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Christ had often preached the doctrine of forgiving enemies, and praying for them; he practises it here himself in a most exemplary manner.
Where note,
1. The mercy desired and prayed for; and that is, forgiveness.
2. The person desiring that mercy, Christ, the dying Jesus.
3. The persons for whom it is desired, his bloody murderers; Father, forgive them.
4. The argument used, or motive urged, to procure this mercy: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Learn hence,
1. That ignorance is the usual cause of enmity against Christ.
2. That there is forgiveness with God, for such as oppose, yea, persecute Christ out of ignorance.
That to forgive enemies, and to beg forgiveness for them, is an evidence of a Christ-like frame of Spirit; Father, forgive them: not that the gospel requires of us an insensibility of wrongs and injuries; that allows us a sense of offered evils though it forbids us to revenge them; yet the more tender our resentments are, the more excellent our forgiveness is: so that a forgiving spirit does not exclude a sense of injuries; but the sense of injuries graces the forgiveness of them: neither does the gospel require us, under the notion of forgiving injuries, to deliver up our rights and properties to the lusts of everyone that will invade them, but meekly to receive evil, and readily to return good.