Before Anyone Understood
What the cross reveals about the God who forgives first
Three times.
Three times Jesus told his closest disciples that he must suffer and be crucified and on the third day rise. Three times they didn’t understand what he meant.
Then it started to happen. And they still didn’t understand.
Jesus was misunderstood throughout his ministry. But on Good Friday, the misunderstanding reaches its depths. The path to Golgotha, the place of the Skull, was paved by it. The cross was surrounded by it.
And yet.
Before the darkness fell. Before the veil tore. Before he breathed his last. Jesus was fixed to a beam with iron nails. Lungs fighting against the weight of his own body just to form words.
And the first words he speaks from the cross? Looking out over the rulers, the soldiers, the criminals, the crowd, those who loved him standing at a distance — Jesus prays:
Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.
Of course the cross is misunderstood.
This isn’t where you expect to encounter God. It’s a Roman execution. It’s the curse of Deuteronomy made visible. It’s the end of every hope they brought to Jerusalem that week.
And yet.
Fixed to a beam. Lungs failing. Jesus prays. For every person there. For every person yet to draw near.
And we can misunderstand this prayer just as completely as everyone else misunderstood the cross.
One by one, look at who is here.
The Rulers
“He saved others; let him save himself — if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” (Luke 23:35)
The rulers didn’t think they were rejecting God. That’s what makes this so uncomfortable. They thought they were defending God. Their categories were airtight. Their convictions were sincere. Deuteronomy confirmed it. A man dying on a Roman cross was under the curse of God.
The cross wasn’t ambiguous to them. It was verdict. And yet they sound more like Satan in the wilderness temptation: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here… he will save you.”
Sincere, theologically serious, God-defending people — people who looked, in many ways, like us — completely misunderstood what God was doing. Not because they stopped believing. But because of their beliefs.
The prophet Isaiah had already seen this moment. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5)
They say: if you’re the Messiah, save yourself. But they have it exactly backwards. Because he is the Messiah, he stays. He doesn’t save himself because he is saving us. And Jesus says:
Father, forgive them.
Prayed over the men who were sneering up at him. They misunderstood. He forgave them anyway.
The Soldiers
“The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ There was a written notice above him, which read: This is the King of the Jews.” (Luke 23:36–38)
The soldiers understood power. Kings conquer. Kings command. Kings do not die on crosses. And if they do, their kingdom dies with them. They joined the voice of the rulers, taunting Jesus to save himself.
The sign placed above Jesus was the punchline of a joke Pilate was telling at the Jews’ expense. They nailed it up in mockery. They didn’t know they were posting a coronation announcement.
The soldiers were simply following orders, echoing the voices around them. But as they mocked, they misunderstood that the power of this King saves not through force, but through weakness.
And the King says:
Father, forgive them.
Prayed over soldiers who were laughing. They misunderstood. He forgave them anyway.
The First Criminal
“One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’” (Luke 23:39)
He is in agony. Beside him is someone who has claimed divine authority. Use it. Get us down. He triples down on the taunts of the rulers and soldiers.
Salvation, to him, means rescue from this situation.
We know this too. We come to God in real pain and what we want is to get down from whatever cross we’re on. Fix the marriage. Halt the diagnosis. Stop the freefall. And when rescue doesn’t come in the form we demanded, we land on his conclusion:
Either God cannot. God will not. Or God is not.
But when we focus only on the circumstances we want God to rescue us from, we miss how he is actually rescuing us in the midst of them. Even so, Jesus says:
Father, forgive them.
The prayer had already been prayed over him. He didn’t understand. He was forgiven anyway.
The Crowd
“When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away.”(Luke 23:48)
The mockery ceases. After Jesus dies, people genuinely grieve. The weight of what they witnessed registered somewhere too deep for words. For many, it was the death of their dreams and hope for a better future.
They went home. Certain the story was over.
If the story ends with crucifixion, all we are left with is grief. All we can do is beat our chests.
But the mourning is not the end of the story. The crowd couldn’t see this yet. And Jesus’ prayer lingers over them:
Father, forgive them.
Prayed over people walking away in the wrong direction. They misunderstood. He forgave them anyway.
The Second Criminal
“The other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’” (Luke 23:40–42)
A dying man turning toward a dying king with the smallest possible reaching.
Remember me.
That’s all.
It sounds like David in Psalm 25:7: Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good.
And what does Jesus say?
Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.
Today. Luke uses that word like a flare — every time it appears, something irreversible is arriving. Today a Saviour is born. Today this Scripture is fulfilled. Today salvation has come to this house.
And now to a man with nothing but his death sentence:
Today.
Not eventually. Not once the accounting is complete. In paradise — the Greek word for Eden. The garden. The place where God walked with his people and nothing stood between them.
He asked for a future kingdom. Jesus gives him the present tense. He asked for eventually. Jesus says today.
His “remember me” didn’t purchase the paradise. It received it.
Just a turning. Toward the one who had already prayed Father, forgive them — and letting that prayer be for him. Forgiven, yes. Now, reconciled.
The Centurion
“When the centurion saw what had happened, he praised God and said, ‘Surely this was a righteous man.’” (Luke 23:47)
Notice who this is.
A Roman soldier. The same uniform as the men who mocked him. The same army that nailed him there. He has been standing at the foot of this cross doing his job — overseeing an execution. And something has broken through.
In Luke’s gospel, he doesn’t declare Jesus Lord or Messiah. He says righteous man — which is both less than the whole truth and more than anyone else in authority has managed all day.
Something cracked open in him that afternoon that he didn’t arrive with.
He speaks without mockery. Without demands. Without grief that goes home.
He doesn’t yet have words for what he knows. But he knows.
Father, forgive them.
Prayed over a soldier standing at the foot of the cross he helped build. He didn’t fully understand. But something in him was opening.
The Women
“All those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.” (Luke 23:49)
They didn’t leave.
That matters more than it might appear.
The disciples had fled. The crowd had gone home. But these women, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, who had watched him teach and heal and move toward the forgotten — they stayed.
At a distance. But present.
There is a kind of faith that looks like this. Not able to explain what they believe or why they remain. Just — unwilling to leave. Something holding them there at the edge of the unbearable.
That’s not nothing. It’s a beginning.
On Good Friday
Some sneered. Some mocked. Some demanded rescue. Some grieved and went home too soon. One said remember me. One watched until something in him cracked open. And some simply refused to leave.
From a cross, Jesus prayed over each and every one of them.
He offers forgiveness for the sins of the world — born in his body on that crooked, blood-stained cross.
That is the glory of this day.
The love that saved us instead of himself. The forgiveness offered before it was sought. The garden opened from the worst place in the world.
This is what the cross is.
An invitation back into the presence of God. Reconciliation from our estrangement. The obliteration of the debt of sin.
So wherever you are today —
The cross already accomplished everything before you understand it.
Forgiveness is offered before you ask. But what makes it yours — what moves you from forgiven to reconciled — is faith. A turning. Even the smallest one.
Remember me.
That’s enough. It has always been.
Jesus is not a king who waits to be impressed. He is not a God who forgives reluctantly. He is the one who — from a cross, in agony, before anyone understood what was happening — prayed:
Father, forgive them.
He does remember us. He will remember us. He already has. He always will.
The rulers were there. The soldiers were there. The criminals were there. The crowd was there. The centurion was there. The women were there.
And somehow, across two thousand years, so are we.
The question is whether we will move closer to the cross — carrying all our misunderstandings and laying them down at his feet in exchange for his prayer:
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.