Father, Forgive Them, For They Do Not Know What They Are Doing.
- holydan86
- Jul 17
- 2 min read
Romans 12:14
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
How do you respond to harsh treatment from others when you choose to stand boldly in your faith? I have faced multiple things for my faith, including the most harsh for me, being alienated from my only child simply because I follow Jesus with zeal. I am seen by my ex-wife as one who ‘pushes his religion down throats’, when in reality, I do not want to see anybody go to hell, and have the love and compassion to tell others the same truth I received, in love, that they may stop living a lie and suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
The true response from harsh treatment is that we pray for people. But in many cases, the cultural Christianity of “you deserve better” and “you do you” gets us to believe that we can justify hatred towards others, and even hypocritical judgement. We end up placing ourselves into a position where we believe “I am worthy to be saved… but not them!” All of this leads eventually into the reality of Matthew 7:21/23, which ends with “I never knew you” because they practiced the lawlessness of not loving God with their entire being, nor their fellow man as themselves.
At the end of the age, I believe that the scriptures make it very clear that we will be persecuted and even killed for our faith. The right response to this will make the difference on how we will treat those doing the persecuting and killing of our physical bodies. If we seek vengeance, then we will ‘live by the sword and die by it’, but if we seek to even forgive the one ending our lives? This may be the very seed needed to bring them to repent and know Jesus as their Lord and Savior (which we see examples of in the underground church even as you read this). We must reach the point of being able to faithfully say in our final moments if losing our lives for Jesus:
“Father, forgive them. For they do not know what they are doing.”
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