Forgiveness on the Cross (Luke 23:32-43)

Last Friday I wrapped up our Youth Group's teaching series on the Gospel of Luke. Below is the talk that I gave (give or take a little).

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Recap

We have come to the last teaching week of the term. I hope your eyes have been opened to Jesus more. This term we have looked at a bunch of different people or characters that Jesus had interacted with. Can you remember who they were? Let me refresh your memory and see if you can remember the stories we saw

Mary trusted in the God of the impossible to be Jesus’ mother, even at a great cost to herself.

John the Baptist prepared the way and pointed to Jesus, telling them to repent of their sins.

Peter left everything he had to follow Jesus and to make Jesus known.

Jairus and the bleeding woman had faith that Jesus could heal. Jesus showed that he has the power to heal, cleans and even raise the dead.

Jesus sent 72 of his followers out to talk about Him and they came back with joy

Jesus told a parable about two lost sons. The younger brother wanted his father’s money and not his father, until he came to he senses and returned. The older brother who lived with his father felt like a slave and not a son. In both cases, the father shows his sons great love, patience and forgiveness.

Zacchaeus met with Jesus and was forgiven. He threw a party and changed his life even at a great cost to himself.

And today we are now looking at Jesus himself who offers us forgiveness, at a great cost to himself.

The need for forgiveness

Jesus offers forgiveness to you. Now you may not think you need forgiveness from God. You are like, I have never killed anyone, I haven’t seen an R rated movie, I don’t swear, I’ve never shoplifted etc. And that is good. But we all know deep down that we are not perfect. We hold people to higher standards than what we live by and then if we do stuff up we make excuses as to why we are the exception. Now, I don’t know you deep down, but God does and He says, no one is righteous not even one. There is no one who does what is right and never sins (Rom 3:10, Ecc 7:20). Is God right? Does He know what He is talking about?

We know there is something wrong with the world and sometimes we think the problem is out there. It is corruption, and governments and people with power that cause all the bad things. But the truth is, there is a problem is all of us. Some of us are better at hiding it than others, but the problem comes from within us all. Jesus says it is out of the heart that evil comes. Things like sexual immorality, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly (Mark 7:21-22) these things come from within us all. Is that you? Jesus says doing these things makes us defiled, unclean, imperfect which means we can not be in the presence of God who is pure, holy and perfect. We can not be with God.

We cannot be with God because we have all fallen short of Him. This is really bad news, as God said that after death we will all face judgement (Heb 9:27). After we die, we will have to give an account to a holy and perfect God in how we live, and I have already said that God knows you haven’t lived a good life. This is bad. You will receive justice for your sins and be taken away from God. On your own, you can not get yourself out of this mess. You are not the exception to the rule. You are helpless, lost and in darkness.

Death and judgement, this is all bad news, but there is good news. I am telling you first the bad news because I love you and want you to know about the good news. The good news is that Jesus offers forgiveness to you, at great cost to himself. Let’s look at this passage of Jesus on the cross and see what He says and what He is like.

Difference between knowing and knowing

Now you may be thinking that you know this story, this is Easter, I hear this every year. So do I. In fact, every Easter my family go to Katoomba to hear talks about this. You would think we wouldn’t need to do this every year, surely we get the gist of it right? But there is a great difference between knowing some facts about someone and knowing that someone personally. There is a great difference between knowing that you can be forgiven and knowing that you are forgiven. Facts are useful, but knowing something personally impacts us more, and if it is good news, we want to relive it, retell it and remember it. Do you have the same conversations with your friends sometimes, or remember the same moments or events in the past because they make you laugh? We remember Easter every year because it is good news. It is deadly serious, but it gives us joy for we remember that we have been forgiven by God. It is good to not just think you know something but to study it, to turn it over in your mind, to see new details that you may not have seen before. This happens to me all the time.

Sneered, mocked and insulted

Now in the passage, we are simply told that they crucified Jesus. Crucifixion was a grisly, graphic and excruciating way to die. Our account doesn’t record a lot of the graphic details of the cross. Instead, in our passage the focused in on Jesus and the people around Him. And here we see something crazy, something unbelievable about Jesus as he bleeds out, suffocates and dies.

We see in verse 35 the people watching Jesus die and grasp for air as the rulers sneered at him.

Next, in verse 36 we see the soldiers came and mocked Jesus.

And then to add insult to injury even one of the guys dying on his own cross next to Jesus hurls insults at him.

Jesus was sneered, mocked and insulted, as he was in the process of dying a painful death. The rules, the soldiers and the criminal all have a go at Jesus and taunt Him to save Himself. They said things like “Here is the one who could raise the dead and heal people and yet he is here dying. How weak.” “People thought this guy was a king, now with a crown of thorns covered in blood he doesn’t look to royal anymore.”

The funny thing is, is Jesus could have gotten off the cross. But by staying on the cross, by dying He was showing how great and powerful He was at forgiving people. He even saves someone before he dies.

The forgiven criminal

At the end of our passage comes the last criminal. He sees that Jesus is innocent and that he is guilty. He knows he is getting a just punishment and that Jesus did nothing wrong. He then asks Jesus to remember Him in his kingdom. He doesn’t mock that Jesus said he was a king, he simply asked to enter his kingdom. That has to take faith, to see a guy dying, knowing he doesn’t have much time left and to ask to come into his kingdom. When is that going to happen? But Jesus says yes, he will be remembered. The criminal, dying on the cross would be with Jesus that day in paradise.

This criminal was forgiven and welcomed into Jesus’ kingdom. It is never too late, there is never a wrong time to come back to your senses and return to God.

Jesus forgives

Now we skipped over the first bit of the passage because I found this bit the most crazy and unbelievable thing about this whole thing.

While on the cross, when Jesus is dying the rulers who sneered at him, the soldiers who mocked him and the criminal who insulted him, verse 34, Jesus said: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Jesus forgives them. All of them. Those who are killing him, mocking and insulting him. Those who sin has put him on the cross in the first place. Everyone. We are all lost and in darkness. We all need to be rescued from God’s judgement. Jesus takes our judgement from God and brings us home.

When you forgive someone, you are taking on a cost to yourself. If someone breaks something of your and you say they are forgiven, you are taking on that loss, not making them pay back what they have done. You are saying your relationship is more important than the thing that was broken. If someone hurts you by gossiping about you, or insulting you or not including you in things, and you have forgiven them, then you are taking on at cost, you are absorbing the hurt yourself and not paying them back with what they deserve. And Jesus, on the cross, is taking on our penalty, the judgement that we deserve before God because we have done wrong to God and others. He talks on that cost because he values our relationship with Him. He wants us to come to our sense and return to him. He offers us forgiveness now.

Jesus suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God (1 Peter 3:18).

In Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace (Eph 1:7).

God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom by the Son he loves, in which we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:13-14)

You may feel like you have done pretty some wrong things in your life, that you have even betrayed Jesus. But Jesus can forgive you. He forgave those who put him on the cross, he can forgive you. Today you can be with him, today you can have joy and forgiveness from God. It means giving up your own ways and obeying Him. You can confess your sins to God and let his forgiveness cleanse you from all unrighteousness. There is no better time than today to do this.

I’m going to pray

Thank you Father that you have made a way for us to be forgiven. We are sorry that we have done wrong to you and to others. We thankyou for your forgiveness in your Son Jesus. May you cleanse us from sin, may you forgive our sins, may we live for you now, empowered by your Spirit. Help us to live with joy now, knowing that we are forgiven in Jesus. Amen