Father Forgive Them Sermon

He Prayed For The People Who Killed Him

Open your Bible to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 23, beginning at verse 32. I want you to see this text with fresh eyes, because familiarity can dull us to the most astonishing moments in all of Scripture. Listen to what Luke records.

"Two others, who were criminals, were also led away to be executed with him. When they arrived at the place called The Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.' And they divided his clothes and cast lots. The people stood watching, and even the leaders were scoffing: 'He saved others; let him save himself if this is God's Messiah, the Chosen One!' The soldiers also mocked him. They came offering him sour wine and said, 'If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!' An inscription was above him: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS."

That is the text. And I want you to sit with what just happened.

The soldiers have driven iron nails through his hands and feet. The crowd is mocking him. The religious leaders are scoffing at him. The Roman inscription above his head is meant as a joke. And in the middle of all of that, with the weight of the cross pressing down and the blood already running, Jesus opens his mouth. And what comes out is not a curse. What comes out is not a cry for vengeance. What comes out is a prayer. For them. For the very people doing this to him.

That is the most staggering sentence in this passage. And it is the sentence that drives everything we need to hear today.

The Central Claim Of This Text

Here is what Luke wants us to understand. The mercy of Jesus does not wait until people deserve it. It does not wait until they apologize. It does not wait until they stop. It does not even wait until they understand what they are doing. The prayer comes while the nails are still fresh. That is the character of the God we are dealing with. That is the gospel in one sentence from the lips of the dying Son of God.

Now let us work through this text carefully, because there is more here than a single moving moment. There are layers, and every layer has something to say to us.

The Crowd Around The Cross

Luke tells us there were multiple groups present at the crucifixion. There were soldiers carrying out orders. There were religious leaders who had orchestrated the whole thing. There were bystanders who came to watch. There were criminals on either side of him. There was a crowd that simply stood and stared.

What is remarkable is that Luke does not divide these people into the guilty and the innocent. He shows us a scene of almost total hostility and indifference. The leaders scoff. The soldiers mock. The crowd watches. Nobody is coming to his defense. Nobody is weeping over an injustice. The inscription above his head is designed to humiliate him. Everything in this scene is arranged against him.

And yet Jesus prays for them. Not for a select few. Not for the ones who seem most redeemable. The prayer is broad. Father, forgive them. The word them sweeps across that whole scene.

This tells us something essential about the nature of grace. Grace is not a reward for the almost-good. Grace is the gift given to people who are actively, openly, and in some cases gleefully opposed to God. Paul would later write that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Luke shows us that while they were still sinning, Christ prayed for them. The cross is not the place where God gives up on humanity. It is the place where God refuses to.

They Do Not Know What They Are Doing

Now notice the reason Jesus gives in his prayer. He does not say they are innocent. He does not say what they are doing is acceptable. He says they do not know what they are doing.

This is an important distinction. Jesus is not excusing the crucifixion. He is identifying a spiritual blindness at the root of it. The soldiers are following orders and do not grasp the identity of the one they are executing. The religious leaders are so convinced they are protecting their tradition that they cannot see they are crucifying the one their tradition pointed to all along. The crowd is caught up in a moment they do not fully understand.

There is a kind of ignorance that is still culpable. Luke is not saying these people bear no responsibility. He is showing us that Jesus, even in his death, looks at human beings with a kind of compassionate understanding that we rarely extend to one another. He sees not just what people are doing but what is driving them. He sees people caught in systems of power and religion and fear and crowd pressure, and he prays for them anyway.

This ought to stop us from being too quick to write people off. The person who has wronged you most deeply may be operating out of a blindness they are not fully aware of. That does not make what they did right. But it does open a door for something other than permanent bitterness.

The Mockery And The Inscription

Luke records the taunting with a specific phrase. He saved others. Let him save himself. That line is meant to be devastating. It is meant to expose what they believe is the final proof that Jesus is a fraud. If he were really the Messiah, he would come down from that cross.

But here is the irony that Luke wants us to feel. The reason Jesus will not save himself is precisely because he is saving others. The cross is not evidence that he lacks power. The cross is the exercise of a different kind of power altogether. The power to absorb hatred and return mercy. The power to be destroyed and yet not be defeated. The power to die and still be praying for the people who are killing you.

The inscription reads, This is the King of the Jews. Pilate put it there as mockery. But Luke lets it stand as proclamation. Because it is true. And the way Jesus is reigning from that cross, through forgiveness rather than force, through mercy rather than retaliation, is exactly the kind of king he came to be.

What This Means For Us

Now we have to let this text do what it came to do. Because Luke did not record this prayer just to give us a moving portrait of Jesus. He recorded it because this prayer has a claim on the people who follow Jesus.

In Luke's Gospel, Jesus has already told his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who mistreat them. Here at the cross, he is not just teaching that. He is doing it. He is showing us what that looks like when it costs everything.

This is where the sermon gets personal. Because most of us are carrying something. There is a name, a face, a situation. Somebody who betrayed you. Somebody who lied about you. Somebody who walked away. Somebody who did real damage to your life or your family. And the natural human response to that kind of wound is to hold onto it. To rehearse it. To let it define how you see that person.

But this text will not let us stay comfortable there. Because if Jesus, hanging on a cross with nails in his hands, could pray Father forgive them, then forgiveness is not something reserved for small offenses and easy situations. It is the very character of the God we claim to follow. And he calls us to reflect that character in our lives.

Let me say clearly what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not pretending the harm did not happen. It is not saying what was done to you was acceptable. It is not reconciliation without repentance, and it is not the same as trust, which must be rebuilt over time. Forgiveness does not require you to act as if nothing occurred.

What forgiveness is, at its core, is releasing the debt. It is choosing not to let what someone did to you become the thing that defines your life going forward. It is refusing to build a prison out of your pain and live in it. And it is only possible, at the depth this text is calling us to, because of what Jesus did on that cross.

Here is the good news underneath all of this. Jesus did not just model forgiveness from the cross. He purchased it. The prayer he prayed that day, Father forgive them, was answered. Not because the crowd deserved it. But because the one praying it was also the one paying for it. The forgiveness he extended to them was backed by his own blood.

That means the forgiveness available to you today is real. Whatever you have done, whatever weight you are carrying into this room, the cross is the answer. You do not have to earn your way back. You do not have to be good enough first. The prayer has already been prayed. The price has already been paid. What is required of you is to receive it, to turn from sin and trust in the one who prayed for you before you ever thought to ask.

And if you have received that forgiveness, then you are called to live out of it. Not perfectly. Not without struggle. But genuinely. Because a person who has been forgiven everything has the deepest possible reason to forgive.

The Closing Word

Go back to the text one more time. They crucified him. They mocked him. They cast lots for his clothes. They scoffed at his identity. And he prayed for them.

That prayer is still the most powerful thing ever spoken from a place of suffering. And it is an invitation. An invitation to receive the mercy that was purchased there. An invitation to extend that mercy to the people in your life who have not deserved it. An invitation to be shaped by the cross into the kind of person who can say, with however much faith you can muster today, Father, forgive them.

That is the life Jesus died to make possible. And it begins right here.

Sources Consulted

Bock, Darrell L. Luke 9:51 to 24:53. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 1996.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1997.

Morris, Leon. Luke. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. Revised edition. Eerdmans, 1988.

Nolland, John. Luke 18:35 to 24:53. Word Biblical Commentary. Word Books, 1993.

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.