Luke 23:34 — Prayer for forgiveness at the cross

“And Jesus said: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Luke 23:34

Context

Luke 23:33-38 tells of the crucifixion of Jesus with striking concentration on the behaviour of the crucified one. At the very moment in which the soldiers nail him to the cross, Jesus prays for his Romans and for the people standing around him. The saying is placed directly between the act of nailing (v. 33) and the dividing of his garments among the soldiers (v. 34b) — an almost parallel sequence: while people enrich themselves on the dying one, the dying one forgives his perpetrators.

With this word Luke shapes the Christian behaviour of the book of Acts. In Acts 7:60 Stephen, while being stoned to death, prays in almost identical words: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” The Lukan double work is literarily integrated: Christ’s model prayer is taken up by the first martyr, and forgiving thereby becomes the signature of the emerging church. Luke 23:34 is therefore not a one-off act of salvation in a juridical sense, but a repeatable model.

The verse stands in sharp tension with the penal-substitution reading of the cross. For if Christ were precisely at that moment bearing the penalty of the perpetrators, the request for the forgiveness of those very perpetrators would be meaningless — God would have had to acquit them in any case, since the debt would have been paid. Jesus, however, prays as if forgiveness depended on God’s free grace and not on a simultaneously rendered satisfaction. That is precisely the Socinian point: the request for forgiveness is only meaningful if forgiveness is understood non-juridically.

Text-critically, Luke 23:34a (the petition for forgiveness) is absent from some early manuscripts (Papyrus 75, Codex Vaticanus). Yet the external attestation is broad (Codex Sinaiticus, Bezae, many versions) and the internal plausibility high — the word fits Lukan theology, the parallel in Stephen, and the early-church reception (Irenaeus, Origen). Most modern editions (Nestle-Aland, in brackets) treat the verse as probably original. For theological interpretation it remains a key passage, precisely because it brings Luke’s theology of forgiveness to expression.

In the wider narrative arc, the motif of forgiveness is load-bearing: the crucified one promises paradise to the repentant criminal (v. 43) and dies with the words “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (v. 46, Ps 31:5). Both sayings show the same Father God: the same Father to whom Christ entrusts the perpetrators is the Father into whose hands Christ commits himself. It is a wholly trusting, not a punishing, God.

The Socinian core thesis

In Socinian terms, Luke 23:34 is the strongest internal refutation of penal substitution by Jesus himself. In the act of his self-giving, Christ shows how forgiveness operates in the Kingdom of God: God forgives freely because he is Father — not because a penalty has first been executed. It is precisely this kind of forgiving that Christ demands of his disciples (Matt 6:12; 18:21-35); thus he likewise considers God capable of forgiving in this manner.

The logic is simple and inescapable: whoever receives a debt fully paid does not forgive — he receives and issues a receipt. Whoever, on the other hand, genuinely forgives no longer demands payment. The two concepts are mutually exclusive. If penal substitution takes place at the cross, then eo ipso no forgiveness is taking place; and if forgiveness is happening, penal substitution is superfluous. Luke 23:34 unmistakably attests the latter.

The petition for forgiveness also has a model, pedagogical function. Christ is not asking for something which he himself is just then bringing about through his dying — that would be tautological. He shows, rather, how the Father is always ready to forgive as soon as people turn toward him and ask for forgiveness. That is the Old Testament logic of forgiveness which Luke 15 (the prodigal son) brings into narrative form: the father runs out to meet him, demands no payment, but welcomes the one returning.

The adversative subordinate clause “for they know not what they do” specifies the condition of forgiveness: not every guilt is of the same kind. Ignorance (agnoia) is a classical ground of forgiveness in the apostolic preaching (Acts 3:17; 13:27; 17:30) and in the Pauline letters (1 Tim 1:13). The image of forgiveness given by Jesus on the cross is therefore not a sin-blind blanket pardon, but a mercy differentiated according to guilt — which fits precisely with the Lukan theology of metanoia.

Finally, the passage is decisive for the doctrine of God. It forbids setting God and Christ against each other as though they were two subjects in a juridical procedure — God the wrathful, Christ the appeaser. The praying Jesus is precisely the one who stands in perfect accord with the Father (John 17:21). He asks what the Father wills in any case; and he asks in this way because the Father forgives in this way: freely, without demanding a penalty, out of love.

Exegesis: key terms and word field

Five key terms decide the interpretation of Luke 23:34 linguistically and philologically:

patér — “Father”

The address of God as “Father” is consistently stamped in the Gospel of Luke: Jesus prays in Gethsemane “Father” (Luke 22:42); in his teaching on prayer “Father, hallowed be your name” (Luke 11:2); and on the cross three times “Father” (23:34; 23:46). This continuous address is not merely a matter of style — it is theologically charged: the crucified one speaks to God in the relational language of the Son.

Fatherly forgiveness is Jesus’ consistent metaphor for salvation, culminating in Luke 15 (the prodigal son). There the father runs out to meet the returning one, embraces him and celebrates — without any debt having to be paid. This narrative is Jesus’ own image of God. And it is precisely this Father whom he calls upon at the cross. Whoever reads Luke 23:34 from Leviticus 16 overwrites Jesus’ speech about God with a foreign, cultic-juridical theology.

In the Old Testament background the address “Father” is rare (Isa 63:16; 64:7; Ps 89:26), but present at decisive points: God acts in fatherly fashion because he is Creator and covenant partner — not because he first has to be propitiated by the blood of a son. Christ’s address at the cross stands in this line.

áphes — “forgive, release”

Aorist imperative of the verb aphíêmi, literally “let go, release, remit”. It denotes a punctiliar act of release, not a forensic crediting of a payment received. If the Greek New Testament had wanted to express a logic of exchange, the term used here would have been logísasthai (to reckon, to credit) or some juridical term — not aphíêmi.

The word field áphesis denotes in Septuagint usage the year of release (Lev 25; Deut 15: áphesis tôn chreôn) — a free cancellation of debts without any exchange or punitive performance. Precisely this background resonates when Jesus, in Luke 4:18-19, opens his programme with Isaiah 61:1-2: áphesin aichmalôtois — “release for captives”. Forgiveness in Lukan usage is liberation, not juridical receipt.

Tellingly, Christ himself uses the same verb in the petition of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:4: áphes hêmín tás hamartías hêmôn). The structure of the petition at the cross is therefore exactly parallel to the structure of the petition in the Lord’s Prayer — and there no one would think that the Father must first be paid before he forgives the one petitioning.

autois — “them”

The personal pronoun autois is syntactically the object of the forgiveness: forgiveness is to be granted to them, namely to the immediate perpetrators (the Roman soldiers nailing him to the cross; on the Lukan narrative perspective, however, probably also the instigators in the Sanhedrin and the watching crowd). It is not a generic “everyone”, but a concrete petition for concrete perpetrators.

That is hermeneutically important: the Socinian reading does not have to claim that Luke 23:34 speaks of all human beings of all times. It is enough that the logic of the verse is universalisable — and it is, as soon as Stephen (Acts 7:60) applies it to his executioners, Paul to the zealots of the circumcision, and the tradition to the dying.

Theologically this means: in the concrete act, Christ shows what he preaches as a general model of forgiveness. It is not a universalism of salvation, but neither is it a limited performance of salvation; it is exemplary forgiving, which holds for every autois that turns to God in repentance.

ou gár oídasin tí poioûsin — “for they know not what they do”

The adversative subordinate clause with gár (causative) supplies the condition of forgiveness: ignorance (agnoia). This is a genuinely Jesuanic-early-church category of guilt. In Acts 3:17 Peter says: “I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your rulers” — and then calls them to repentance. In Acts 17:30 Paul says: “God overlooked the times of ignorance.” Luke is building a consistent theology here.

Ignorance is not an excuse but the basis for forgiveness. Conscious wickedness (the sin against the Holy Spirit, Matt 12:31) is expressly not included. Forgiveness in the New Testament therefore presupposes a particular state of guilt and a readiness to respond; it is not magically-juridically dispensed, but tied to the inner condition of the perpetrators.

Precisely this does not fit penal-substitution logic. The latter claims: Christ pays the penalty of all, therefore God can pardon. Luke 23:34 says: Christ asks the Father to forgive these perpetrators because they act in ignorance. The one is a juridical blanket logic, the other a differentiated Father-theology.

The imperative logic of the petition

A petition (áphes) grammatically and logically requires a giver and a recipient who are not identical. Christ asks the Father; the Father is to forgive. This structure is constitutive: were the forgiveness already accomplished, the petition would be meaningless. Were Christ himself the one effecting the forgiveness qua penalty payment, the petition would be tautological.

The dogmatics of penal substitution usually responds: the petition is the moment of mediation by which an already objectively acquired forgiveness is subjectively applied. But that answer is contrived: the text itself yields nothing for it. In the text the petition is simply a request for something the Father has to give.

Moreover, a request for the application of an already purchased salvific performance would have been worded differently: something like “Father, apply to them the forgiveness obtained through my blood.” Instead, what we have is a plain petition for forgiveness. The simplest understanding is also the most likely.

Comparison of interpretations

Reference to Fausto Sozzini

Sozzini treats the logic of forgiveness and satisfaction at several places in his main work “On Jesus Christ the Saviour” (De Iesu Christo Servatore), most pointedly in the third part. His basic argument concerning passages such as Luke 23:34 is formal-logical.

If forgiveness is truly forgiveness, it cannot at the same time be payment. For whoever receives a debt fully paid does not forgive but receives; and whoever truly forgives no longer demands payment. Therefore Christ, when he asked at the cross, “Father, forgive them”, opened by this very prayer what kind of God the Father is — namely the one who freely forgives as soon as he is asked, and not the one who first has to be appeased by payment.

Fausto Sozzini, Part Three · Forgiveness and satisfaction are mutually exclusive

Sozzini argues formal-logically: satisfaction and forgiveness are contradictory concepts. Either someone pays — then on the receiver’s side there is reception, not forgiveness. Or forgiveness is granted — then no payment is necessary or possible anymore. To assume both at once is a contradiction in terms. Luke 23:34 is thus an experimental test of this logic: because Christ there asks for forgiveness, he cannot at the same time be paying for the perpetrators.

In a second line of argument, Sozzini shows that Jesus’ entire practice of forgiveness stands within this logic. In the Lord’s Prayer he asks for áphesis; in the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matt 18:21-35) he requires áphesis without any exchange logic; and in his words to the disciples (Eph 4:32: chariszómenoi heautoís) unearned grace is demanded. Jesus’ entire model of forgiveness is consistently Socinian: free, non-juridical.

Sozzini concludes: a God who could not freely forgive would be smaller than the Christian virtue he himself requires. For Christians are to “forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32) — and they do this without having received any payment. But if the demanded human virtue forgives freely, then all the more must the divine arch-virtue be capable of forgiving freely. Otherwise God would be worse than his saints.

In his correspondence and in the Praelectiones theologicae Sozzini goes one step further: he argues that the dogmatics of penal substitution pragmatically empties Jesus’ petition at the cross of meaning. If the penalty is in any case being executed at that moment, the request for forgiveness is superfluous; if, however, the petition is not to be emptied of meaning, then penal substitution is false. Tertium non datur.

Overview of Sozzini’s writings

Logical arguments

The following logical and philological arguments speak for the Socinian reading of Luke 23:34:

1. Logical exclusion. Payment and forgiveness are contradictory concepts. Whoever receives payment does not forgive; whoever forgives does not receive. A request for forgiveness therefore implies that no payment has been carried out. Luke 23:34 is a request for forgiveness — consequently no penal payment is being made.
2. The tautology argument. If Christ himself were the one effecting forgiveness through his simultaneous dying, the petition would be tautological (he would be asking for what he himself is just then performing). Tautologies are not to be found in Jesus’ theological speech; therefore the petition is to be read as a genuine request to the freely forgiving Father.
3. The emptying-of-meaning argument. If penal substitution were precisely being carried out, God would have to acquit the perpetrators in any case, since payment would have been made. The request for forgiveness would be superfluous. Whoever wishes to preserve its meaning must abandon the substitution model.
4. The Lord’s-Prayer analogy. In the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:4) Jesus, using the very same verb (áphes), asks for forgiveness of his own sins. No one takes the petition of the Lord’s Prayer to be an act of crediting a payment received. The analogous structure at the cross must be read accordingly.
5. The Stephen parallel (Acts 7:60). The first martyr prays at his death in the same way as Christ: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Stephen plainly pays no penalty. By this means Luke presents the prayer of forgiveness as universal Christian practice — not as a high-priestly reception of penalty.
6. Luke’s theology of agnoia. Luke builds a consistent theology of ignorance (Acts 3:17; 13:27; 17:30; 1 Tim 1:13). Forgiveness is grounded in the ignorance of the perpetrators and in God’s overlooking goodness — not in a juridical payment. This theology is incompatible with penal substitution.
7. Luke 15 as the norming image of God. The parable of the prodigal son explicitly shows Jesus’ image of God: the father runs to meet, requires no payment, but welcomes the one returning. Luke 23:34 verbalises this image at the cross. A different God at the cross would be a different God from the one proclaimed by Jesus.
8. Consistency in the image of God. Ephesians 4:32 calls Christians to forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven. Christians forgive without payment. If God is the standard, he must a fortiori be able to do so; otherwise the demanded Christian virtue would be greater than the divine arch-virtue — a theologically untenable consequence.
9. Argument from Old Testament forgiveness language. In the Old Testament God frequently forgives without any penalty being carried out on a substitute: David in Psalm 51, Manasseh in 2 Chron 33:12-13, Nineveh in Jonah 3. The image of forgiveness at the cross stands in this line — not in the line of a forensic substitutionary rite.
10. The textual semantics of aphíêmi. The verb means “to let go, to remit, to release” — not “to credit a payment received”. Whoever wanted to express a juridical reckoning would have used logízomai (cf. Rom 4). The verb-choice argument strikes the penal-substitution reading at the root.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages illuminate and strengthen the Socinian reading of Luke 23:34:

Acts 7:60 — Stephen quotes the prayer

The first martyr, at his stoning, prays exactly as his Lord: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Luke thereby sets the cross-forgiveness model as a universal Christian practice. Stephen plainly pays no penalty; his petition is a free request for forgiveness. In the Lukan double work, Luke 23:34 and Acts 7:60 are the hermeneutical poles of the theology of forgiveness.

Luke 15:11-32 — the father of the prodigal son

The parable of the prodigal son is Jesus’ own image of God. The father runs out to meet the returning one, embraces him, clothes him anew, and celebrates — without any debt having to be paid. Precisely this Father is the one Christ calls upon at the cross. A penal-substitutionary reading of Luke 23:34 must either lose the image of Luke 15 or reinterpret it.

Luke 11:2-4 — the Lord’s Prayer

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus uses the same verb (áphes) to ask for forgiveness of his own sins, conditioned by his own readiness to forgive. The word at the cross is the exact application of this petitionary structure to the perpetrators: forgive, because they act in ignorance and because the Father forgives freely.

Matthew 18:21-35 — the parable of the unmerciful servant

The king remits the servant’s enormous debt simply by áphesis (v. 27). There is no substitute who pays. This is Jesus’ teaching statement about the Kingdom of God: forgiveness is a free remission, not a juridical exchange. Luke 23:34 shows this logic in actu at the cross.

Ephesians 4:32 — forgive as God in Christ has forgiven

Paul makes God the norm of free forgiving. Christians are to forgive “as” God in Christ has forgiven — without having received any payment. The “as” only bears weight if both acts follow the same logic: free remission. Were God’s forgiveness the receipt of a penalty, the “as” would be meaningless.

Psalm 51 — David asks; God forgives freely

After his offence concerning Bathsheba and Uriah, David asks for forgiveness: “Have mercy on me, O God” (v. 1). There is no substitute who pays; God forgives out of his own mercy. This is the Old Testament norm of forgiveness language, in whose line Luke 23:34 stands.

Jonah 3:10 — Nineveh is forgiven without any penalty being carried out

God sees the repentance of Nineveh, “relents from the disaster” and does not punish. There is no substitute; repentance itself opens the forgiveness. This too strengthens the Old Testament logic of forgiveness in whose tradition Jesus prays at the cross.

Acts 3:17-19 — agnoia and metanoia

Peter sets the Jerusalem sermon under the Lukan ignorance thesis: “I know that you acted in ignorance” (v. 17), and then calls them to repentance (v. 19). The basis of forgiveness is ignorance + repentance, not a balancing of penalty. Luke 23:34 is the theological source of this apostolic preaching.

Objections and Socinian replies

Objection 1: “Christ’s petition itself is the payment”

That only shifts the problem without solving it. If the petition itself were penal payment, it would no longer need the language of petition — it would be a demand or a crediting. A paid debt does not require an imperative of petition; it requires a receipt. The grammatical form contradicts the interpretation.

Moreover, it is circular: penal substitution is presupposed in order to read the text, and the text is then adduced as evidence of penal substitution. The Socinian procedure is the reverse: first take the text in its simplest grammatical meaning, and see whether it can carry the theory — it cannot.

Finally: were the petition itself a payment, it would be theologically incomprehensible that Stephen utters the same petition in Acts 7:60. Stephen pays nothing; he simply asks. But if the same linguistic form in Stephen is a simple petition, it is also a simple petition in Christ — otherwise there would be a special theological vocabulary at work of which the text knows nothing.

Objection 2: “Luke 23:34 concerns only the Romans, not everyone”

It is true that autois is grammatically concrete. But Acts 7:60 shows that Luke deliberately universalises the logic: Stephen prays so for his executioners, and Acts 3:17 applies the agnoia-thesis to the Jerusalemites. It is a model, not a one-off special case.

In addition, the Jesuanic teaching corpus (Matt 6:12; 18:21-35) shows that the logic of forgiveness is universally applied. Luke 23:34 is the exemplary application of this teaching to the extreme case of dying. From the extreme case the normal case can be inferred, not the other way round.

Even if Luke 23:34 concerned only the Romans, the thesis of penal substitution would already be broken. For it claims that every forgiveness requires a balancing of penalty. A single counter-instance suffices to refute a universal statement. Luke 23:34 is that counter-instance from the mouth of Jesus himself.

Finally, the Father-address is decisive: Christ does not address the Father in a special high-priestly idiom but in the simple language of sonship that also marks the Lord’s Prayer. That is an image of God, not a special casuistry.

Objection 3: “Without penalty there can be no forgiveness”

The premise “no forgiveness without penalty” is unbiblical. In the Old Testament, God frequently forgives without any penalty being carried out on a substitute: David in Psalm 51, Manasseh in 2 Chron 33:12-13, Nineveh in Jonah 3, the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15) — the father punishes no one; he embraces.

“Righteousness” in the Old Testament sense (tsedeq) is not retributive righteousness but covenant faithfulness, saving faithfulness. Compare the entry on Romans 3:25-26: there it is shown that dikaiosyne theou is to be read as saving covenant faithfulness.

The dogmatics of penal substitution is a late-medieval construction. The biblical language of forgiveness is far broader and does not carry the forensic model. Luke 23:34 refutes the narrow forensic reading within the Gospel text itself.

Moreover, the answer “righteousness requires penalty” shifts the problem to the question of what righteousness even is. In Socinian terms it is no rigid recompense scheme but God’s faithful relational conduct. On this reading, Luke 23:34 is fully coherent: the righteous Father forgives freely, because that is righteous.

Objection 4: “The verse is missing from early manuscripts”

The text-critical situation is mixed but not decisive against the verse. Codex Sinaiticus, Bezae, the Vetus Latina, the Syriac versions and a large part of the Byzantine tradition have it. Irenaeus already cites it at the end of the second century. The external attestation is broad, if not unequivocal.

The internal plausibility is also high: the verse fits Lukan theology, the Stephen parallel (Acts 7:60), the ignorance-thesis (Acts 3:17), and Jesus’ consistent address to the Father (Luke 22:42; 23:46). That speaks strongly for originality, or at least for theological authenticity.

It was probably omitted from some early-third-century manuscripts because it was felt to be offensive — precisely because it touched the question of forgiveness extended to the Jews at a time when the Church was separating from the synagogue. Omission as an anti-Jewish tendency is documented in text criticism.

Even if the verse did not belong to the original Lukan text, it would be an early (at the latest pre-Irenaean) theological testimony of the early Church concerning the nature of Christ at the cross — and such a testimony is no less weighty than a late-medieval dogmatic edifice.

Objection 5: “The forgiveness extends only to temporal, not eternal guilt”

This distinction between temporal and eternal guilt is scholastic, not biblical. The text does not make it: áphes autois is undifferentiated. There is no hint in the text that Christ means only a part of the guilt and delegates another, larger part to the payment of penalty.

Moreover, the forgiveness of temporal guilt with simultaneous penal payment to God for eternal guilt would be theologically absurd. Forgiveness and payment would be present at the same time — which, on Sozzini’s logical argument, is impossible.

The parallel in Acts 7:60 makes this clear. Stephen asks Christ not to reckon “this sin” (hautên tên hamartían) to the perpetrators. Hamartía denotes the guilt-laden act in its full theological sense, not a civil-law claim. The matter is forgiveness in the full theological sense — and it is freely petitioned, not juridically settled.

Finally, the scholastic reading would split Jesus’ image of God: a God who forgives freely in temporal matters but insists on penal balance eternally. That is not reconcilable with Luke 15 (the prodigal son) — there the father embraces the one returning without any distinction between temporal and eternal guilt.

Theological consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast the reading presented here:

• Matthew 26:28 — covenant blood as the inaugurating sign of the promised covenant of forgiveness; parallel to Luke 23:34 with free forgiveness as the content of the covenant.
• Mark 10:45 — ransom as image of liberation, not penal balance; parallel to the free forgiveness in Luke 23:34.
• Romans 3:25-26 — hilastêrion as the meeting-place of grace, and dikaiosyne theou as saving covenant faithfulness.
• 1 John 4:10 — God initiates the sending of the Son out of love; God is subject, not recipient of forgiveness.
• Isaiah 53:5 — a text of solidarity, not penal substitution; the bearing of sickness is shared bearing, not reception of penalty.
• Hebrews 9:22 — “almost everything is purified with blood” — the “almost” breaks the universal penal-blood reading.

Summary

Luke 23:34 is the practical model of Christian forgiveness at the cross itself. Christ asks remission for his executioners — and thereby renders every theory of penal substitution logically superfluous: whoever asks for forgiveness has not been paid; whoever had been paid would no longer have to ask. Forgiveness and the execution of penalty are mutually exclusive.

The passage opens up Jesus’ image of God: a Father who forgives freely because he is Father, and who demands of his children that they forgive in the same way (Matt 6:12; Eph 4:32). The Old Testament language of forgiveness (Ps 51; Jonah 3; Luke 15) provides the background; the Lukan theology of ignorance (Acts 3:17; 17:30) unfolds the presupposition; the parallel in Stephen (Acts 7:60) universalises the practice.

Understood in Socinian terms, Luke 23:34 is therefore not a heroic example-saying at the edge of the theology of the cross, but its key self-interpretation by Jesus himself. The cross is the revelation and sealing of God’s free forgiveness — not its juridical precondition. Christ dies forgiving, because God is forgiving.