“Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.”

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And amazingly, Jesus is praying for them that his Father would open their eyes and help them to see their sin, repent, and be forgiven. That is the beautiful thing about this prayer of Jesus: It declares guilt and offers forgiveness at the same time.

So this morning here in this room, if you are rejecting Jesus as Son of God and Lord and Savior of your life, he declares that you are guilty AND he offers himself as the sacrifice to pay for your sins and forgive all the sins you have ever done and ever will do. There was evidence, and there is evidence, that Jesus is the sin-bearing Messiah and Son of God who he claimed to be.

For example, 1 his supernatural healings; 2 his authority over nature; 3 his power over demons; 4 his compassion for outcasts like lepers and his association with the lowly; 5 his simplicity of life and indifference to wealth; 6 his unparalleled wisdom and his seeing through hypocrisy; 7 his indifference to human praise and devotion to the good of others; 8 his living for the glory of God; 9 his willingness to die for others; 10 his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God was he a liar, insane, true?

Those are some of the evidences that made the ignorance of his killers a guilty ignorance. Therefore, they needed to be forgiven even if they did not know what they were doing, because they should have known. Now my point this morning is this: If we claim to be ignorant that we are killing human beings and that therefore we are innocent, Jesus prays for us, "Father, forgive them, for.

I don't know if I can say, "They don't know what they are doing. But the important point is this: Whether we know what we are doing or don't know what we are doing, we are guilty and need forgiveness, because we should know what we are doing. Indeed, we do know what we are doing. So hear me loud and clear at the outset: Jesus offers you forgiveness this morning for aborting your child, or encouraging your girlfriend or your daughter to abort your child, or for working in an abortion clinic, or for being apathetic and doing nothing about this great evil and injustice in our society.

1. Father, Forgive Them (Luke ) - Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross.
Why did Jesus say FATHER, FORGIVE THEM?.
“Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” | Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation.
The Parsifal Mosaic.
Why did Jesus say “Father, forgive them” on the cross?.

And in offering forgiveness, Jesus declares that we are guilty. Our ignorance is guilty ignorance. We should know what we are doing even if we don't.

Disability Is No Accident

And we do know! So let me show you why I believe we know what we are doing, or should know, and are guilty for knowing or not knowing what we are doing — namely wrongfully killing unborn human beings whose right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is a gift of God Acts We know what we are doing because 27 States including Minnesota treat the killing of an unborn child as a form of homicide see United for Life.

That is, they have what are called "fetal homicide laws. She shot herself in the head, and he changed his mind and covered her over with brush and walked away. He was apprehended and charged with assisting a suicide and "inadvertently murdering the fetus during the commission of a felony. The verdict was upheld in As I read about this in the newspaper one sentence leaped off the page because of its stunning implications.

We have some laws that condemn the killing of a fetus as murder, and we have some laws that condone the killing of a fetus as abortion. What is the basis for the difference? Usually the proposed basis for the difference is simply this: It is illegal to take the life of the unborn if the mother chooses that it not be taken, but it is legal to take the life of the unborn if the mother chooses that it be taken.

In first case the law treats the fetus as a human with rights; in the second case the law treats the fetus as non-human with no rights. Do you see what this means? It means that according to our laws in Minnesota as well as other states , the humanness of the unborn is determined from case to case not on the basis of its intrinsic qualities, but on the basis of someone else's choice.

If the one who has the power says it is right for the unborn to be killed, it is right; but if the one with the power says it is wrong for the unborn to be killed, it is wrong. There is a name for this state of affairs. We call it anarchy: Each one who has the power defines what is "right" on the basis of what he or she wants to be right. Now at this point those of us who care about racial justice should hear some ominous and threatening sounds.

And those who care most about justice for the unborn should see the profound implications of this for racial justice — and every other form of justice. And there should be no sense that you can pick one of these issues to care about with no concern about the other. When human justice is disconnected from a person's intrinsic humanity and made to depend simply on the choice of the strong, no one is safe from being arbitrarily defined out of personhood — whether it is a Jew in Nazi Germany or Black Slave in South Carolina or an unborn infant in the womb.

If the right to life and liberty hangs merely on the will of the strong, there is no justice. The issue for racial justice and justice for the unborn is: What constitutes human personhood and the human responsibilities and rights that flow from it. But here's my point this morning: The existence of fetal homicide laws show that we know what we are doing when we abort the unborn or condone abortion or take no interest in it.

Father, forgive, we know what we are doing.

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We know what we are doing because of the inconsistency of doing fetal surgery on a baby in the womb to save him while his cousin at the same stage of development is being killed. The evidence mounts on all hands that the unborn are persons and patients alongside of their mothers. They can be medically treated just as the mother can. But many people turn a deaf ear to observations like Dr.

Steve Calvin's in a letter some years ago to the Arizona Daily Star: We know what we are doing because the size of a person is irrelevant when deciding if the person is a human being or not. The five-foot-eight frame of a teenage son guarantees him no more right to life than the inch frame of his little sister in her mother's arms. Size is morally irrelevant 1 inch, 23 inches, 68 inches in determining who should be protected. Forgive, Father, we know what we are doing. We know what we are doing because developed reasoning powers are not the criterion of personhood.

A one-week-old infant, nursing at his mother's breast, does not have these powers either, yet we don't put his life in jeopardy because of that. We know what we are doing because in all other areas of life we do not allow location or environment to determine a person's right to life. So Scott Klusendorf asks, "How does a simple journey of seven inches down the birth canal suddenly transform the essential nature of the fetus from non-person to person?

We know what we are doing because we consider persons on respirators and dialysis as human beings whose lives are precious and to be protected.

In other words, the unborn cannot be disqualified from human life because they are dependent on their mother for food and oxygen and protection from toxins. In fact, we operate on the exact opposite principle: The more dependent a little one is on us, the more responsibility we feel to protect him, not the less. Before answering the questions as to why Jesus said "Father forgive them. Now, let us look at a few Scriptures and get the context. Since those who were killing him were deceived, and did not understand what they were doing, Jesus asked God to forgive their sin.

This implies very strongly that someday all will know the full extent of what they did. It will be at that time that repentance will come.

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"Father, Forgive, For We Know What We Are Doing".
Luke ESV - And Jesus said, “Father, forgive - Bible Gateway;
Luke NIV - Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, - Bible Gateway.
1. Father, Forgive Them (Luke 23:34);

Read Jesus' statement in Matthew 23 where he bemoans Jerusalem's rejection and the fact that the city would soon be left desolate. This prophecy was fulfilled in 70 A. It says in Scripture that every knee will eventually bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is their Savior.

Therefore, God has also highly exalted Him and bestowed upon Him a name which is above every name; That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of beings in heaven and on earth and under the earth,