Father forgive them for they know exactly what they are doing!

 I was once told by a livid atheist: "Forgiveness is not the prerogative of Christians." 

I looked straight into his angry eyes and saw the all too familiar struggle: he knew he was wronged and he wanted justice. And he knew he was thirsty for the wrong doer's blood and he didn't like that about himself. His experience and his intellect were telling him that it would be better to forgive. He had even convinced himself he could forgive just as easily as any openly Christian person like I could. But his entire body screamed NO! I DO NOT WANT TO FORGIVE!

Of course, the main reason for that was that far from being repentant, his wrong doer was smugly celebrating his wrong doing in full public view. His wrong doer was getting away with the crime and no one could stop him.

As one who cared deeply for both these atheist men: the wrong doer and the wronged, I could not convey to them how to forgive each other without Christ in the picture.

If you want to leave Christ out of the equation, you will have to give yourself some very good reason to go against every fibre of your being and forgive. 

You could tell yourself: 

1. It's better for my mental and physical health that I just let go of what I cannot control and forget about all this. But forgetting is not the same as forgiving.

2. It's irrational to expect someone who has gotten away with such a serious offence to change his ways just to please me. 

3. This person is a waste of my time and energy that I should be using for my own growth instead.

4. Being angry with him is not going to change him, but it is going to destroy me.

And simply by replacing your angry thoughts with rational ones, you could bring yourself to come to a place of acceptance about the reality of the offence against you and your inability to gain justice or even an apology.

But forgiveness is a lot more than that.

Forgiveness is a choice to not allow your life to be poisoned by the sin of the other.

Forgiveness is a choice to process your grief and outrage and decide that you can indeed let it go.

Forgiveness is a choice to not carry the unnecessary burden of unforgiveness when life throws so much at us anyways.

But for most humans, this is a task so very important and so very hard to do that we just do not do it.

I have yet to meet a person who has been able to forgive a grievious offence without the grace of God. Because forgiveness, true forgiveness where you don't even feel the need to keep score or recount the offender's sins to another, is too hard to accomplish by oneself. 

Jesus accomplished it for me.

Because of Jesus' teachings and action in forgiving those who killed Him, AS they were killing Him, I have hope that He can accomplish the same in me.

Those who killed Jesus surely knew they were taking the life of a human being, they knew he was innocent of any malice because He had fed and healed so many thousands, they knew he was convicted for claiming to be God. And they knew that He was not behaving like a con man nor like a lunatic, so the only likely possibility left was that He was actually God.

So what is it exactly that Jesus said they did not know, when He appealed to His Father to forgive them?

My guess is the only thing they did not know is the life-changing love of God on the cross.

And once you realise your offender does know that either, you may find it more compelling to forgive.

Someone who really loves Jesus told me something that I will never forget: Jesus did not just die for the sins I committed, He died also for the sins committed against me. So if I don't forgive, I am declaring with my life that Jesus died in vain. And no one who really loves Jesus will ever do that.

For me, ultimately, forgiveness is trusting Jesus to come up with a better outcome than I can come up with myself.

Can you trust the One who died for you?

Choose to obey Him and forgive.