Father, Forgive Them
Atonement: Your King Victorious • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
This morning, we begin a series that we’re calling “Cross Words.” For the next few weeks, we will be looking at the words of Jesus from the cross. Today, we focus on the first words of Jesus from the Cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But in order to get there, we need to understand what the cross is, and why it’s so central to the Christian faith.
SIMON
There was a man who came into Jerusalem. To all appearances, he was an innocent man.
He was not from Jerusalem, at least not originally.
The city was under Roman occupation. Apart from a brief, shining moment a hundred fifty years prior, God’s people had not been free of foreign subjugation for over six hundred years.
The Prefects Rome set over the Province of Judea were often brutal, suppressing revolts and potential revolts with massacres. tells of one such instance, when the Prefect we know as Pontius Pilate killed a group of Galileans and mixed their blood with the blood of their sacrifices - he defiled their worship in the most horrifying and offensive way possible, as if to defy God to His face in their presence.
For the worst of criminals, the Roman punishment was crucifixion. It may be the most perfect method of excruciating torture and death that has ever been devised. It was so gruesome that it was forbidden to use against Roman citizens. This was for the worst of the worst, the scum - for insurrectionists, murderers, rioters, pirates, escaped slaves. It was not only a punishment, but a hideous warning for others: The crucified lined the road outside the city, or were lined up along the city wall, or in groups on a hill outside the city, as if to say to all who entered or exited, “Rome rules here. Here’s what we do to the guilty.” The victims often took days to die.
Our man was coming into the city on a Friday, Luke tells us, in from the country. He had a Jewish name, but he was from Cyrene, a city 1100 miles away. And though Jesus carried his cross from the steps in front of Pilate’s administrative palace, when they reached the gate, they grabbed this man, Simon, whom Mark’s Gospel says was just passing by. And for all the soldiers knew, Simon was innocent of the crimes that this cross was meant to punish. But they grabbed him anyway. Simon knew he was innocent, too.
But they made him carry this cross. It would have been a wooden beam as broad as a man’s armspan. Have you ever lifted a beam that size? This was no trivial imposition. But it wasn’t wise to protest. And when they arrived at the place of the Skull, Simon’s part was done. The cross beam was slapped to the ground, and Jesus was crucified.
Here was a man, punished in the Roman way. Simon surely thought, “But I’m innocent.”
But Simon did not know why Jesus was condemned. He didn’t know what he was doing.
PILATE
Pontius Pilate, the man who handed Jesus over to crucifixion, held significant authority in the Province. His words had authority to release or to crucify. He had the power of the Roman armies to quell any dissent, whether he let Jesus go or not. And when he examined Jesus, three times, he declared Jesus innocent of all the charges the Jewish leaders threw at him. And yet, at their insistence, Pilate, the man with the authority and power to judge, who knew Jesus to be innocent, decided to grant their demand. He even had the gall to wash his hands in front of the crowds, as if the man whose soldiers were about to crucify Jesus could claim to be innocent of his blood.
How could a man pervert justice and twist the truth in this way?
In John’s account, earlier in Pilate’s examination of Jesus,
Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world-- to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." 38 Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, "I find no guilt in him. ( ESV)
This man, who sat in judgment, condemned a man he knew to be innocent, because he was a judge who did not even know what truth is. He did not know what he was doing.
CROWD
On the way out to the place of crucifixion, tells us that a great multitude followed. This wasn’t unusual - you can read time and time again in the Gospels where crowds gathered around Jesus. Now women wept and mourned for him. It was understandable. Here was a man who many had followed. In fact, five days prior, as he rode toward the city on a donkey, the crowds had rushed to welcome him into the city, spreading their cloaks and branches across the road for him. They had shouted, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”
The fact that the women now wept and mourned for Jesus showed that the crown of thorns upon his brow was not their idea of the King’s majesty. They did not know that this cross was the culmination of all the prophecies concerning the Son of David, the Son of Man, the Son of God. And so, Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.”
Their tears were misplaced because they did not understand the meaning of Jesus’ death, that his death was for their guilt. Even his closest disciples didn’t. They did not understand what must take place for them to be forgiven. They did not know what they were doing.
SOLDIERS
When they arrived at the place of the Skull, they crucified Jesus, with the two criminals on his right and left. And the soldiers played games at the foot of that cross, to decide who got his clothes.
They stripped him to nothing. They uncovered his nakedness, exposing him to shame. To them, it was part of the humiliation of the punishment. The clothes were a perk of the job. To them, the casting of lots, like playing dice, was a way to pass the time as their prisoners slowly died.
They did not know that they were fulfilling . They didn’t know that by uncovering his nakedness, they were identifying him with the first man, the first sinner, Adam, who took from the tree, and saw he was naked, and felt guilt and shame. Here, the Second Adam stood nailed to the tree, naked, but bearing no guilt or shame of his own. Instead, he bore ours.
RULERS//SOLDIERS
The elders mocked Him. Verse 35: "He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!" 36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine 37 and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" ( ESV)
Like the women, who mourned because they did not understand Jesus’ death, the rulers and soldiers mocked because they did not know what it meant to be the King of the Jews, the Christ of God. They did not know what they were doing.
But Jesus told them why he was crucified. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
THE SECRET DARKNESS OF SIN (...FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO)
The secret darkness of sin is that our every wrong is more heinous than we know.
Pilate minimized and denied his sin by washing his hands before the watching crowd, all while deciding to have a man crucified whom he knew to be innocent.
The rulers & soldiers agreed with one another, reinforcing each others’ sin. They mocked - they blasphemed the Son of God - and they did it together.
The women wept for Jesus, when they should have been weeping for themselves - realizing that Jesus’ death, this gruesome crucifixion, this horrifying spectacle, showed them just how heinous their own sins were.
Consider these three ways we are like the men and women in :
Like Pilate, we minimize the wrongs that we do. We blame it on pressure from others, or the brokenness of the system. We call it the cost of doing business. A little lie, a little compromise. We say we’ll surely get fired if we do the right thing, as though that would take God by surprise.
We minimize gossip, laziness, and lust, and deny that they really do any harm.
We blame the other person - if she hadn’t done x, I wouldn’t have done y. I know, parents, you’re thinking, “I hope my kids are listening,” but guess what - you’re not exempt.
Like Pilate, we relativize right and wrong, when confronted with the truth, we say, “What is truth?”
Like the rulers and soldiers, we agree with the sins of others when it suits us. How often have we gone along with some pursuit that we know is wrong, or reinforced what others have said when we know it is wrong?
And like the women, we mourn the punishment instead of the sin.
And what about Simon of Cyrene? The only other thing we know about him is that Mark’s Gospel tells us he had two sons, Alexander and Rufus. We don’t know if he made it back to them that evening and said, “Boys, you’ll never believe what happened today.”
But we do know one thing about Simon: Of the two men who carried that cross that day, he was not the innocent one.
In , the apostle Paul quotes from several Old Testament Psalms when he says,
as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one." 13 "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips." 14 "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness." 15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 in their paths are ruin and misery, 17 and the way of peace they have not known." ( ESV)
And this is the deep, dark secret of sin: In all these things, we know not what we do, because, like each of the people in , we fail to see that our sins are not just errors, but an affront to the holiness of the God who made us, who is good to us, and who deserves our perfect love and obedience. How often do we apologize for wronging another person without ever stopping to realize that the person we wronged was made in God’s image, as were we - that by wronging them, we have actually rebelled against God?
Indeed, in another Psalm, , King David cried out to God with these words:
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. ( ESV)
The minimizations, the denials, the misdirected grief, and every other sin, are first and foremost sins against God. And we don’t even know what we’re doing. The trouble with darkness is that it’s dark. So how can we be delivered from this darkness? How can we be forgiven, when we’re so far gone we don’t even see the sin, and when it’s pointed out, we minimize, we deny, we change the subject?
We see the answer when we look back at Simon of Cyrene in light of Jesus’ words: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And here’s where we see the SECRET DARKNESS OF SIN confronted by THE STUNNING LIGHT OF GRACE.
II. THE STUNNING LIGHT OF GRACE (“FATHER, FORGIVE THEM…”)
700 years before Jesus was crucified, God’s Holy Spirit spoke through the prophet Isaiah, telling us the mission and purpose of the Messiah in :
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned-- every one-- to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. ( ESV)
Perhaps Simon of Cyrene looked to every onlooker to be an innocent bystander, drafted into service to carry someone else’s cross. But it was actually the other way around. The Messiah, the Christ, contrary to the mockery of the rulers, was the one who was meant to carry another’s burdens. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Simon of Cyrene is a picture of you, and me, thinking we’re innocent when all the time we deserve that cross.
These words from Isaiah prove and confirm Jesus’ own words about his mission: Jesus said, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”
He said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ( ESV)
The night before he was crucified, he took bread and said, “This is my body, which is given for you.” After supper, he took the cup and said, “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. ( ESV)
And he said, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
And now, here, he says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
How can we be forgiven for sins so deep that we don’t even know what we’re doing?
The first sin ruptured Adam and Eve’s relationship with God, with each other, and with the rest of creation. We have followed in our first parents’ steps. Like Pilate, who judges without truth, like the soldiers dividing Jesus’ garments, who played games with the things that belong to God, we blindly stumble in the darkness.
We cannot banish the darkness.
We cannot come to God.
But now, in our darkness, Jesus says, “Father.” As the Son of Man and the Son of God, Jesus is able to call upon God in a way that no sinner could ever do apart from Him. “Father,” Jesus says, and the Father listens. God the Father listens to Jesus, because Jesus has what we don’t: Innocence.
Again, in Isaiah, we learn this about our sin, our iniquity, our wrongs:
Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. ( ESV)
Our sins have ruptured our relationship to the Lord, and our only hope that He would hear us is for our sin to be taken away. For us to be forgiven.
Jesus says, “Father.” And the Father hears. Jesus stands between us and God the Father, bearing all the iniquities that we are too blind to see, and says of men like these soldiers, these women, these wicked judges and rulers, “Father, forgive them.”
And the Father hears.
Do you want to know the purpose of the cross? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Here, at the cross, the humiliating, excruciating, offensive, torturous cross, you can have forgiveness for every sin, no matter how dark. Grace: God’s unmerited favor - God’s undeserved gift - forgiveness is a gift.
But you must have Jesus to take your sins upon His back. If you are to be forgiven, if you are to come to the Father, to be heard by the Father, to belong to the Father, then you must come through faith in Jesus.
CONCLUSION
And this brings us to our question for the day: Do I know the One who can forgive? Search the entire world for a message like this one. You will not find it anywhere but in the Good News of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said in , perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
If you have never known the One who can forgive, today is the day of salvation. Perhaps you’ve never heard the Good News about Jesus. He died on the cross in Jerusalem, and on the third day, he rose again, in order to bring us back to God - to give us eternal life with him.
Here are the words that Jesus’ disciple Peter spoke in that same city a few weeks later, according to :
"Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know-- 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. ( ESV)
If you put your faith in Jesus Christ, then right this moment today, you will become a child of God by faith, forgiven of every sin.
Perhaps you’ve grown up in the church, and heard the Good News since you were a baby. But here’s my question: Do you know the One who can forgive? Do you know Him? If not, today is your day, too. You don’t have to wait a single day longer to belong to Jesus as a child of God, promised eternal life.
Say to Him, “Jesus, I believe in you. Save me from my sins.”
Brothers and sisters, if you have put your trust in Christ, you are a Christian, and eternal life is your inheritance as a gift. And Jesus now calls you to live for Him.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he says,
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. ( ESV)
So Christians - new Christians in this room today and Christians who have been believers for decades - here’s a good work that God prepared beforehand, that you should walk in it: Pray this prayer that Jesus prayed, too. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The secret darkness that you once walked in hangs like smog over the world around you. There is no hope but the hope of Christ. Pray for your friends, your neighbors. Pray that they would come to the Father through Jesus, and be forgiven. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”