Prayer for Forgiveness (Luke 23:32-34)

Sometimes important incidents occur surrounded by other activities. For example, we can be sitting in a restaurant looking at our phone and not realising that the couple at another table have just become engaged or that the three individuals at a different table have agreed to a business transaction that will bring benefits to millions. We can be close to very important occasions and not realise it. 

Something similar can be said about this incident involving Jesus and the soldiers who crucified him. There were other people at the cross, including some women who followed Jesus, and the apostle John was there as well for a while, but they did not seem to notice this important event at the time it occurred. The soldiers must have heard the prayer, and they would have noticed its different tone from what others said when they were crucified.

Why was it important?

One way to discover its importance is to note that it was the fulfilment of Bible prophecy. There are two Old Testament passages in particular that were fulfilled. In Isaiah 53:12, the prophet predicts that God will reward the Messiah for his death and states that his dying would involve him being ‘numbered with the transgressors’ and also that he would make ‘intercession for the transgressors’. 

The prophet may not have realised that the fulfilment would involve two types of transgressors. First, Jesus was numbered with the transgressors crucified beside him; second, he made intercession for the soldiers. This is a reminder that Jesus died for different types of sinners; on this occasion, he died for those who were breaking the civil law and he also died for those who were administering the verdict based on the civil law.

The other Old Testament passage is Psalm 22:16-18: ‘For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet – I can count all my bones – they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.’ Psalm 22 is well-known as being a Messianic psalm. Its first words were said by Jesus on the cross when he asked the Father why he had forsaken him. Later on in the psalm, the author mentions that those called dogs will pierce his hands and feet. ‘Dogs’ was a common word that Jews used to describe Gentiles. Gentile soldiers crucified Jesus and after they did so they did what the psalm predicted – they shared some of his clothes and  gambled for the rest.

An event that can be described so accurately centuries before it occurred must be important. After all, God is the only One who can predict the future precisely. Some people can have a guess about the immediate future and may describe what then occurs, but who can describe with total certainty what will happen in five hundred years’ time? This literal fulfilment of ancient prophecies reminds us of the importance of what took place at Calvary.

The example of Jesus

During his three years of public ministry, Jesus had taught his disciples concerning what they should believe and how they should behave. One of the topics that he often spoke about was prayer, including prayer for those who were opposed to him. In Matthew 5:44, he told his disciples to ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ His words point to the reality that prayer for such people comes from love for them. At that moment, those soldiers were being cruel to Jesus; they were indifferent to his pain, and unconcerned about his mission. Yet in his heart, there was love, and that love showed itself in strong intercession for them. 

Do our prayers reveal love for our enemies? There is at least one person in the Bible who imitated the example of Jesus when he prayed for those who had crucified him. Stephen, when he was being stoned to death, prayed for his murderers and asked the exalted Saviour not to punish them. ‘As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep’ (Acts 7:59-60). No doubt, many other believers have imitated the Saviour in showing great love for those who have illtreated them.

The Saviour’s prayer for the soldiers was marked by urgency. He did not merely pray once for them. Luke indicates by the tense of the verb that Jesus mentioned the petition several times. The fact that he repeated this petition would also indicate that in addition to urgency there was a sense of love and longing within him for the soldiers to be pardoned by his Father. So his first recorded action on the cross is to engage in intercession for those who were mistreating him. They were indifferent to him, but he could not be indifferent to them.

His turning to pray to the Father is another way in which Jesus is our example. Although he is a divine Person, he respected the order that he had taught and shown to his disciples which was for prayer and intercession to be addressed to the Father. His asking the Father to pardon the soldiers acknowledged the roles that the divine Persons have in salvation. When the Father pardons sinners, he also justifies them. Before this would happen, the soldiers would have to trust in Jesus as sinners who had found a Saviour.

Jesus turned to prayer here when there was little to encourage him as far as visible things were concerned. His enemies among the Jews were pleased that he had been crucified, the soldiers were indifferent, the women who had followed him were powerless to help, and his disciples had abandoned him. Both criminals crucified with him provided at that time no encouragement. Where could he go? To the One with whom he had passed many hours in prayer. While it might seem initially that he did not pray about himself, the case is that he did because his prayer revealed his deep desire for sinners to be converted.

The Saviour was aware that he was engaged in the mission for which he had been sent into the world by the Father. The mission was for him to go to the cross and ensure that sinners would be saved. Having reached the cross, one way that he could reveal the continuation of his mission was to indicate verbally that his heart was still determined to fulfil his calling. He knew that the Father could only pardon the soldiers if he paid the penalty for their sins, including the sin of crucifying him.

The prayer of Jesus

Crucifixion was an excruciatingly painful way of putting someone to death. We would expect someone undergoing this experience to be desperate for some help or irate with those who performed the crucifixion. He would want something to ease his pain and he would have no affection for his crucifiers. Yet Jesus had neither of those responses. In contrast, he did not ask for anything to help himself and he prayed for those who crucified him. Clearly, Jesus put others before himself, and he did so here while suffering greatly.

Jesus knew that he should not pray for deliverance from the cross. On the previous evening, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he had asked his Father if it was possible for him to avoid the cross. The answer from his Father, the One he was now currently addressing on behalf of the soldiers, was that it was impossible for him to avoid the cross. 

Why was that the case? The answer was the eternal arrangement between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit with regard to the salvation of sinners. In that arrangement, each of the divine Persons had roles to fulfil. The role of the Son was to live a perfect life and die an atoning death for his people. His perfect life included what he did on the cross as a man. He had to love his neighbour, and here his neighbours were the soldiers who had crucified him. What better way to show his love that to pray explicitly for their salvation!

In John 17, Jesus prayed for all his people, the ones whom the Father had given him in that eternal arrangement. All of them would come to know him through different ways in various situations. Had it been divinely planned that some of them would come to know even in the place of his crucifixion? The Gospels tell us that some did, and among them were the soldiers who crucified him.

The first of the seven sayings involves Jesus addressing the Father as does the last of them. In the first he prayed to the Father about the soldiers and in the last he spoke to the Father about committing his spirit into his Father’s hands. Obviously, in a profound way he was enjoying communion with his Father when he made both of the statements. In between those two sayings, he also speaks to his Father, but on that occasion he does not call him Father but ‘My God’. In that other saying, which we will consider later, the nature of the communion was different in that it was not so comfortable for Jesus from a spiritual point of view. He was forsaken in his soul by his omnipresent Father, whereas in the other two sayings he was conscious very much of his Father’s presence.

We can also say that Jesus was conscious of his Father’s pleasure at that time even although he was now on the cross. There would have been no displeasure at anything Jesus had said or done because all of it occurred because he always did what pleased the Father. Numerous prayers had been offered by Jesus during his days on earth and each of them was received with delight. After all, the Father’s joy in returning prodigals is great, and those soldiers were about to find the path that leads to divine forgiveness. They did not know it, but the Father and the Son did.

The request of Jesus was about forgiveness for their great sin. They had crucified the God of heaven. Although his divine nature was beyond their actions, his human nature was badly treated by them. It was true that they did not realise what they were doing, and Jesus mentions their ignorance in his petition. Still, their ignorance did not mean that their sin could be ignored. Instead, their sin had to be forgiven.

Some may wonder if Jesus only prayed for this particular sin to be forgiven. It would be unusual for divine forgiveness to be extended to only one sin and not to all their sins. The petition offered by Jesus focussed on their worst sin, but he had in mind the forgiveness of their persons and not just pardon for their actions. Jesus wanted full salvation for them. That was his desire at the commencement of his time on the cross. And we know that he had the same desire for all those whose penalty for sins he was going to pay at that time – all his people.

The answer to his prayer

For the several hours that Jesus was on the cross there seemed to be no indication that his prayer had been heard. Little change appeared in the behaviour and attitudes of the soldiers. While we look at them, we can see that it is not appropriate to assess the intercession of Jesus by how those he prays for act before their conversions, even in the hours close to them experiencing the great change. Until the Father issues his effectual call and the Holy Spirit renews their hearts, they will remain rebels and unchanged.

Another aspect of the behaviour of the soldiers that often occurs is that believers before they are converted can be unaffected by any treatment they mete out to others who also may become believers. One of the criminals would yet repent of his sin and confess Jesus as his Saviour. It is even possible that part of the process for bringing the soldiers to faith was listening to the testimony of the criminal that they crucified. Yet initially they had no compassion for him. Of course, they did not know and he did not know that they would soon be members of the heavenly family, brothers in the Lord forever.

In Luke 23:47, the response of the centurion to what he had observed at the crucifixion. ‘Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!”’ Matthew gives the response of the centurion and his men: ‘When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”’ (Matt. 27:54). We can see from those responses that a great change had come over these soldiers in answer to the prayer of Jesus.

Initially, there was no sign of a change. As Jesus prayed for them, they gambled for his garments. Yet as they went through the drama of the cross, and we must remember that they had the equivalent of a front row seat, they came to have a different understanding of what took place. They heard all his other statements from the cross as well as his prayer for them, and they realised that Jesus was no ordinary man, but the Son of God. This was in total contrast to the Jewish religious leaders.

Their experience is a reminder to us that the best way to understand the cross is to consider what took place there. Why did such cosmic events, such as the darkness at noonday or the earthquake, take place? Why did Jesus move from having a sense of divine favour to a sense of divine forsakenness to a sense of divine favour? How could Jesus know that a crucified criminal would be in heaven that day, and be there with himself?

When one receives from the Bible answers to such questions, we realise that all that happened took place because Jesus was paying the penalty for sin. The soldiers could be pardoned because the One they crucified carried their sins away from the sight of God. He did this while paying the penalty for them. No doubt, they still had a lot to learn about the significance of the sacrifice of Jesus. But then so had the disciples who had been with Jesus for three years.

Preached on Sunday, 5th January, 2020