Millions witnessed what forgiveness looks like when Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, quoted Jesus’ cry from the cross before she forgave the man who murdered her husband.
Eleven days after Charlie’s assassination—near the end of a nearly six-hour memorial service at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona—Erika declared from the podium: “On the cross, our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they [do] not know what they do.’ That man. That young man. I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and it’s what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer, we know from the Gospel, is love, and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”
Charlie, 31, the co-founder of Turning Point USA and a strong follower of Christ, was shot and killed Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. I have no doubt that Charlie was persecuted for his Biblical beliefs about the sanctity of human life and God’s design for creation, sexuality, marriage and the family.
I am so proud of Erika, this widowed mother of two young children, for her costly obedience to God’s Word. Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness in the sixth chapter of Matthew could not be any more direct. In His model prayer, Christ teaches that since God forgives us, we should forgive others when He said: “And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).
A few verses later, Jesus states further, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).
Charlie was not ashamed of the Gospel of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. His Biblical worldview informed his political opinions. I appreciate Charlie’s conviction for standing unequivocally on the authority of Scripture over every aspect of our lives.
The message of the Gospel invites scorn, ridicule and even violence from those who hate the truth. Christian persecution is growing in our country. American churches and synagogues are increasingly facing attack. Under the Biden administration, pro-life Christian activists were jailed for peacefully protesting the heinous act of abortion.
Jesus warned Christians to expect persecution. Although it should never be tolerated by civil authorities, persecution is sometimes the cost of obeying Christ’s invitation in Luke 9:23: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”
Jesus also said in John 15:20: “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.”
As a member of President Trump’s recently appointed Religious Liberty Commission, I’ve been inspired to see how Christians are boldly standing on God’s Word and refusing to bow to a woke culture that thumbs its nose at God.
For example, Monica Gill, a high school government teacher in the notoriously liberal school district of Loudon County, Virginia, said that her district adopted a policy in 2021 that, in her words, “forced teachers to deny the foundational truth of what it means to be human—created as male and female.” The policy said that teachers must affirm all transgender students, treating boys as girls and girls as boys.
But Monica refused to go along with her school district’s godless agenda. “I knew that I could not stand in front of my Father in Heaven one day and say, ‘My pension plan was more important than Your truth,’” she said. The high school teacher took a stand and filed a lawsuit against the district, and this past July, the district agreed that teachers do not need to use pronouns inconsistent with biological reality.
The growing LGBTQ movement in our society is further evidence of the Apostle Paul’s warning in the first chapter of the Book of Romans: “because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21-22).
For a world drowning in humanism that worships itself instead of its Creator, the Prophet Jeremiah rightly declared: “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
That’s why I must continue preaching the Gospel around the world, in places like Brussels, Belgium, where God moved mightily in September with a harvest of souls for His Kingdom. This month, I went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the remote reaches of India calling sinners in need of the Savior to “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).
And whenever persecution comes my way, I pray that I will not be shaken but instead see it as the blessing that Jesus describes in Matthew 5:10-12: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
