He Said It While It Was Still Being Done to Him

She has been told to forgive it about a dozen times by people who love her.

Every one of them was right. She knows they were right. She is not arguing with the instruction and she has never once said that she should not have to.

The problem is that she cannot get near it. When she tries, nothing happens. There is no resistance and no anger and no dramatic refusal; there is a kind of blankness, as though the instruction had been given in a language she does not have, and she has concluded from about the fifth attempt that something is wrong with her.

What nobody told her, and what took me years to see, is that the most famous sentence about this in the whole Bible was said in the middle of the thing rather than afterward, and that the verb it is said with is not the tense anybody assumes.

The timing of the sentence

Read where it sits in the account, because Luke puts it in a specific place.

And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:33-34, King James Version)

There they crucified him... Then said Jesus.

It is not afterward. It is not from the far side of anything. It is during, at the worst point, while the thing is being actively done by the people it is being said about.

That matters because almost everybody assumes forgiveness happens at the end, once a thing has stopped and been processed and set at some distance. Here it happens in the middle, which means the middle is a place where it can be said at all.

You are able to say it from inside the thing rather than only from the far side. Luke 23:33 puts the sentence at the worst point of the account, and it is by the eternal Spirit, Hebrews 9:14 naming His Spirit, that He offered Himself in that same hour.

The verb is a continuous one

Here is the detail that reorganizes this, and it is a matter of grammar rather than of sentiment.

The Greek verb behind said in that verse is in the imperfect tense, which describes continuous or repeated action. The plainest reading is that He kept saying it. Not once, as a single declaration, but repeatedly, over hours, while it went on.

That is not a devotional flourish; it is what the tense does. And it changes the shape of the thing entirely.

Because if the model is one clean act of will, then a person who cannot produce it has failed. And if the model is a sentence said again, and again, over a long period, in the middle, then somebody on their fifth blank attempt is not failing. They are doing it.

You are not required to do this in one act, and the tense of the original will not carry that reading. Luke 23:34 is written in a tense of repeated action, and it is by the Spirit, Galatians 5:22, whose fruit is longsuffering, which is a word about duration.

The reason He gives is not an excuse

The second half of the sentence is the part people find difficult, and it is worth being exact about what it does.

For they know not what they do.

That is not a claim that nobody was responsible. The whole New Testament holds those people responsible afterward, at length, in sermons preached by the men standing nearby.

What it does is name a fact about their state rather than a verdict about their guilt: they did not understand what they were doing. Both things are true at once, and Scripture never resolves them into one.

I find that useful because a person who cannot get near forgiving is very often being asked, silently, to first agree that the thing was smaller than it was. This sentence does not do that. It goes ahead while the fact remains fully what it is.

You are able to hold what actually happened and let it go at the same time. Luke 23:34 names their ignorance without canceling their responsibility, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:13, who makes a person able to hold two true things without collapsing either.

Stephen says it and adds one word

There is a second version, said by an ordinary man, and the difference between the two is the reason it is in the book.

And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:60)

Stephen is not the Son of God. He is a man in a crowd being killed by people who had been his neighbors, and the sentence is available to him, and Luke records that he had to kneel down and shout it.

Cried with a loud voice. It was not serene. It cost him volume.

And notice what he does not say. He does not say they know not what they do; he does not offer any account of their state at all. He simply asks that it not be charged to them.

That is the version an ordinary person can use. It requires no understanding of the other party and no explanation of them. It is a request about where an account is filed.

You are able to ask about where it is filed rather than having to explain anybody. Acts 7:60 has him asking only that it not be laid to their charge, and it is the Holy Ghost, Acts 7:55, who is named as what he was full of while saying it.

The middle place while a person cannot

Practically, since the instruction has not been reachable for years, there is a passage aimed exactly at the gap.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (Romans 8:26)

We know not what we should pray for as we ought. Paul writes that about believers generally rather than about a failing minority.

So the blankness at the fifth attempt is not a disqualification. It is the ordinary condition the verse assumes, and the remedy given is not a better effort; it is somebody else doing the praying underneath.

And there is one more thing worth saying plainly. Nothing on this page asks anybody to go back into reach of somebody who is still doing harm, or to raise this with a person it is not safe to raise it with, or to do it on any timetable at all. If what happened is still happening, or if carrying it has got to the point where you do not want to be here, say it out loud to a doctor, a counselor, a social worker, or a pastor you trust. In the United States the 988 crisis line is answered by a real person at any hour.

You have Somebody praying underneath what you cannot form. Romans 8:26 says the Spirit itself maketh intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered, and it is that same Spirit named in the verse doing it rather than the person.

What He did with it in the meantime

There is a description of how He handled the whole episode, written by a man who watched it, and the last clause is the instruction.

Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously. (1 Peter 2:23)

Committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.

That is a verb of handing over, and the thing handed over is not the offense, it is Himself. And the one it is handed to is described specifically as the one who judges righteously, which means the judging is not being canceled, it is being relocated.

Peter is not describing a man who felt nothing. He is describing a man who kept putting the whole situation into somebody else's hands, repeatedly, in the imperfect tense again, over hours.

You are able to commit it rather than resolve it. 1 Peter 2:23 has the committing as a repeated act to the one that judgeth righteously, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that a person is assured of standing while a matter is out of their hands.