Why Did Jesus Say Father Forgive Them on the Cross

Why Did Jesus Say Father Forgive Them on the Cross

Of all the seven last words of Jesus from the cross, seven recorded statements that He made during the six hours of His crucifixion, none is more stunning, more theologically rich or more personally challenging than the very first one. Luke 23:34 records it simply: "Jesus said 'Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.'"

Think about the context for a moment. Jesus had been arrested in the night by an armed mob. He had been subjected to a series of sham trials before the Sanhedrin, before Herod and before Pilate. He had been flogged, a punishment so brutal that it frequently killed men before they ever reached the cross. He had been mocked, spat upon, stripped of His clothes and forced to carry the instrument of His own execution through the streets of Jerusalem. Nails had been driven through His hands and feet. And as He hung there in agony He looked down at the soldiers who had just nailed Him to the wood and He prayed for them.

Not a prayer of judgment. Not a prayer of vengeance. Not even a prayer of resignation. A prayer of forgiveness, actively, specifically, immediately requested from the Father on behalf of the very people who were killing Him. This moment is one of the most extraordinary in all of human history and it deserves far more attention and far deeper reflection than it typically receives. Because what Jesus said from the cross in that prayer reveals something about the character of God and about the nature of forgiveness that changes everything.

The Context: What Was Happening When Jesus Said This

Luke 23:33-34 records the moment with straightforward narrative clarity: "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 detail about the soldiers dividing His clothes is almost jarring in its ordinariness, these men were engaged in the routine business of execution while the man they were executing was praying for their forgiveness. They were gambling for His garments as casually as men might throw dice over any other transaction. And in the middle of this brutal, casual, dehumanizing scene Jesus was interceding for them.

Who exactly was Jesus praying for in this prayer? The most immediate answer is the Roman soldiers who had carried out the physical act of the crucifixion, the ones who had driven the nails, who were now dividing His clothes, who were posted at the foot of the cross to ensure no one interfered with the execution. But the prayer is broader than that. The crowd had shouted "Crucify Him!" The religious leaders had orchestrated His arrest and trial. Pilate had ordered the execution despite knowing Jesus was innocent. In a very real sense the prayer encompassed all of them, everyone whose choices and actions had brought Jesus to that cross on that day.

And in the deepest theological sense the prayer reaches across two thousand years to encompass every human being who has ever lived, because every sin ever committed contributed to the weight of what Jesus was bearing on that cross. The soldiers who drove the nails did not know what they were doing. Neither do we, fully, when we sin, we do not comprehend the full weight of what sin costs, what it damages, how deeply it offends the holiness of God. And Jesus prays for all of us.

What Does "They Do Not Know What They Are Doing" Mean?

The second half of Jesus' prayer deserves as much attention as the first. He did not simply say "Father forgive them." He offered a reason, "for they do not know what they are doing." This is not a minimization of what was being done to Him. It is an accurate and compassionate assessment of the spiritual blindness in which it was being done.

The soldiers who crucified Jesus were executing what they understood to be a condemned criminal on orders from the legitimate Roman governor. They had no theological framework for comprehending that they were killing the Son of God. The religious leaders who had orchestrated His arrest genuinely believed they were protecting Judaism from a dangerous blasphemer. Even the crowd that had called for His crucifixion was operating under the influence of leaders they trusted and religious traditions they had been formed by. They did not know, could not fully see, the enormity of what they were participating in.

Acts 3:17 records Peter's later assessment that confirms this understanding: "Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders." And 1 Corinthians 2:8 adds a further dimension: "None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." The ignorance was real, not an excuse that eliminated responsibility but a genuine spiritual blindness that Jesus in His compassion acknowledged and made the basis of His intercession.

This is not to say that ignorance completely removes moral responsibility, it does not. But it does explain why Jesus could pray for forgiveness rather than judgment for those who were killing Him. He saw them not primarily as monsters but as people acting in ignorance, people who, if they could have seen the full picture, might have responded very differently. And that compassionate vision of the people who were hurting Him most was the foundation of His prayer for them.

This Was Not the First Time Jesus Had Taught This

What makes Jesus' prayer from the cross so extraordinary is not that it was a new idea, it was the living out in the most demanding possible circumstances of what He had already taught His disciples to do. Matthew 5:44 records His teaching from the Sermon on the Mount: "But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Jesus had said these words to His disciples on a hillside in Galilee, and now on the cross He was demonstrating what He had taught. He was not asking His followers to do something He had not Himself done. He loved His enemies from the cross. He prayed for those who were persecuting, killing, Him. The teaching and the teacher were completely consistent. What He had commanded He perfectly embodied at the moment of greatest personal cost.

This is one of the most important principles of Jesus' entire ministry, He never called His followers to a standard He had not first demonstrated in His own life. Wash each other's feet, He washed theirs first. Love one another as I have loved you, He demonstrated what that love looks like by dying for them. Forgive as I have forgiven you, He forgave from the cross before commanding His followers to forgive from their daily lives.

Was the Prayer Answered?

This is a question that deserves serious attention. When Jesus prayed "Father forgive them" was that prayer answered? And if so, how?

The most compelling evidence that the prayer was answered comes in the events of Pentecost described in Acts 2. Just fifty days after the crucifixion Peter preached in Jerusalem, the very city where Jesus had been crucified, to many of the same people who had witnessed or participated in the events of that week. His sermon concluded with a direct and pointed statement: "Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah." Acts 2:36.

The response of the crowd is recorded in verse 37: "When the people heard this they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles 'Brothers what shall we do?'" And approximately three thousand people were baptized and added to the community of believers that day.

Three thousand people, many of whom had been in the crowd that called for His crucifixion fifty days earlier, received the forgiveness that Jesus had prayed for them. The prayer from the cross was answered in the power of Pentecost. The forgiveness Jesus requested from the Father was made available through the very death and resurrection that those people had participated in. The cross that was intended to silence Jesus permanently became the means through which the forgiveness He prayed for was made available to the very people who had demanded it.

Additionally Acts 6:7 records something remarkable about the ongoing spread of the Gospel in Jerusalem: "The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith." Priests, members of the very religious establishment that had orchestrated Jesus' crucifixion, were coming to faith in Him. The prayer was being answered in wave after wave of forgiveness extended to those who had participated in the crucifixion.

Stephen: The First Martyr Who Followed Jesus' Example

One of the most powerful evidences that Jesus' prayer from the cross was not just a one-time act but a pattern to be followed is found in Acts 7:54-60, the account of Stephen's martyrdom. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death by a religious mob. And as he was dying he looked up to heaven and prayed with his last breath: "Lord do not hold this sin against them." Acts 7:60.

The parallels are unmistakable and deliberate. Stephen followed the pattern of Jesus, praying for his killers, asking for their forgiveness, meeting violence with intercession rather than with calls for vengeance. And among the witnesses to Stephen's death, holding the coats of those who were stoning him, was a young man named Saul, who would become the Apostle Paul after his dramatic encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Could Stephen's dying prayer for his killers, including Saul, have been part of what God used in Saul's eventual conversion? We cannot say with certainty but the connection is suggestive. The prayer of forgiveness that follows the pattern of Jesus' prayer from the cross may have contributed to the salvation of the man who would become the most significant missionary in Christian history. The forgiveness prayed for from Stephen's death reached the future Paul. Just as the forgiveness prayed from the cross reached thousands on the day of Pentecost.

What This Reveals About God's Character

Jesus said in John 14:9 "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." The prayer from the cross is therefore not just a revelation of Jesus' character, it is a revelation of God's character. The Father to whom Jesus prayed is the same Father whose nature Jesus was expressing in that prayer. And what we see revealed is a God whose love for human beings is so profound, so unconditional and so fundamentally oriented toward their forgiveness and restoration that even the act of killing His Son does not move Him toward vengeance but toward the prayer for forgiveness.

Romans 5:10 captures this extraordinary reality: "For if while we were God's enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life!" While we were enemies. The cross was not something that moved God from hostility to forgiveness, it was the expression of a forgiveness and a love that had always been His orientation toward human beings even when they were most fully and most actively His enemies.

This is the God Jesus revealed from the cross. Not a God waiting for sufficient remorse before extending forgiveness. Not a God whose love has conditions and limits that human sin can exceed. A God who prays for the forgiveness of the people who are killing His Son while they are in the act of killing Him.

What This Means for How We Forgive

Jesus' prayer from the cross is not only a theological revelation about God's character, it is a direct and personal challenge to the way every believer handles being wronged, hurt, betrayed or persecuted. Matthew 6:14-15 connects God's forgiveness of us directly to our forgiveness of others: "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins your Father will not forgive your sins."

The prayer "Father forgive them" from the cross is the most extreme possible application of this principle. Jesus forgave from a position of maximum personal suffering, maximum injustice and maximum cost. If forgiveness is possible and right in those circumstances, and it was, then forgiveness is possible and right in every lesser circumstance that any believer will ever face.

This does not make forgiveness easy. Nothing about what Jesus did from the cross was easy. But it makes forgiveness possible, and it makes the refusal to forgive impossible to justify before a God who forgave from the cross. The person who prays "Father forgive them" in the midst of their own suffering is not being heroic or performing an impressive spiritual feat. They are simply following the pattern of the one they claim to follow.

1. Forgive Before Being Asked

One of the most radical aspects of Jesus' prayer is that it was offered before any of the people He was praying for had expressed any remorse or any desire for forgiveness. The soldiers had not apologized. The crowd had not recanted. The religious leaders had not changed their minds. Jesus prayed for their forgiveness before any of that happened.

This challenges the natural human pattern of waiting for an apology before extending forgiveness, the conditional forgiveness that says "I will forgive when they acknowledge what they did." Jesus models a forgiveness that does not wait for the conditions to be right. It releases the other person from the debt before they have asked for that release. This kind of forgiveness is genuinely costly, and genuinely liberating for the one who chooses it.

2. Pray for Those Who Hurt You

The specific form of Jesus' forgiveness was prayer, intercession before the Father on behalf of those who were harming Him. This is exactly what He had commanded in the Sermon on the Mount and exactly what He modeled from the cross. Praying for the person who has hurt you is one of the most practical and most powerful ways to move toward genuine forgiveness, because it is genuinely difficult to maintain sustained bitterness toward someone you are consistently bringing before God in prayer.

3. Try to See What They Do Not See

Jesus' prayer included the compassionate assessment "they do not know what they are doing." He saw the ignorance and the blindness that lay behind the actions being taken against Him. This does not excuse those actions but it does provide a framework for understanding them that moves toward compassion rather than toward contempt.

When someone hurts you it is worth asking, what do they not see? What blindness, what pain, what unresolved damage in their own life is producing the behavior that is damaging you? This does not eliminate the hurt or the wrongness of what was done. But it opens the possibility of seeing the person as a human being in need of grace rather than simply as an enemy deserving of judgment.

What Does This Mean for You Today?

Is there someone in your life right now who has hurt you, who has wronged you, betrayed you, spoken against you or treated you with cruelty or indifference? Is there an offense you have been holding onto, a debt that you have been refusing to cancel, a person you have been unwilling to release from the judgment of your heart?

Jesus said from the cross "Father forgive them." He said it for people who had not asked, who had not apologized and who at that moment were still in the act of doing what they were doing. The same prayer is available to you today, not as a feeling to manufacture but as a choice to make, an act of the will that aligns with the character of the God who prayed it from the cross.

"Father forgive them." You can pray it for the person who hurt you most. And in doing so you will be following the most precise and the most costly example of forgiveness ever given.

Conclusion: The Prayer That Changed Everything

Jesus said "Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" and in those fourteen words He revealed the heart of God toward sinful humanity, demonstrated the ultimate application of everything He had taught about love and forgiveness and set a pattern that His followers have been trying to walk in ever since. It was the prayer of a man in agony who chose intercession over bitterness, who chose the good of others over the defense of His own rights and who expressed with His dying breath the same love that had brought Him to the cross in the first place.

That prayer was answered. It continues to be answered in every person who receives the forgiveness it made available. And it calls every person who has received that forgiveness to extend it, at whatever cost, however difficult, to whoever has wronged them, because we follow a Savior who forgave from a cross.

Reflection

Who in your life right now do you most need to pray "Father forgive them" for, not as a feeling but as a deliberate, costly, will-driven act of following Jesus' example? What would it look like to begin praying specifically and consistently for that person's good rather than for their judgment? And how does the reality that Jesus prayed this prayer while He was still being hurt, before the hurt had stopped, challenge the idea that you need to wait until the situation is resolved before you can genuinely forgive?

Share your thoughts and reflections in the comments below!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Does Jesus' prayer mean everyone who crucified Him was automatically forgiven?

Jesus' prayer made forgiveness available, not automatic. The same forgiveness that was purchased by His death on the cross must be received through genuine repentance and faith to be personally experienced. The three thousand who were baptized on Pentecost received that forgiveness personally. Those who never responded in repentance and faith did not receive it experientially regardless of the prayer. Forgiveness offered must be forgiveness received for it to transform a person's standing before God.

Is it always possible to forgive?

The Bible consistently presents forgiveness not as something we manufacture through sufficient emotional effort but as something we choose through the will and then receive the grace to sustain through the Spirit. Colossians 3:13 calls believers to forgive "just as in Christ God forgave you" and the power for that forgiveness comes from the same Spirit who enabled Jesus to pray it from the cross. It may not feel immediately possible, but it is always possible as an act of the will that invites God's grace to complete what the will has chosen.

What is the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation?

Forgiveness is a unilateral decision, you can release someone from the debt they owe you without their participation or even their knowledge. Reconciliation is a bilateral process, it requires the genuine participation of both parties, the acknowledgment of wrong by the one who did it and the rebuilding of trust over time. Jesus forgave from the cross before any of the people He was praying for had done anything to participate in the process. You can do the same, forgive unilaterally as an act of the will, while recognizing that the reconciliation of specific relationships may require additional time and the genuine participation of the other person.

Why does God require us to forgive others?

Matthew 18:21-35, the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, provides Jesus' own explanation. The person who has received enormous forgiveness from God and then refuses to extend forgiveness to others has fundamentally misunderstood and failed to genuinely receive what they have been given. Genuine reception of God's forgiveness produces the capacity and the desire to extend forgiveness to others. The refusal to forgive is therefore evidence that the transforming reality of God's forgiveness has not yet genuinely reached the heart of the person who claims to have received it.

A Short Prayer

Father I come to You now with the same prayer that Your Son prayed from the cross. Father forgive, forgive the person who hurt me, who wronged me, who betrayed my trust or treated me with cruelty or indifference. I do not pray this because I feel it yet. I pray it because Jesus prayed it and because I want to follow Him even into the most difficult and most costly of His examples. Help me to mean it more fully with every day that passes. Release me from the bitterness that has been damaging me more than it has affected the person I am holding it toward. And help me to see the person I am praying for the way Jesus saw the people He was praying for, as someone who does not fully know what they are doing and who needs Your grace as desperately as I do. Amen.

Continue Reading: Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified Him, but what does the Bible teach about what forgiveness actually is and how we receive it for our own sins? Discover the full depth of this extraordinary gift by reading our complete study on The Forgiveness of Our Sins and experience the freedom that genuine forgiveness brings.

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