That's like carving the Bible up like it’s a Thanksgiving turkey, then handing out the drumsticks only to people you already like. The claim here is that Jesus forgave the soldiers because they were just “tools” and not really culpable, while the Jewish leaders were the “real killers,” and therefore outside the blast radius of His forgiveness. But this is like saying, “Sure, I forgive the trigger finger, but not the man who pulled the trigger.” That’s not theology, that’s a bad courtroom drama.

First, sin is sin, whether it comes as a single stab wound or an organized war effort. The soldiers sinned. Pilate sinned. The Jewish rulers sinned. The crowd crying “Crucify him!” sinned. And Peter, who denied Him, sinned. Scripture does not offer us the luxury of making up a neat hierarchy where some sins count as “waging war” while others are just casual misdemeanors. The Bible calls all of it rebellion against God.

Second, Christ’s prayer, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), was not Him making a fine philosophical distinction between culpable Pharisees and innocent Roman grunts. He was interceding for His murderers, full stop. And Acts 2 proves it, because Peter turns around at Pentecost and preaches to some of the same crowd—“this Jesus whom you crucified”—and then three thousand repent and are forgiven. The very ones complicit in His death received the fruit of that prayer.

Third, the idea that the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. was Christ’s way of not forgiving is to confuse God’s judgment with Christ’s mercy. Yes, judgment fell on hardened unbelief, but that doesn’t erase the fact that many of those “vipers” also repented and entered the kingdom. Paul himself was one of those vipers, breathing out murderous threats against Christ’s people. And yet he didn’t just get forgiven, he got drafted as an apostle. (I'm proud of you for getting your escapology right though about Christ's judgment on Jerusalem tho!)

So the bottom line? To pit “forgiveness of the soldiers” against “vengeance on the rulers” is to pit Christ against Himself. And that won’t do. The cross was not a boutique act of forgiveness for some of the guilty—it was the ground of forgiveness for anyone guilty who turns in faith.

In other words: Christ’s forgiveness on the cross was not a laser pointer singling out the rank-and-file while skipping the brass. It was a floodlight covering the whole bloody mess.