In perhaps the most Christ-like statement ever uttered in public, Erika Kirk emulated her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by repeating the exact sentiment Jesus proclaimed to the hardened criminal hanging next to Him on an old wooden cross outside Jerusalem’s city gates:

I forgive him!

Charlie Kirk went to college campuses to engage in civil discourse, often taking on large throngs of college-educated kids on a mission to prove him wrong about his conservative positions. Charlie’s real purpose was to share truth, including the gospel of Jesus Christ, with all who would hear. Prove me Wrong events were simply pathways that offered opportunity to share the greatest truth with young men and women, and to be able to influence them to accept Jesus Christ.

Charlie would have been proud of his wife’s public confession of forgiveness of the murderer. It was lost kids like Tyler Robinson for whom Charlie set out to share the Gospel. How fitting, on a day in which the gospel was presented over and over by public figures Charlie influenced, that his own wife would do as Jesus did in forgiving one who “did not know what he was doing.” (Luke 23:34)

May we all have the boldness to forgive as Erika did. Who in your life needs to hear that you forgive them? Why not do so today?

PS: To those of you who may not understand the forgiving grace of Jesus Christ, it is important to know that you cannot give what you do not have. Because Erika knows the forgiveness of her Savior, Jesus Christ, she is able to give what has been given to her. If you don’t know Jesus and His forgiveness of you, then you will never be able to forgive anyone else.

Ironically, when one chooses not to forgive, it is they who are chained and imprisoned to the perpetrator. We are free only when the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ upon our lives is poured out to others.

Turn to Jesus and accept His free gift of forgiveness…then pass it on to others. Here’s how: