Luke 23 v34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
These words come at the climax of Jesus’ life, at his crucifixion only minutes from the end of his life. They are placed there to teach us the centrality of our faith. Firstly that anyone who hears these words or reads them is forgiven by God. Secondly, it tells us about the God we believe in, he who created us with free will to choose between good and evil will be forgiven for the mistakes we make. Thirdly, these words, uttered by Jesus as he hung on the cross, give us a pattern to follow in our own lives.
Jesus taught us to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, and even to pray for those who use us spitefully. This is a huge challenge to all of us. When people hurt us in any way, our first reaction is to retaliate in some way. If you want to see this in reality just look at social media where knee jerk reactions are the order of the day and before long things spiral out of control, where people refuse to talk to each other, sometimes for years. In other cases they continue to snipe at each other each person taking the superior view to the other, and from their high ground they look down on the other person with contempt.
There is one sin that stands out in Jesus’ teaching which also runs through the Bible as a whole and that is the sin of Pride. In the end Pride breaks relationships it stops love, care and compassion being put into action and ultimately breaks up communities and nations.
What God wants from all his children, that is you, me and the rest of people out there; is that we should be one, that we should be working for all people wherever they may be and making his world a better place for all to live in.
This isn’t about our work for today or tomorrow but the work for each of us for the rest of our lives. Yes, and let us acknowledge that it is sometimes two steps forward and one step back and at others one step forward and two steps back! Let us have the humility to accept our weakness and the trust to place ourselves into the loving arms of God.
Andrew SSL