Luke 23 · Passage · Forgiveness
Father, Forgive Them
Luke 23:34 and Acts 7:59 to 60 record the dying prayers of Jesus and of Stephen for the people who killed them.
Saul stood by approving while Stephen prayed for the men who stoned him, and he later became the apostle Paul.
Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up His garments by casting lots.
- The passage
- Luke 23:32 to 38, Acts 7:59 to 60
- Books
- Luke, Acts
- When
- under Pontius Pilate; Luke gives no year
- Hold in memory
- Luke 23:34, Acts 7:60
Summary
On the cross Jesus asked His Father to forgive those who were crucifying Him, and He gave their ignorance as the plea. Luke sets the prayer between the nailing and the casting of lots, with the people, the rulers and the soldiers standing around Him. Peter later told the people of Jerusalem that they had acted in ignorance and called them to repent. Stephen, dying under the stones, prayed that the Lord would not hold the sin of his killers against them.
- Isaiah 53:12 says the Servant made intercession for the transgressors, and Matthew Henry and Adam Clarke read the prayer from the cross as that intercession.
- The prayer is the first of three sayings Luke records from the cross, and the last is a prayer to the same Father.
- Teachers divide over whom the prayer covers: Augustine says all His enemies, Calvin the common people alone, and Albert Barnes perhaps both the Jews and the Roman soldiers.
- Stephen prayed the two prayers Jesus prayed at His death, in the reverse order and to the Lord Jesus.
- Scrivener (1894) lists four Greek manuscripts that lack the prayer, Codex Vaticanus among them, and Westcott and Hort (1882) judged it an addition; Scrivener's list and their verdict both predate later finds.
The Prayer at the Place Called The Skull
Luke sets the prayer between the crucifixion and the dividing of the garments, after Jesus has been nailed to the cross between two criminals.
The prayer of Luke 23:34 asks pardon for people who were still doing the wrong. It belongs to the teaching on forgiveness for that reason. A reader who has been wronged meets the question it raises, whether he may ask God's mercy for someone who has not repented.
The question here is what the prayer asks, whom it names and what its plea of ignorance means. The answer comes from Luke 23:32 to 38 read line by line and from what Peter and Paul said about ignorance. It also comes from the manuscript evidence for the line and from Stephen's dying prayers set beside those of Jesus. Augustine, John Chrysostom, Bede, John Calvin, Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke and Albert Barnes give the readings where teachers have divided.
Two others, who were criminals, were also led away to be executed with Jesus. When they came to the place called The Skull, they crucified Him there, along with the criminals, one on His right and the other on His left.Luke places Jesus between two criminals at the moment of the nailing, so the prayer that follows is spoken by a man counted among the guilty.
Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He has poured out His life unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.The chapter's last line joins the Servant's bearing of the sin of many to His intercession for the transgressors among whom He was numbered.
Luke's next words are the prayer of verse 34, and in the same verse they divide His garments by casting lots. In the Greek the verb of saying, elegen, is an imperfect, was saying. The request is aphes, from aphiemi, which the STEP Bible lexicon renders to release, and the Lord's Prayer uses the same verb for forgiving debts in Matthew 6:12.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible counts the prayer the first of "Seven remarkable words Christ spoke after he was nailed to the cross".
Stephen Prayed the Two Prayers of the Cross
Luke 23 and Acts 7 each record two prayers spoken at a death, and the second death follows the words of the first.
Both men die calling out in a loud voice, and Luke ends both accounts with the death itself, a last breath and a falling asleep.
| Row | Jesus, Luke 23 | Stephen, Acts 7 |
|---|---|---|
| The prayer for the killers | Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” | Acts 7:60, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” |
| The spirit committed | Luke 23:46, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit.” | Acts 7:59, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” |
| The voice | Luke 23:46, Jesus called out in a loud voice | Acts 7:60, Falling on his knees, he cried out in a loud voice |
| The death | Luke 23:46, He breathed His last. | Acts 7:60, he fell asleep. |
Jesus prays first for His killers and last for His own spirit, while Stephen commits his spirit first and prays for his killers last. Jesus speaks both prayers to the Father, and Stephen calls on the Lord Jesus in the first and on the Lord in the second.
The Greek of Acts 7:60 reads mē stēsēs autois tautēn tēn hamartian, which reads word for word, do not set to them this sin. Its verb is histēmi, to stand, here in its first sense of setting a thing in place, so Stephen asks that the sin not be set down against them.
The People, the Rulers and the Soldiers
Three groups stand around the cross in Luke 23, and they watch, sneer and mock in turn.
The people stood watching, and the rulers sneered at Him, saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.”Luke separates the people, who stand and watch, from the rulers, who sneer and dare Him to save Himself.
The soldiers also mocked Him and came up to offer Him sour wine. “If You are the King of the Jews,” they said, “save Yourself!”The soldiers who carried out the crucifixion join the mockery and offer Him sour wine.
Above Him was posted an inscription: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.The charge posted above Him names Him King of the Jews, the title the soldiers mock in verse 37.
The prayer itself names no group, and its them follows verse 33, where the subject of they crucified Him is the company that brought Him to the place.
When the centurion saw what had happened, he gave glory to God, saying, “Surely this was a righteous man.” And when all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened, they returned home beating their breasts.The centurion and the crowd are seen again after His death, and Luke shows both changed by what they saw.
Luke 23:38, Luke 23:47 to 48
The Prayer in the Manuscripts of Luke
Some of the oldest copies of Luke lack the first half of verse 34, and two editors of the nineteenth century weighed that evidence in opposite ways.
F. H. A. Scrivener's Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, in its fourth edition of 1894, lists the witnesses. The words from Then Jesus said to what they are doing are missing from Codex Vaticanus (B), the first hand of Codex Bezae (D) and the cursives 38 and 435. The Old Latin copies a and b, the Latin of Codex Bezae, the Sahidic version and two copies of the Bohairic also lack them.
Scrivener lists the line in Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus (A), Codex Ephraemi (C) and the other uncials, in all other cursives, in the Vulgate, all four Syriac versions, the Armenian and the Ethiopic. Among the Fathers he names Irenaeus and Origen in their Latin versions, Chrysostom and Theodoret, and he counts Augustine quoting it "more than sixty times". In Codex Bezae the line was written in later by a hand "which cannot be earlier than the ninth century".
Without the prayer, verse 34 would pass from the crucifixion of verse 33 directly to the garments. In the Greek the disputed words run ho de Iēsous elegen, pater, aphes autois, ou gar oidasin ti poiousin. The tagged Greek text of the STEP Bible prints them inside double brackets, and the Berean Standard Bible prints them in the text. Both editors wrote in the nineteenth century, so their lists leave out the witnesses found since.
An addition kept in double bracketsBrooke Foss Westcott; Fenton John Anthony Hort
Westcott and Hort, in the Notes on Select Readings of their Introduction and Appendix (1882), judged the line "a Western interpolation, of limited range in early times". They rejected the view that scribes cut it out: "Wilful excision, on account of the love and forgiveness shown to the Lord's own murderers, is absolutely incredible".
They wrote that "Few verses of the Gospels bear in themselves a surer witness to the truth of what they record than this first of the Words from the Cross". In their judgment it "need not therefore have belonged originally to the book in which it is now included".
They held that the line has "exceptional claims to be permanently retained" in its place. Their edition prints it in double brackets, the mark it gives to words that "appeared to be derived from an external written or unwritten source".
The objection: Scrivener lists the line in all the other uncials and cursives he names, and in Fathers from Irenaeus to Augustine.
A line Luke wroteF. H. A. Scrivener
Scrivener answered that the witnesses for the line are too many and too varied to set aside. He found it "almost incredible that acute and learned men should be able to set aside such a silva of witness of every kind". He called the system that brackets the line "hopelessly self-condemned".
The objection: some of the oldest witnesses Scrivener himself lists lack the line, and Westcott and Hort found no reason a scribe would cut it.
The Prayer on the Lips of Martyrs
Stephen, James and the confessors of Lyons are each recorded praying for the people who killed them.
The stoning of Stephen, his speech to the Council and the vision before his death are taught on Stephen the First Martyr.
John Chrysostom, in his eighteenth Homily on Acts, says Stephen prayed for his killers "wishing also even in this way to win them over".
And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and watching over the garments of those who killed him.’Back in Jerusalem and praying in the temple, Paul confesses to the Lord his own part in the death of Stephen.
Eusebius's Church History, in Arthur Cushman McGiffert's translation (1890), quotes Hegesippus on the death of James the brother of the Lord. Thrown down from the temple and "not killed by the fall", James "turned and knelt down and said, 'I entreat you, Lord God our Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'". Hegesippus is the one source for the account, and Scrivener counts it among the early witnesses to the prayer in Luke.
The letter of the churches of Lyons and Vienne, also preserved by Eusebius, says its confessors "prayed for those who had inflicted cruelties upon them, even as Stephen, the perfect witness".
What They Did Not Know
Peter and Paul both said that those who crucified Jesus did not understand who He was, and Peter still called them to repent.
The plea of the prayer is that the crucifiers did not know what they were doing. In the temple courts after the healing of a lame man, Peter said the same of the people of Jerusalem and of their leaders.
And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders.Peter tells the crowd that they and their leaders acted in ignorance, the plea of the prayer from the cross.
Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away,In the next breath Peter calls the same crowd to repent so that their sins may be wiped away, so the ignorance he names leaves them in need of forgiveness.
The word Peter uses is agnoia, which the STEP Bible lexicon glosses as ignorance and counts four times in the New Testament. John Chrysostom, in his ninth Homily on Acts, notes that Peter "exculpated not them alone, but also the chief contrivers of the evil".
None of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.Paul says the rulers of this age would not have crucified the Lord of glory if they had understood God's wisdom.
I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man; yet because I had acted in ignorance and unbelief, I was shown mercy.Paul says he was shown mercy because he had acted in ignorance and unbelief when he persecuted the church.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible weighs the plea: "If ignorance do not excuse a crime, it at least diminishes the atrocity of it". He grants that "these persons well knew that they were crucifying an innocent man". In his reading they did not know the judgments their act would bring on their country.
1 Corinthians 2:8, 1 Timothy 1:13
Whom the Prayer Covers
Teachers of the church have read the word them as all of Christ's enemies, as the common people alone, and as the Jews and the Roman soldiers together.
All His enemies, and all who would repentAugustine; Matthew Henry
Augustine, in his Sermon 382, says that as Jesus hung on the cross He "could see all his enemies. He could foresee that many of them would become his friends. That is why he was interceding for them all".
Matthew Henry calls the prayer "a mediatorial word, and explicatory of the intent and meaning of his death". He gives its sense as a prayer for "all that shall repent, and believe the gospel".
The objection: Luke 23:34 states no condition, and Henry's terms of repentance and faith come from the preaching in Acts.
The common people aloneBede; John Calvin
John Calvin, in his Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, translated by William Pringle, judged it probable "that Christ did not pray for all indiscriminately". He held that the prayer was "only for the wretched multitude, who were carried away by inconsiderate zeal". Of the scribes and priests he wrote that "no ground was left for hope".
Bede, as the Catena Aurea gives him, holds that Christ prayed not for those who crucified "Him whom they knew to be the Son of God, but for such as were ignorant what they did".
The objection: in Acts 3:17 Peter names the leaders with the people as having acted in ignorance.
The Jews and the Romans togetherAlbert Barnes
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical, is unsure "whether he referred to the “Jews” or “to the Roman soldiers.” Perhaps he referred to both". He says "The Romans knew not what they did, as they were really ignorant that he was the Son of God". He adds that the Jews "knew, indeed, that he was “innocent,”" and did not know what their guilt would bring on their country.
The objection: the soldiers and the rulers are named only in the verses after the prayer, so any reading that sorts the prayer by group rests on the verses around it.
The conversions in Acts as its fulfilmentJohn Chrysostom; Augustine; John Calvin; Matthew Henry
John Chrysostom, in the Catena Aurea, says Jesus prayed "that He might teach us to pray for our persecutors", and he adds, "But He says, Forgive them, if they should repent".
Therefore let all Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ!” When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and asked Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”At Pentecost Peter tells the crowd in Jerusalem that they crucified Jesus, and they are cut to the heart and ask what they should do.
Augustine, in his Sermon 302, says the words "were not futile or without effect. Later, thousands of those people believed in the one they murdered". Calvin held that the prayer was heard and "that this was the cause why many of the people afterwards drank by faith the blood which they had shed". Henry wrote that the prayer "was answered not long after, when many of those that had a hand in his death were converted by Peter's preaching".
The objection: Acts records the conversions and does not call them the answer to the prayer, so the link is the teachers' reading.
The Command Kept on the Cross
Jesus had taught His disciples to pray for those who mistreat them, and on the cross He did what He had taught. Irenaeus drew the same line from the command to the cross.
But to those of you who will listen, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.Luke's own record of the command to pray for those who mistreat you stands seventeen chapters before the prayer from the cross.
“And from this fact, that He exclaimed upon the cross, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’ the long-suffering, patience, compassion, and goodness of Christ are exhibited, since He both suffered, and did Himself exculpate those who had maltreated Him. For the Word of God, who said to us, ‘Love your enemies, and pray for those that hate you,’ Himself did this very thing upon the cross; loving the human race to such a degree, that He even prayed for those putting Him to death.”
Irenaeus · Against Heresies (Book III, Chapter 18), Section 5 · on Luke 23:34Patristic
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The tagged Greek text of the New Testament, with Strong's numbers, morphology and glosses (STEP Bible, Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- STEP Bible TBESG, the brief lexicon based on Abbott-Smith (1922), entries g863, g2476 and g52 (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek: Introduction and Appendix (Cambridge and London, 1882), Notes on Select Readings, Luke 23:34, pages 67 to 68.
- F. H. A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, fourth edition, edited by Edward Miller (London, 1894), volume 2, item 17, Luke 23:34.
- John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, volume 3, translated by William Pringle, on Luke 23:34.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, volume 5 (Matthew to John), on Luke 23:34.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, on Luke 23:34.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Luke 23:34.
- John Chrysostom, in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, on Luke 23:34.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily 9 (on Acts 3:17) and Homily 18 (on Acts 7:60)
- Augustine of Hippo, Sermons 302 and 382, in a modern English translation, on Luke 23:34.
- Bede, in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, on Luke 23:34, in a modern English translation.
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 3, chapter 18, section 5.
- Eusebius, Church History 2.23.16 (Hegesippus on James) and 5.2.5 (the letter of the churches of Lyons and Vienne), translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, volume 1 (Buffalo, 1890)
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