Many of us have been hurt by someone.
Maybe a parent.
Maybe a husband or a wife.
Maybe a business partner, a pastor, a friend we trusted with everything.
And here is the part that makes it so hard.
They never said sorry.
They never admitted it.
Some of them act like it never happened.
Some of them would do it again tomorrow.
And everybody keeps telling us, "You need to forgive."
And something in us says, "How?"
"How do I forgive someone who is not even sorry?"
That is an honest question.
And the Bible answers it in the most unlikely place.
On a cross.
Luke 23, verse 33:
"And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him."
Think about what has just happened to Jesus.
He was betrayed by a friend.
Abandoned by the rest.
Tried in a fake court, with false witnesses.
The governor said, "I find no fault in him," and handed Him over anyway.
He was beaten.
Mocked.
And now they are driving nails into His hands.
If anyone ever had a right to be bitter, it was Him.
So listen to the first thing He says from the cross.
Verse 34:
"Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
That is His first sentence.
Not a protest.
Not a complaint about the unfair trial.
Not a list of names.
A prayer for the people doing it to Him.
Now look at who He is praying for.
Were they sorry?
Read the rest of that same verse:
"And they parted his raiment, and cast lots."
While He is praying for them, they are dividing His clothes.
Gambling for the last piece.
Nobody at the foot of that cross was sorry.
Nobody asked for forgiveness.
Nobody even noticed the prayer.
He prayed, and they kept playing dice.
So here is the first thing we need to hear.
Jesus did not wait for an apology.
He forgave people who were still doing it.
That means forgiveness does not begin with them.
It begins with us.
If we wait for them to be sorry, we have handed them the key to our healing.
And some of them will never give it back.
Now, how did He do it?
Notice three things in that one sentence.
First, He said, "Father."
He did not say, "I forgive you," to the soldiers.
He turned and spoke to His Father about them.
That matters.
Forgiveness starts as a prayer.
We take the person, and the wound, and what they did, and we hand it to God.
We stop carrying the case.
We put it in the hands of the One who judges righteously.
That is something we can do even when our feelings have not caught up yet.
Second, He said, "Forgive them."
Who is "them"?
Luke does not say.
The soldiers? The priests? Pilate? The crowd?
He did not make a list of who qualified.
Most of us forgive selectively.
This one, yes. That one, never.
He left the door open for all of them.
Third, He said, "For they know not what they do."
He argued their case.
Think about that.
When we are hurt, we become prosecutors.
We build the case against the other person.
We rehearse it at night.
We find the words that make them look as bad as possible.
We tell the story to anyone who will listen.
Jesus did the opposite.
He looked for whatever could be said on their behalf, and He said it to His Father.
And He did it more than once.
In the garden, when His closest friends fell asleep, He said:
"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
He gave His friends their excuse.
On the cross, He gave His enemies theirs.
Now let us be clear about what this does not mean.
Forgiveness does not mean it was small.
Jesus asked for forgiveness, which means there was something to forgive.
It does not mean pretending nothing happened.
He told Pilate plainly that someone's sin was greater.
And forgiveness does not mean we put ourselves back in harm's way.
We can release a person and still be wise about them.
Forgiveness is not saying, "It was okay."
Forgiveness is saying, "Father, I am not holding this against them anymore. I give it to You."
And here is why this matters so much.
Luke wrote a second book, the book of Acts.
In it, he tells us about a man named Stephen.
He was the first Christian to die for Jesus.
They stoned him.
And as he was dying, Stephen prayed:
"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."
Where did he learn that?
He learned it from the cross.
Jesus did not just teach forgiveness.
He did it.
And because He did it, it came out of Stephen under the stones.
And there was a young man standing there, holding the coats of the people throwing them.
His name was Saul.
We know him as Paul.
He watched a man forgive the people killing him.
And God got hold of him.
We never know who is watching when we forgive.
So, how do we forgive someone who isn't sorry?
We do not wait for their apology.
We turn to the Father, and we hand the whole thing to Him.
We stop prosecuting, and for once we look for what can be said on their behalf.
And we pray the prayer before we feel it.
"Father, forgive them."
Let us say it today.
With their name in it.
We may have to say it again tomorrow.
That's alright.
The prayer is where it starts.
The forgiveness that came into us on that cross was never meant to stop with us.
It was meant to come out of us.
That is how we make our redemption effective.