“I forgive him,” said Erika Kirk to a huge audience a few days after her husband, Charlie, was shot dead by Tyler Robinson. A few weeks earlier Ian Wilkinson, who survived eating poisonous mushrooms, offered forgiveness to Erin Patterson who had killed Ian’s wife and two friends by feeding them a deadly meal. He felt he could do this despite the “deep sorrow” she had brought him.[i] In 2012 there was a school shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio. A 17-year-old (T.J. Lane) opened fire in the school cafeteria, killing three students and injuring others. Some students and community members held placards and signs saying, “We forgive you” to the killer. The words of forgiveness by Erika Kirk, Ian Wilkinson and the placard-carrying students were given despite the killers not having repented from their sins or asking for forgiveness. So, how could they forgive the murderers?
They were, it was said, following the example of Jesus when He was crucified. As Erika Kirk said (here I’m quoting The Australian): Her voice trembling at a whisper, Ms Kirk said the “young man on the cross, our saviour, said ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing’. “That man (Robinson), that young man, I forgive him.”[ii] When reading the comments section of articles about the terrible shooting, one finds the same sentiments being expressed. As one respondent wrote: “We forgive even when others are unrepentant because that is the example of Jesus from the cross towards those who crucified him.”
What are we to make of this?
First, we note the difference in choice of words between those in the news events and those in the Bible. Erika Kirk said, “I forgive him.” Ian Wilkinson spoke of himself offering forgiveness. The placard-bearing students said, “We forgive you”. In each case they are themselves, personally, offering or providing forgiveness to the evildoers.
Jesus and Stephen, however, addressed God. On the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). Similarly, Stephen, as he was being stoned, cried loudly, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin” (Acts 7:60). They call on God to forgive.
Of course, that’s not to say we can’t forgive one another. On the contrary, having been forgiven so very much through Christ, we confess that “we also find this evidence of God’s grace in us that we are fully determined wholeheartedly to forgive our neighbour” (LD 51).
But, since the killers had not repented or asked for forgiveness, what did Erika Kirk and Ian Wilkinson mean when they appear to act so kindly and magnanimously in response to the shocking murders of those close to them? When they speak of forgiveness, I expect that they would not be wanting to acquit the murderers, for justice needs to be done. So, what did they mean when they spoke of forgiving the killers? Perhaps Erika and the others meant: I’m not going to harbour a grudge; I’m not going to be bitter; I’m not going to allow myself to be consumed by hatred because I am called to love even my enemies. That’s a very limited form of forgiveness. Indeed, it’s questionable whether we can call it forgiveness as we, reformed people, understand forgiveness.
But, one might say, weren’t they following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ when, on the cross, he asked his Father to forgive his murderers? When people say that they are following the example of Jesus in forgiving others we need to understand what Jesus was saying. Jesus of course knew that God is not only a God of love but a God who is also perfectly just. His justice demands that He cannot simply ignore sin. He does not forgive sin without there being punishment in the way of payment for sin. That is why God gave His Son to pay completely for our sins and the sins of all who confess them and who believe in Him; He never ignores any of our sins.
It’s like where we confess in the Heidelberg Catechism, LD 5 Ans 11, that: “God is indeed merciful, but he is also just. His justice requires that sin committed against the most high majesty of God also be punished with the most severe, that is, with everlasting, punishment of body and soul.”
But how, then, could Jesus ask God to forgive those who crucified Him? And how could Stephen ask the Lord not to charge those who were stoning him? For an answer to this I refer to Professor Klaas Schilder. In his book Christ Crucified he deals quite extensively with this seemingly difficult question.[iii]
Schilder points out that in the original Greek the word ‘forgive’ can have two meanings. There is a forgiveness which, on the basis of law, says to someone: I shall cancel that which you have done amiss. That is the forgiveness we believers receive through the payment of Christ our Saviour.
But there is also a ‘forgiveness’, in the wording of the original Greek, which consists solely of a temporary suspension of the charge or of the sentence. It’s in this second meaning that Jesus was asking His Father. He was saying in effect: Father, postpone the judgement; give My Spirit, which will be poured out at Pentecost, time to do its work and bring some of these people, who are indeed guilty of a heinous criminal offence (crucifying the Son of God!), to the acknowledgement of their sin and to repentance. Schilder says:
“It was such a detention of the execution of law, preliminary and incidental, which Jesus had in mind. This detention is not a plea for the justification of the sinner, and is not a plea against justification; it simply desires that God will temporarily withhold the terrible punishment, the catastrophic annihilation which must necessarily follow the condemnation and cursing of the Prince of life by this generation of vipers.
Christ is praying, in effect: May it please God not immediately to let the powers of the last judgment break through against these. May it please God to wait and not to send the storms of the last judgment into this scene… I pray Thee, Father – My prayer rests in a confident sense of My own worth – that Thou suspend the judgment for a time.
That is, says Schilder, the meaning of the word ‘forgive’ in the context in which Christ uses it here. Christ is saying to the Father:
I would leave room for the justification by faith of all those who are present here, and are included in the election. And I would also leave room for my living Word to become effective, so effective and so persistent, that the measure will presently be full and the judgment can come.”
But what, then, are we to make of the words Christ added, and Erika Kirk quoted: ‘for they know not what they are doing’. After all, as the police will tell you if you disobey the road rules: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Schilder would agree that, indeed, it’s no excuse. Nevertheless, Christ does use it to appeal for postponement of justice being carried out. Says Schilder:
The fact that these people do not know what they are doing is not an argument for their eternal salvation, but a basis for suspending the judgement. Time must come when they must know what they are doing. Golgotha must be explained by the Word; and may God grant the time necessary for those fisher-folk, who will be apostles later, to preach that word to the world. The world must know what is happening here, in order that the hearing of the preached Word may bring the one to true repentance and faith, and may aggravate the responsibility of the other, if he does not subject himself sincerely to Him who speaks on Golgotha.
Hence Christ is not praying for a cancellation of the execution, not even for a postponement of execution, but for the suspension of the judgement of wrath, which is sure to come in any case. Christ is praying for a period of time in order that, on the one hand, all those souls who would seek acquittal in the execution of Christ might seize on grace to that end, and in order that, on the other hand, an even profounder legal basis may be placed under the condemnation of those who are here condemning their God in Christ.
Father, the Mediator’s voice cries out, the world must pass away, but keep back Thy catastrophes for a period, and let Me stand alone in My catastrophic curse. Father, there are many branches on Israel’s tree. According to right and reason all these dead branches must be broken off by the storm of the last judgment at once, and the whole tree be cast into the fire. But do Thou withhold Thy four winds for a time, Father; let the tree of Israel stand today in order that there may be occasion for grafting new shoots to the old trunk, and in order that thereafter the dead branches may be a more conclusive gesture be thrust into the oven.
Basically, that’s the postponement (the ‘forgive’ in the original Greek) that Stephen was later also requesting (Acts 7:60) when he cried: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. Paul would later similarly say: “All men forsook me; I pray God it may not be laid to their charge” (11 Timothy 4:16). What these God-fearing men asked was, in a way, the fruition of Christ’s prayer.
Now, when people today ‘forgive’ others on the basis that Christ said, “Father forgive them this sin”, there are only two possibilities. If they use these words prompted by the Spirit of Christ, their prayer is the fruit of Jesus’ praying. Then they may seek time for the guilty person to get to know Christ and, through the preached Word and indwelling Spirit, to come to acknowledgement of personal guilt and a seeking of forgiveness in Christ.
But if people today pray this separate from the love and justice of Christ, then their petition for mercy is in the last analysis a praying against Christ. For Christ’s prayer was not, of course, a rebellion against the justice of God, but was a struggle to give both God’s justice and His love time to do their work.
[i] Ellie Dudley, “Ian Wilkinson forgives his wife’s killer”, The Australian (digital version), 25 August 2025.
[ii] Joe Kelly, “Forgiveness over vengeance: Erika Kirk’s message for a divided nation”, The Australian (digital version), 29 September 2025.
[iii] Klaas Schilder, Christ Crucified (ch. 7 of Book Three of the trilogy), Klock & Klock Christian Publishers, Minneapolis, 1978, pp. 129-147. Translated from Dutch by Henry Zylstra.