"Father, forgive them..."

Christ’s first word from the cross, and indeed, his first word to us, is “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” At first glance, this appears as a word of comfort. We are so ignorant of the ways we need saving, yet mercifully, Jesus offers us forgiveness and makes everything alright. But if this is all this word is saying to us, then the cross has been sanitized, sentimentalized, and stripped of its narrative passion in the name of a good atonement theory. As Stanley Hauerwas observes, “...as soon as these words from the cross are bent to serve our needs, to give us a god we believe we need, it is almost impossible to resist entertaining ourselves with speculative readings of Jesus’s words from the cross. For example, we think what a wonderful savior we have in Jesus, who, even in his agony, kindly offers us forgiveness” (Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ, 15).

The error in such a reading is a grammatical one. On this reading the objects of divine forgiveness, the vague prepositions of “they” and “them,” have taken precedence over the subject, the definite person of the Father. Furthermore, it is not at all clear in the text to whom the “they” or the “them” are referring. Is it the criminals crucified on either side of Jesus in the preceding verse? Is it the people and their rulers who stood beholding? Is it the imperial soldiers who nailed him there and gambled for his clothing? Is it even, perhaps, us? The text refuses to say. The ambiguity of reference for this verse is precisely the point. This text is not about us, it is about the one whom Jesus names from the cross - God the Father.

It is extraordinarily tempting to make this text about us, for surely it is our sin that needs forgiving, and if it is our sin, we must know something about it. Certainly, if there is anything we know for sure, it is who we are and what we do. We are constantly sure that if we can be certain about anything, it is our own truth, our own authentic self-knowledge.

Again, the text corrects this error in our thinking. We do not know what we do. We don’t even know who we are. Are we criminals? Are we agents of empire? Are we onlookers? But here I am, making this text about us, and our problems, even though the text refuses to either identify a “them” or name a problem. Jesus speaks positively only of his Father and the forgiveness that comes from him.

But what is this forgiveness? Surely forgiveness need only arise in response to a problem, a problem we normally call sin. Forgiveness deals with this problem of sin. This neat way of articulating it, the problem and the solution, lands us right back into the realm of theory once again and the comforting certainty that we know what we are talking about.

Christ’s first word to us from the cross is not a message about something certain that we might call the “human condition.” It is the beginning of the exposition of the cross and the God who hangs there. The grammar of Christ’s word, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” is the great reversal of our alleged self-knowledge. The supposed word of comfort, “Forgive them” becomes a withering word of judgement. The offer of forgiveness reveals precisely how deeply we do not know what we are doing. It is because we do not know who we are and what we are doing that we must look up and see Jesus on the cross and there discover the nature of who we are and what our problem is.

The Father’s forgiveness is first a word of condemnation. It is grace, to be sure, but it is a withering word of grace. On occasion situations arise where a person may have an encounter with somebody, after which they feel slighted. The perpetrator of the slight may or may not be aware of having done anything wrong, but if the victim of that slight offers a word of forgiveness, it is at that moment that the perpetrator must come to terms with the reality of their guilt. To accept the offer of forgiveness is to accept the guilty verdict. If the perpetrator accepts the verdict, they may do so in the form of repentance.

The Scottish theologian, James Torrance (Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace, 54-5), following John Calvin (Institutes, III, 3, iv), makes a distinction between this form of repentance which he names “evangelical repentance” and another form of repentance, called “legal repentance.” Legal repentance is the way many of us intuit repentance, people know they have done wrong, they repent of their wrong-doing, and the repentance triggers the mechanism by which they may be forgiven. Evangelical repentance, on the contrary, begins with forgiveness. This forgiveness brings with it the knowledge of guilt, the acceptance of this guilty verdict is repentance. In the former we know what we do and are the authors of our forgiveness, in the latter, grace defines us and subverts our attempts to take control of the world.

And so, we begin to understand how Christ’s word from the cross holds together. The word of forgiveness is not the answer to our problem of not knowing what we do. The word of forgiveness is precisely the revelation that we do not know what we do. But insofar as it is a word of forgiveness, we are not left condemned with the knowledge of our own ignorance and malfeasance. Therefore, the first word from Christ is the word of forgiveness, not to comfort us at the sight of a tortured and dying God, but to reveal to us the truth of what is being done on the cross. The word of forgiveness, as an act of judgement and mercy, discloses to us the truth that on this cross, in the body of this man Jesus, the judge has been judged in our place.

Ultimately then, Christ’s first word to us from the cross, becomes a word for us, not because it is primarily about us, but exactly because it is about him. Hanging from the cross, Jesus takes our place as the guilty one, and from that position, reveals to us our guilt by mercifully taking it upon himself. This first word from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” opens our meditations on the cross by mercifully disciplining us in our ignorance and revealing to us that in Christ the great reversal has been completed. We may not know who we are or what we do, but we do see Jesus, and as we look on, hearing his words to his Father from that great height, we discover that there is one who knows who and what we are, just as he is known by the Father, and so, we are forgiven.