OPINION:
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Imagine speaking such grace-filled words while overtaken by unimaginable pain, having just been flagrantly flogged, brutally nailed to a wooden cross, and physically and emotionally degraded beyond recognition.
This was Christ’s prayer as he stared down at his assailants, expressing a gargantuan level of compassion and forgiveness as they slowly and nefariously slaughtered him.
“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,’” Luke 23:35 (NIV) reads, with verse 36 continuing: “The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’”
The scene seems unimaginably unbearable, yet Jesus’ words simultaneously prove to be both super-human and convicting.
If we’re honest, many of us have disregarded, disconnected from and disbanded relationships for far less severe infractions, dismissing people and harboring percolating anger along the way.
But we’re called to something greater.
Jesus’ death and resurrection — the full manifestation of God’s promises to humankind and his love for creation — are the most profound events in human history. And Christ’s simple words of forgiveness and care on the cross provide an austere blueprint by which we are called to live.
However, too many refuse to follow those directions, allowing our human emotions to eclipse our eternal calling. The world, in many ways, is mired in unprecedented chaos, as hatred, discord, disconnection and confusion rage. Many of us simply jump aboard that train.
With love growing systematically and maniacally cold, the temptation has perhaps never — at least in the modern era — been greater to return hostility with hatred, discord with distress, flaming words with ever-blazing insults.
But if Jesus, amid the most horrific moments imaginable while bearing the sin of mankind, can offer love and care for those mocking and annihilating him, perhaps we, too, can muster the ability to forgive, look past wrongs and even venture to love our enemies.
Jesus’ words aren’t a one-off or an anomaly, either, as others in Scripture show a similar path forward. In the Old Testament, Joseph openly forgave his brothers after they tried to destroy his life, sold him into slavery, and left him imprisoned, destitute and embroiled in a horrendous set of circumstances.
And in the New Testament, we see Stephen’s grueling and incomprehensible story. As the faithful Christian was savagely stoned to death, he fell on his knees and proclaimed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
Even in his greatest time of need, Stephen, like Jesus, expressed love and concern for his killers — a level of compassion and devotion that’s no doubt patently foreign to many of today’s young people being reared in safe spaces, cancel culture and the bowels of Twitter wars.
Despite our individual and cultural descent away from biblical morality and truth, we do have glimmers of this sort of forgiveness brewing around us.
Consider Pastor Anthony Thompson, who lost his wife, Myra, when she was gunned down on June 17, 2015, by a White shooter during a Bible study at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina.
As Mr. Thompson stood just days later in the courtroom facing his wife’s killer, he was overtaken by forgiveness, grace and love.
“I didn’t want to go to the bond hearing,” he told me a few years ago. “After being coached to go, I went and I told my children not to say anything, because I wanted to get there [and] leave as fast as I could.”
But God had other plans. As Mr. Thompson prepared to leave the courtroom without addressing anyone, he said God implored him to stand up and speak to the killer.
“God said, ‘Get up. I have something to say,’ and I had no idea what it was he wanted me to say,” Mr. Thompson recalled. “As I walked to the podium, the words just came to my mouth.”
Rather than cursing or maligning the murderer or letting rage take over in some other regrettable way, he offered an almost unfeasible act of grace.
“Son, I forgive you,” he told the killer. “We would like you to take this opportunity to repent, repent and confess, give your life to the one that matters the most — Christ — so that he can change it and change your ways. Do that and you will be better off than you are right now.”
That is true forgiveness – the loving of enemies the Bible talks about and to which Jesus calls us. Romans 12:10 implores us to “be devoted to one another in love” and to “honor one another above yourselves.” And Romans 12:17-19 (NIV) continues:
“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
Forgiveness might sometimes feel insurmountable, but we have to choose to live like Jesus or be reflections of the unforgiving, unrelenting culture around us.
Christ died for us when we didn’t deserve it, offering a pathway to eternal salvation. When we struggle to release our anger and pain and lean into forgiveness, we must simply remember those heartfelt words uttered on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
• Billy Hallowell is a digital TV host and interviewer for Faithwire and CBN News and the co-host of CBN’s “Quick Start Podcast.” Hallowell is the author of four books, including “Playing with Fire: A Modern Investigation into Demons, Exorcism, and Ghosts,” and “The Armageddon Code: One Journalist’s Quest for End-Times Answers.”
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