A prayer of Jesus
Father, Forgive Them
They had led Jesus to the place called Calvary and were nailing Him to the cross between two criminals. Soldiers cast lots for His clothing at His feet. Rulers sneered, the crowd watched, and the whole machinery of injustice ground on. In that moment, as the spikes went in, Jesus spoke His first recorded word from the cross. It was not a curse on His killers but a prayer for them, and it named their deepest need before He named His own pain.
“Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.”Luke 23:34
What he prayed
He prayed for the very people crucifying Him. Addressing God as Father, He asked Him to forgive them, and He offered a reason, that they did not know what they were doing. He did not excuse the sin, but He pleaded their blindness, that the soldiers, the leaders, and the crowd could not see whom they were killing. He asked no vengeance. He named no charge. Instead He turned the whole weight of the moment into intercession, standing between guilty men and the God they were offending, exactly as He had come to do. Some of the earliest manuscripts of Luke do not include this sentence, which is why a few translations set it in a note, yet it has been treasured by the church from very early days as fully in keeping with all He taught and lived.
What it teaches us about prayer
This prayer shows forgiveness is not a feeling that arrives after the wound heals but a choice made in the middle of the wound. Jesus does not wait for an apology. He intercedes for people still in the act of harming Him. He teaches us to answer cruelty not with a curse but with a prayer, and to see even our enemies as blind more than merely wicked, in need of mercy rather than only judgment. This does not deny the reality of the sin. It carries the sin to the Father instead of avenging it ourselves. To pray this way is impossible on our own strength. It is the fruit of a heart so secure in the Father that it can spend itself on the good of those who hate it.
What it reveals about Jesus
On the cross Jesus practiced what He preached, loving His enemies and praying for those who used Him. But more than an example, this is the gospel enacted. The one being killed is the one securing pardon for His killers. His prayer, Father forgive them, is the very reason He hangs there, for the cross is how that forgiveness is bought. Here is the High Priest interceding while He becomes the sacrifice. And His prayer reached far beyond that hill, for all of us in our blindness had a hand in His death, and all of us are included in the mercy He asked. He did not merely wish forgiveness on us. He died to make it ours.
Questions people ask
Did Jesus really pray for the people crucifying Him?
Yes. As He was being nailed to the cross, His first recorded word was a prayer asking the Father to forgive the very men doing it, pleading that they did not understand who He was. He sought no revenge and named no charge against them. It is the clearest picture in Scripture of the love for enemies He had taught, lived out at the highest possible cost.
Why do some Bibles put Luke 23:34 in a footnote?
Because the sentence is missing from several of the earliest manuscripts of Luke, so translators honestly note the uncertainty about whether it stood in the original text. Its absence in some copies does not make it untrue, and it was quoted by Christians very early and fits everything else we know of Jesus. Most churches have received it with confidence as His genuine word from the cross.