Text: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)

The Holy, and Harmless Son of God had been arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, a private garden of which Jesus had the use. The Son of Perdition, Judas by name, had kissed the Blessed Redeemer’s face as if he was a loyal and obedient disciple of the Master.

In order that all things might be fulfilled of which the prophets spoke, this Lamb, in whom there was no deceit to be found, was crassly interrogated, and only after hiring ruthless men to lie could any charge be brought against Him.

He was summarily scourged. Most people never survived the torture with which the Romans had perfected. Then they led Him out to crucify Him.

They lay our Blessed Lord upon the harsh wooden cross and nailed Him there. Then raising the structure they edged it to hole in the ground made to support the cross made heavy by the weight of a man’s body.

As it fell to its resting-place, bones were jarred from their sockets. In this agonizing condition the Lord Who had command of the armies of Heaven prayed, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

"All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw nigh;                                To you is it nothing that Jesus should die?                            Your Ransom and Peace, your Surety He is                                 Come see if there ever was sorrow like His!                             "He dies to atone for sins not His own;                                  Your debt He hath paid, and your work He hath done."

Mr. Kelly wrote --

"Stricken, smitten and afflicted                                         See Him dying on the tree.                                             ‘Tis the Christ by man rejected!                                       Yes, my soul, ‘tis He! ‘Tis He!

‘Tis the Long-expected Prophet,                                      David’s Son, yet David’s Lord;                                           Proofs I see sufficient of it                                           ‘Tis a true and faithful Word.                   

"Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning                                        Was there ever grief like His?                                      Friends, through fear, His cause disowning                             Foes insulting His distress.

Many hands were raised to wound Him,                                     None would interpose to save,                                           But the awful stroke that found Him,                                    Was the stroke that Justice gave.

"Ye who think of sin but lightly,                                       Nor suppose the evil great,                                             Here may view its nature rightly                                          Here its guilt may estimate

Mark the sacrifice appointed!                                           See who bears the awful load!                                           ‘Tis the Word, the Lord’s anointed                                        Son of Man, and Son of God.

THE FORGIVENESS OF GOD

When God forgives, He lifts our guilt from us and takes it away. (Job 7:21) He covers our sins in a similar fashion as sheet is drawn over the body of the dead. (Psalm 85:2) He reckons our sins as dead and He will not resurrect them again -- ever, even in the Day of Judgment.

The Greek word translated "to forgive" is the same word translated "to divorce" because when God forgives, He separates from us our sins and our guilt.

When God forgives, He blots out our sin in a similar fashion as our creditor’s books are crossed or blotted when payment is made.

When God forgives, He casts our sins out of His sight. They will be remembered and held against us again no more forever. Our sins are cancelled. (Hebrews 8:12)

God’s forgiveness is free! In the Lord Jesus we have "redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace." (Ephesians 1:7) God, Whose attributes, like His nature is infinite, grants forgiveness according to His matchless and infinite grace. While His forgiveness is free, we must nevertheless repent of our sins.

"Repentance is to leave                                                 The sins we loved before,                                               And show that we in earnest grieve,                                      By doing so no more."

God is able to forgive great sins and great sinners. Paul blasphemed and persecuted the Household of Faith, yet he was forgiven. Zaccheus as a tax collector was rich with unjust gain, but when he repented of his sins, he was forgiven. Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, yet she found forgiveness. And God can forgive you.

"Did Christ o’er sinners weep                                           And shall our cheeks be dry?                                            Let floods of penitential grief                                       Burst forth from every eye.                                            "The Son of God in tears                                                The wondering angels see,                                                Be thou astonished, o my soul,                                           He shed those tears for thee!

Dear people, precious in the sight of God, have you been forgiven? Has God in His mercy forgiven you? There is a way to know --can you forgive others? Jesus died on the cross not only to restore us to the Father, but also to restore us to each other.

THE FORGIVENESS OF EACH OTHER

If we are loath to forgive others, God will shut His ears when we pray to he forgiven. Jesus taught His disciples to pray, "Forgive us our debts AS we forgive our debtors." (Matthew 6:12) All who pray thus ask the Lord of Heaven to forgive them in the same manner and to the same degree they forgive others.

Our problem is we want God to treat us better than we are willing to treat one another. If we do not want God to treat us the way we deserve, we should not treat others the way we think they deserve.

Can you forgive others? We forgive another only when we no longer want to get even. Therefore, there is no forgiveness in our heart so long as we remember wrongs. When God forgives, He forgets; so do all who forgive. Yet the Church is filled with people who will not speak to one another? Is it a good thing to remember wrongs? What if God were to treat us the way we treat others? What if He were as stubborn and hard-hearted as we are?

We have forgiven only when we are willing to restore a person to our heart when they repent and ask our forgiveness. So long as we bear ill will, and rejoice when trouble comes their way, we have not forgiven.

We should forgive as Christ has forgiven us. We should forgive in the same manner and in the same degree that we expect to be forgiven. Without forgiveness, there is no forgiveness.

Since the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified for sin, it is evident that all who continue to lie, to steal, to commit adultery, etc. know nothing of Christ or of the reason for His crucifixion.

Reader, you must get a divorce from your sins --

"For God must visit sin                                                   With His displeasure sore,                                               Since He is holy, just and true                                         And righteous evermore."

And again,

"Go to dark Gethsemane                                                   Ye who feel the Tempter’s power.                                       Your Redeemer’s conflict see;                                              Watch with Him one bitter hour.                                         Turn not from His griefs away;                                        Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

"Follow to the Judgment Hall;                                          View the Lord of Life arraigned.                                           Oh, the wormwood and the gall!                                          Oh, the pangs His soul sustained!                                      Shun not suffering, shame or loss,                                    Learn of Him to bear the cross.

"Calvary’s mournful mountain climb,                                    There adoring at His feet.                                              Mark that miracle of Time,                                            God’s own Sacrifice complete.                                            ’It is finished’ hear the cry,                                              Learn of Jesus Christ to die!

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APRIL

10, 1806 --Washington, D.C. --President Thomas Jefferson signs an act of Congress declaring "It is earnestly recommended to all officers and soldiers diligently to attend Divine services; and all officers who shall behave indecently or irreverently at any place of Divine worship, shall, if commissioned officers, be brought before a general court martial, there to be publicly and severely reprimanded by the President."

12, 1808 --Washington, D.C. --President Thomas Jefferson signs into law an act providing for the appointment of a chaplain to each brigade of the army.

30, 1816 --Washington, D.C. --President James Madison signs an act providing chaplains in the two houses of Congress.

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TO DESTROY A NATION

If I were interested in destroying a nation, I would first gain control of the food industry. In this way, I would have it in my power to cause starvation on a large scale. To do this I would experiment with plants, animals and fish to develop hybrids that are unable to reproduce.

Second, I would encourage utter abandonment to the development of technology that is absolutely worthless when once the "plug" is pulled on the power source.

Third, I would breakdown the virtue of its families by destroying the moral barriers that protect prudence and purity, so that its citizens would be left without the moral backbone God gives only to righteous people.

Fourth, I would disarm the people by making it unlawful to bear arms for their personal protection.

DICK LAMM, MEET MAGGIE SANGER

Concerned about the rising cost of life-support—the after all, could revitalize Smoke-stack America—the hailed the elderly who did not impede their own passing as "leaves falling off a tree and forming humus for other plants to grow up."

While the quote is accurate, the governor insisted to this writer, the inferences drawn are not. He is not arguing for putting the elderly asleep, like aged and sickly house pets; he is arguing against extraordinary and expensive means--"heroic measures" in Christian ethics--to keep alive elderly and dying patients.

What the governor said, however, is cut from the same ethical bolt of cloth as other statements. Elected on a strong pro-abortion stance, the governor has said of retarded children: "We must ask ourselves--in a world of limited resources—does it make sense to spend $10,000 ‘educating’ a child to roll over." "Population is the ultimate environmental issue," declares this self-professed environmentalist. Immigration "is making us poorer, not richer. It is dividing our wealth and resources."

The governor promises future abrasions: "We’re going to have to make some terribly hard decisions. We’re going to have to insult some people, and we’re going to have to risk some political careers."

Despite the provocative verbiage, Gov. Lamm had best be listened to; unfortunately, he may be a man ahead of his time. If you accept the premises under which he is operating—knowingly or not--the conclusions are logical and consistent.

Clearly, Dick Lamm’s is a "Quality-of-Life" ethic, challenging the old "Sanctity-Of-Life" ethic. Where the latter holds all human life sacred, a gift from God, to be terminated at the hour of His choosing, not of our convenience, the former holds that all life is not created equal, but that some lives are more equal than others.

Once you eliminate Providence from the picture, Dick starts to make sense. If, for example, Darwin was right, we are all descended or ascended from apes and man is but a higher animal, why not treat him with the "humaneness" with which we treat animals? Hunters, for example, are rightly praised for spending a day running down some wounded beast, to "put it out of its misery." The Humane Society, of which almost all approve, rightly, puts to sleep old, suffering and dying animals.

Clearly, Lamm’s ethic is gaining currency. Abortion—the right of the woman to subordinate the life of her unborn child to her own convenience, is now a constitutional right. Elizabeth Bouvia’s demand that the state assist her suicide, is supported by the ACLU. Suicides are no longer denied "hallowed ground" for their remains.

But if Dick Lamm’s is a voice of the future, it is redolent of voices from the past. And, if the governor wishes to sit where his logic leads, let me commend Elasah Drogin’s "Margaret Sanger: The Father of Modern Society," published in 1979 by CUL Publications.

Ms. Sanger was likewise alarmed by immigration. Then, it was not Mexican "illegals," but what she termed "Slavs, Latins and Hebrews." She, too, believed in abortion, and in "The Pivot of Civilization" deplored do-gooder efforts that led to continued propagation of "human weeds."

Philanthropists, who give free maternity care, she wrote, "encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant."

To rid us of that "dead weight of human waste," to create what she lovingly termed "a race of human thoroughbreds," Sanger had her own little final solution to the Negro question. As she wrote to a collaborator in 1939--when some Germans were giving eugenics a bad name--the idea to "hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities." They would travel through the South and propagandize for birth control. "The most successful educational approach, to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

Isn’t it marvelous that Maggie Sanger’s love child, Planned Parenthood--created to enshrine her memory and advance the above ideas--has been given over to the custody of a nice, black lady from New York? --Pat Buchanan