By: Lynson
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
On the cross, having been questioned by debouched leaders, scorned by the villainous religious elite, his deity mocked by mere humans, beaten beyond recognition, I can’t imagine what Jesus was thinking as the crowds pled for his death, many of the same voices that had not long before shouted, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The Messiah had come, to be sure, only the people his coming was meant to transform used the same fullness of prophecy to crucify him. This short prayer from Luke’s gospel depicts the supernatural, unadulterated love of Christ that would move him to intercede for us, even amid the most excruciating death in human history; we deserved the very cross we nailed him to, but the horror of it all didn’t stop him from showing us mercy.
I used to think addiction was a cliff with an unsuspecting edge, or a hill too steep to climb through, a labyrinth blanketed by fog is probably more accurate. Metaphor aside, addiction saw me, perhaps many of us, running toward its snare blindly, and of course, without knowledge. Because I, too, “knew not”, forgiveness from the Lord had long since seemed a thing too wonderful for me, a blessing fit for those who hadn’t fallen as far or rebelled as willfully. I am encouraged, however, that we have a Savior whose love reaches us at our very worst, a love that never tires, not even as he died on the cross. Only, now that we do know, we can receive the love of Christ instead of rejecting it. We can live sober lives because we know that this love comes not as a license to sin, but to cleanse us from sin, to release us from its power, to forgive us for the ignorance of our past, and to resurrect us at the last day.
