As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.  A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him.  But Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.  For the days are surely coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.'  Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.'  For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"  Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him.  When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.  Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."  And they cast lots to divide his clothing.  And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" (Luke 23:26-35) (NRSV)

"He could have called ten thousand angels to take Him off the cross", but He didn't.  He stayed on that cross for you and for me.

There is a drawing power to the cross.  To be sure, some see it as a stumbling block to faith, not wanting to accept that God could actually allow himself to be hung on a cross; others see it as a laughing stock, mocking its apparent weakness and powerlessness.

But for those of us who are being saved, the cross of Christ is the power of God.  The cross is the power of God to take all our sin and nail it to the cross, so that we are declared forgiven, pure and holy in his sight.

The cross is the power of God to overcome the prince of this world.

The cross is the power of God to judge sin and deal with it completely and finally.

The cross is the power of God to melt the stubborn heart who refuses to believe that God loves them - and then we look at the cross and discover how deep and wide and broad and high the love of God is in Christ.

The cross of Christ draws us, if we allow it.  Will you allow Christ to draw you today?

Come with me now to the hill outside of Jerusalem and see again in your mind's eye our Saviour upon the Roman cross, dying for our sins.  Come with me now and hear Him utter the first in a series of last words from the cross.  And consider with me today two truths: the horror of the cross and the love of our Saviour.

The horror and the awfulness of the crucifixion of our Lord cannot be missed.  It is all there for us to read in each of the gospels, in all its human ugliness and sinfulness.

Here is an innocent man, a man who never did anything wrong, a good man, and a man who you would want to meet and enjoy being around.

Here is a man, who enjoyed feasting with friends, meeting new people, a man who delighted in the company of children and encouraged His followers to imitate their faith.

Here is a man who healed the sick, fed the hungry, and proclaimed the love of God to those who were imprisoned by the sins of life, and bound by the cruel expectations of the world.

Here is a man who is more than a man - He is God in the flesh, able to bring the dead to life, and who, because He was fully God, led a perfect, sinless life.

But He was arrested.  Not only is He arrested but He is beaten, beaten not in self-defense, not in jealousy, but beaten out of sheer, cruel brutality.

Not only is He arrested, not only is He beaten, but He is crucified upon a Roman cross.  His arms are outstretched, upon the cross bar, and the nails are driven through His hands and feet.  Halfway up the cross there is a projecting piece of wood, called the saddle, which takes the weight of the innocent victim, otherwise the nails would have torn through His hands.

There is this man, naked, left to die of hunger, thirst, exposure, and eventually suffocation.

But not only is He crucified, but He is mocked while He is dying, while He is hanging there.

Those who stood watching, sneered at Him saying, "He saved others - let Him save himself if He is the Christ of God, the Chosen One."

The soldiers also mocked him, saying, "if you are the king of the Jews save yourself."

You can hear the sarcasm and the hatred in the words.

The horror and the awfulness of the crucifixion is gut-wrenching, because there on that hill of Calvary, everything that led up to that event, everything that surrounds that cross, is the result of everything that is sinister, vile, perverse, corrupt, decayed, rotten and spoiled in humanity.  The cross is the result of sin.   In the book of Isaiah we read,

"He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him."  (Isaiah 53:5a) (NIV)

What we see at this time around this cross, and in the events that lead up to it, is all that we hate in our fellow human beings and in ourselves - the reign of sin.

There's mean-spiritedness.  There's violence.  There's torture.  There's the persecution of the innocent There's the absence of justice There's no desire to know the truth, and every desire to follow half-baked accusations and wild suggestions.  It is an ugly, ugly, ugly, gut wrenching scene.

And do you know what makes it all the more awful?  Do you know what makes the sin at the cross all the more horrible?  Do you know what serves to magnify the vileness of it all?  It is that in the midst of all this putridness, Jesus, the Saviour of the world says, "Father forgive them for they do not what they are doing."

The words cut, the words pierce us because they are so filled with love, they are so filled with compassion in the midst of awful, awful sin - sin that caused the crucifixion of the Son of God.

If Christ had spoken instead words of revenge and anger we could understand that and we would say that that response fits with all the sinful vileness that is the crucifixion.

But instead He speaks words of forgiveness and they make us catch our breath as we read them and your jaw drops in astonishment because they are so out of place with what is happening.  They make us stop and look at the cross and say, "This is horrendous, this is awful.  What caused this?"

"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,."  (Isaiah 53:5) (NIV)

The horror of sin.  May we always come to the cross of Calvary and see there the utter darkness of our sin.  Let it be magnified; let it be amplified against the light of Christ.  As we think of the complete brightness of His compassion toward us while we were yet sinners, let us grasp our own sinfulness and great rebellion toward the living God.

And you ask, "Why would we do that?  For what purpose?" And I respond, because if we walk casually away from the cross and forget the vileness of our sin we are likely to return to our sin and begin to play with it again and to love it as much as ever.

This is the meaning of the second part of Jesus' prayer.  "They do not know what they are doing."  The people were ignorant of their own sin.  The darkness of the event never crossed their minds - they nailed the Son of God to the cross and then went back to their Passover parties.   They do not know what they do.  The people did not know they were really crucifying God's son - they thought He was a sham, they thought He was a heretic - they did not know.  They were ignorant of their own sin.

Oh my friends, do not let the horror of the cross ever be lost on you.  Do you see that what we need is something that will reveal to us the hatefulness of sin, the darkness of it all.  There are times when we are very good at lightly skipping over our sin considering it a trifle of a thing.  "My desire to have my own way and not God's way is nothing really.  I go to church. My lying to my spouse is nothing really, it didn't hurt anyone.   My love for gossip – well, I wouldn't call it a love really, it isn't anything.  My lack of faith isn't simply a lack of faith, it's practicality.  My refusal to offer my talents and gifts to God in his service - do you know how busy I am?  My refusal to forgive my brother and sister in Christ - well do you know what they did to me?"

We live in an age where sin is seen as normal, not as the horror that it is.  We need something to jolt us out of our complacency and show us again the horror of sin.

In the words of Henry Jowett,

"What I want is something that will ... reveal to me the hatefulness of sin, the leprous disgustingness of sin, that I may not only turn away home, but recoil from sin in contempt as a healthy man turns from diseased and disgusting food.  That is what I want."¹

That is what we receive when we think of the cross and what caused Christ to be there.  The vileness of sin, they very son of God, the very one we say we long for, the very one we say we want to have a relationship with is on the cross because of our sin.

And out of the horror of it all floats these sweet words, "Father forgive them for they do not know what they do."

Not only the horror of sin, but also see the love of our Saviour.  By all means come to the cross and experience remorse for your sin and let it move you to say "I'm sorry" to God, but do not leave feeling heavy-hearted.  Do not leave feeling that God is against you and that there is no hope.  Know that our Lord spoke those words for you, "Father forgive them."  And know that they are spoken with great love for you.

This has always been God's heart toward his people - with every beat it bounds with love.

Here is Moses, and God passes in front of him on the Mountain proclaiming:

"The Lord, The Lord the compassionate, the gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin."  (Exodus 34:5-7) (NIV).

Again, here is God speaking through Isaiah,

"I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. "  (Isaiah 43:25) (NIV)

But God's love is never so sure, His forgiveness to the repentent never so steadfast, than on the cross of Christ.  I know that if I look back through all the history of God's gracious dealings with humanity, and then if I look forward and there be able to peer into all the splendours that God has prepared for us in heaven, I can never see our God's love as clearly, as radiant, as awesome as when I look at the cross of Christ and hear Him say, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing."

Warren Wiersbe states that the tense of the verb "said" indicates that our Lord repeated this prayer.  As the soldiers nailed him to the cross, He prayed, "Father forgive them."  When they lifted the cross and placed it in the hole in the ground, our Lord prayed, "Father forgive them."  As He hung there between heaven and earth, and heard religious people mocking Him, He repeatedly prayed, "Father forgive them."²

And as you come to the cross, be sure that you hear Him say about those sins which you confess to Him, "Father forgive."  Know that His forgiveness is always available to you no matter what you have done, no matter how large you think your sin is in your life, Christ died for you and utters that prayer yet for each of us, "Father forgive them".

Max Lucado tells of a time when his four year old daughter came to him with a confession.  "Daddy, I took a crayon and drew on the wall," she said.

Lucado says he sat down and lifted her up into his lap and tried to be wise, "Is that a good thing to do?" He asked. "No." "What does Daddy do when you write on the wall?" "You punish me." "What do you think Daddy should do this time?" And the simple answer came back, "Love."

And Lucado asks, "Don't we all want that?  Don't we all long for a father who, even though our mistakes are written all over the wall, will love us anyway?"³ Don't we want a father who will take those mistakes and with the Mr. Clean of life wipe them all away?  Yes!

And truth of the cross is that we do have a heavenly father like that -a God who knows our failures, no matter how large, and loves us any way.  He gathers that sin of yours and that sin of mine and no matter how large, no matter how small, He erases them by His own blood upon the cross.

My friends do not negate the awfulness of your sin, for it was because of your sin that Christ died and it was instead of you that He died.  "He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities...", but do not leave the cross without Him hearing and receiving His forgiveness.

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - February 2002

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Footnote:

1.	John Henry Jowett in "The Power of the Cross". In Classic Sermons on the Cross of Christ. Compiled by Warren W. Wiersbe. Grand Rapids, Michigan (Kregal Publishing, 1990), p. 41.
2.	Warren Wiersbe, The Cross of Christ. Grand Rapids, Michigan (Baker Book House, 1997), p. 53.
3.	Max Lucado, Six Hours One Friday. Portland, Oregon (Multnomah Press, 1989), p. 84.