"Father, Forgive Them"

Let us go to Calvary to learn how we may be forgiven;

And then let us linger there to learn how we may forgive.

There shall we see what sin is, as it murders the Lord of love;

And see also how almighty mercy prevailed against it.

As we behold our Lord nailed to the cross, and hear his first words upon the tree, let us watch, and learn, and love.

I. WE SEE THE LOVE OF JESUS ENDURING—

To the closing act of human malice.

To the utmost endurance of shame. Philippians 2:8; Hebrews 12:2.

To the extreme limit of personal suffering. Psalm 22:1–18.

We see not alone patience that bears without complaint, but love that labors to bestow benefits upon its enemies.

II. WE SEE THAT LOVE REVEALING ITSELF.

Love can use no better instrument than prayer.

Love, when in a death-agony, still prays.

Love thus brings Heaven to the support of those for whom it cares.

Love thus, to the highest, blesses its object.

To this present our Lord Jesus continues to bless the people of his choice by continually interceding for them. Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25. This is his daily prayer for us.

III. WE SEE FOR WHAT THAT LOVE PRAYS.

Forgiveness is the first, chief, and basis blessing.

Forgiveness from the Father can even go so far as to pardon the murder of his Son.

Forgiveness is the great petition of our Lord’s sacrifice.

Love admits that pardon is needed, and it shudders at the thought of what must come to the guilty if pardon be not given.

IV. WE SEE HOW THE LOVING JESUS PRAYS.

• For his wanton murderers in the very act.
• For their full and immediate forgiveness.

For no other reason except their ignorance; and this plea grace alone could suggest or accept.

Are there any so guilty that Jesus would refuse to intercede for them?

V. WE SEE HOW HIS PRAYER BOTH WARNS AND WOOS.

It warns, for it suggests that there is a limit to the possibility of pardon. Men may so sin that there shall remain no plea of ignorance; nay, no plea whatever.

It woos, for it proves that if there be a plea, Jesus will find it.

Come and trust your case in his hands; he will draw out his own brief, and invent his own arguments of love.

VI. WE SEE HOW HE INSTRUCTS FROM THE CROSS.

He teaches us to put the best construction on the deeds of our fellow-men, and to discover mitigating circumstances when they work us grievous ill.

He teaches us to forgive the utmost wrong. Mark 11:25.

He teaches us to pray for others to our last breath. Acts 7:59, 60.

That glorious appeal to the divine Fatherhood, once made by the Lord Jesus, still prevails for us.

Let the chief of sinners come unto God with the music of “Father, forgive them,” sounding in their ears.

Commendations And Recommendations

It is well to suppose ignorance when we suffer wrong. A cruel letter came to me in my illness, but I hoped the writer did not know how depressed I was; a gossip repeated a silly slander, but I always believed that she thought it was the truth; an individual intentionally grossly insulted me, but I mistook it for a rough jest. In every case I have found it to my own comfort to believe that there must have been a mistake; besides, it makes it much easier to remove any unpleasant feeling if all along you have treated it as an error of judgment, or a blunder, occasioned by want of better information.—C. H. S.

There is something in this plea that at first confounds me, and that makes me ask with reverence in what sense Christ used it. Surely ignorance is not the gospel plea. Ignorance gives no man a claim on God … We are not to say, “Being justified by ignorance, we have peace with God.” … Ignorance is not innocence, it is often a sin; and one sin is no salvation from another.

The ignorance of Christ’s enemies of what is involved in their capital crime brings them within the pale of mercy, and allows their pardon to be a possibility—a possibility on the ground which his cross supplies. Perhaps no mere men really know what they do in repudiating Christ. Satan knew what he did, and nothing has been said in our hearing of any gospel for him; but human sinners cannot fully know; and their ignorance, though it does not make sin sinless, leaves it pardonable.—Charles Stanford.

O Savior, you could not but be heard! Those, who out of ignorance and simplicity thus persecuted you, find the happy issue of your intercession. Now I see whence it was that three thousand souls were converted soon after, at one sermon. It was not Peter’s speech, it was your prayer, that was thus effectual. Now they have grace to know and confess whence they have both forgiveness and salvation, and can recompense their blasphemies with thanksgiving. What sin is there, Lord, whereof I can despair of the remission? Or what offence can I be unwilling to remit, when you pray for the forgiveness of your murderers and blasphemers?—Bishop Hall.

To do him any wrong was to beget

A kindness from him; for his heart was rich,

Of such fine mold, that if you sowed therein

The seed of Hate, it blossomed Charity.

It was a mark of true moral grandeur in the character of Phocion, that, as he was about to be put to death, when one asked him whether he had any commands to leave for his son, he exclaimed, “Yes, by all means, tell him from me to forget the ill-treatment I have received from the Athenians.” Such a spirit of forgiveness, if it became a heathen, will much more become a disciple of the gentle and loving Christ, who, in his dying hour, prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” No one has a right to claim the Christian spirit who refuses to forgive a foe, and even cement his forgiveness by some act of self-denying love.

A great boy in a school was so abusive to the younger ones, that the teacher took the vote of the school whether he should be expelled. All the small boys voted to expel him except one, who was scarcely five years old. Yet he knew very well that the bad boy would continue to abuse him. “Why, then, did you vote for him to stay?” said the teacher. “Because, if he is expelled, perhaps he will not learn any more about God, and so he will become still more wicked.” “Do you forgive him, then?” said the teacher. “Yes,” said he, “father and mother forgive me when I do wrong; God forgives me too; and I must do the same.”—The Biblical Treasury.