, “I forgive you.” That was not nearly as important. By asking the Father to forgive them He was requesting that their punishment be removed, that they be declared innocent of the awful sins that they were committing. Jesus was able to do this because He was taking that punishment on Himself. He was the only one able to do that, but His act of forgiveness stands as an example of the way we need to offer forgiveness to others, too. If we are followers of Jesus we will forgive as He forgave.

Let’s pause for a moment and think about what forgiveness means. Forgiveness is a decision of the will. It is not a warm fuzzy feeling. “I forgive you” means that I choose to give up my right to hurt you for hurting me. And we do have that right. There was even a law in the Old Testament about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. A person who had been wronged had the right to extract an equivalent penalty from the person who had wronged them. But Jesus asks us to give up that right and to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, as He said in the Sermon on the Mount.

So I can choose to forgive when someone hurts me in some way. It doesn’t mean that I pretend that the hurt didn’t happen. It doesn’t even mean that I try to minimize or excuse it. It doesn’t mean that I necessarily expect everything to go back to way it was before. And it certainly doesn’t require that I allow you to keep hurting me. Sometimes justice requires that certain hurts be prosecuted. But that is different than my trying to hurt you back just for hurting me. That is the cycle of revenge that Jesus wants us to break – and that He gave us the power to break through His death on the cross and all that He suffered and forgave there.

We need to be very careful with the people that we have been given the authority to punish. That varies according to the position we are in, with judges in the legal system being perhaps the most extreme example of having authority to punish. This type of authority has been given to us by God, and we need to take it seriously, so that we punish according to what is just, not according to our desire for vengeance. That is why parents need to be very careful disciplining their children when they are angry. Anger is vindictive and not compatible with forgiveness.

Jesus on the cross forgave people before they even knew what they were doing was wrong. He did not wait for them to show signs of remorse. We might like for others to feel sorry for what they have done to us, but we need to be ready to forgive them before that. We can even forgive someone who has died feeling justified in what they did.

The choice that we make to forgive a certain wrong is often not a one-time decision. Some wrongs are very difficult to forgive, especially if they affect our loved ones and not just us. Feelings of anger and bitterness may reemerge from time to time, and we have to keep making this choice not to retaliate. We can’t afford to wait until we feel like forgiving the wrongdoer.

One of the ways you can tell if you have truly forgiven someone is to listen to how you talk about that person to others. Telling someone about the incident or behavior may be necessary for you to receive counseling and be healed or to protect other people who could potentially be harmed in the future. But continually telling others about what happened or what an awful person your offender is usually springs from a desire to make them look bad in the eyes of others. This is a subtle way to keep trying to get back at them, to find some way to hurt them for hurting you. You want to validate your own feelings of being wronged and to have others agree with your assessment of how terrible this person was to hurt you. This is incompatible with the forgiveness that God desires. If I have truly forgiven someone I will speak of them only with words of grace and respect, not condescendingly or critically.

It can be very difficult at times to put a check on our tongues and not say negative things about other people. Our desire should always be to build others up and not tear them down. We need to remember that God will not tell anyone about all our sins that He has forgiven. Silence was another characteristic of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 whom Carl spoke about last time.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.—Isaiah 53:7

What did it mean for Jesus as the Suffering Servant not to open his mouth? We know that He was silent before his accusers. He did not attempt to defend Himself. But He also did not speak to condemn them. On the cross He said, “Father, forgive them,” rather than calling down fire from heaven to punish them as they deserved. He was following his own command from the Sermon on the Mount: “Be merciful as your Father is merciful.” God sets the standard for mercy. And Jesus also told us that the merciful will receive mercy. We need to be careful not to show contempt for the undeserved forgiveness that we have received from God ourselves.

Forgiveness is a huge topic. There is no way that I could do it justice in just one sermon. If you want to read a really good book about what it means to truly forgive, I would recommend Total Forgiveness by R.T. Kendall. Some of these thoughts come from this book, though he goes into much more detail, using especially the life of Joseph as a Biblical example of total forgiveness. Total forgiveness includes even being willing to forgive God, as the one who allows evil and suffering in our lives.

Do you find it difficult to forgive sometimes? It can be very difficult. Some wounds are very deep. But God will not let us get away with harboring unforgiveness in our hearts. Hebrews says,

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.—Hebrews 12:15 ESV

Have you seen that quote on the internet (attributed by some to Buddha, actually) that says, “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”? Anger and a lack of forgiveness can develop into a “root of bitterness.” When I think of a root of bitterness I think of a tree that I am trying to get rid of in our backyard. I keep cutting it down, but it keeps re-growing from the root. As long as that root is alive it is going to keep pushing out new branches from the stump. Bitterness is like that. It keeps pushing out anger as long as the root of resentment remains.

Bitterness means not being able to let go of some negative experience. Bitterness will poison all kinds of relationships. One person’s negativity drags others down and begins to distort their view of reality. By it many can become defiled. Bitterness can easily become a negative cycle where each new thing is misinterpreted in light of the old. People can become trapped in it, unless God can break this cycle somehow. The bitterness needs to be killed at its root, and this can only happen by comprehending and appropriating the grace of God. The first step is to recognize where bitterness might be present and to bring it into the light of God’s truth. If we even want to give up our bitterness it shows that the Holy Spirit is at work, and we can create a space for Him to change our heart and to allow us to forgive what we need to.

“Father, forgive them,” Jesus said. He was undergoing the worst suffering imaginable – to purchase our salvation. Forgiveness didn’t make sense. It didn’t feel right. It simply wasn’t fair or comfortable or easy. But forgiveness brings freedom. It sets people free – especially the person doing the forgiving. So even when it’s not easy we forgive by faith. It is ultimately an expression of our trust in God. And we receive His power to do what we are not humanly capable of ourselves.