I was stunned. When I first heard Erika Kirk’s words at the memorial service, they landed on me like a freight train. Could I have forgiven the man who took my beloved from me? Barely. Could I have admitted such a thing to close friends? Possibly, though reluctantly. But to stand in public—before television cameras, mourners, political leaders, and enemies—and say it out loud? Never.
Yet that is what Erika did.
And it wasn’t weakness. It wasn’t naiveté. It wasn’t some pre-scripted “Christianese” line that she thought would play well in the press. It was Spirit-filled bravery. It was the unexplainable, unpredictable, almost otherworldly reality of what happens when Jesus Christ so thoroughly transforms a life that what should be impossible becomes not just possible, but inevitable.
That’s why one prominent pastor said, “These politicians and public figures are proclaiming the gospel more boldly than many pastors.” Erika proved that statement true. She preached the gospel by living it, with words that could only have come from a heart reshaped by Jesus.
Because Jesus is unlike anyone else in history. Things happen because of Him that no one can expect, predict, or explain.
Think about the thief on the cross. Hanging beside the Savior, wracked with pain, minutes from death—he had no time to reform his life, to undo his sins, to attend a Bible study or tithe to a church. Yet in his final breaths he turned to Jesus and confessed, “Remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus’ response was not, “Too late.” It was not, “You need to pay for what you’ve done.” Instead, it was the most stunning promise ever given: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
That thief brought nothing but his need and his honesty. Jesus gave him everything in return.
That is how Christ works. He produces fruit that doesn’t grow in natural soil. He creates forgiveness where bitterness should reign. He generates courage where fear should paralyze. He makes saints out of sinners, and martyrs out of ordinary men and women.
Charlie Kirk understood this well. He built his life and his work on it. And Erika, standing at his memorial, carried it forward. She did not glorify her pain, or the headlines, or the anger that many would have excused her for. Instead, she glorified Christ. She echoed His words: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Our culture doesn’t know what to do with that. Forgiveness is foreign currency in an age of revenge. We understand litigation, not liberation. We know canceling, not cleansing. We applaud vengeance but scoff at grace. But then Jesus steps in, through the life of someone who dares to take Him at His word—and suddenly the script is flipped.
Erika’s act is not just a personal testimony. It is a cultural disruption. It shouts to a cynical, bloodthirsty age: “There is another way.” And in doing so, it reminds all of us that the only hope for a fractured, violent, sin-sick nation is not more politics, not more outrage, not more “gotcha” moments, but the cross of Jesus Christ.
And that cross is not just a symbol of death. It is the place where forgiveness was purchased at the highest cost imaginable. The Son of God, sinless and pure, absorbed the full fury of God’s justice so that murderers, liars, adulterers, hypocrites, and rebels like us could be forgiven. That forgiveness is not cheap. It is costly beyond comprehension. But because it has been given to us, it can—and must—flow through us.
I think that’s why Erika’s words pierced the moment so deeply. She wasn’t offering a trite soundbite. She was tapping into the very bloodstream of the Christian faith. Forgiveness is who we are because forgiveness is what we’ve been given.
If you’ve ever wondered whether Jesus is real, if the gospel is true, if Christianity is just another religious tradition—watch Erika Kirk. Watch her stand in the moment of her greatest pain and say what no one expected, what no one could predict: “I forgive him.” That doesn’t come from human willpower. That doesn’t spring from political strategy. That is Jesus, alive and well, doing today what He did for a thief 2,000 years ago.
And in that, Charlie’s legacy lives on—not because of a political organization, not because of a media empire, but because the same Jesus who saved a thief on a cross is still saving, still forgiving, still transforming, and still speaking through those who dare to believe Him.
That’s why I was stunned. That’s why my knees buckled and my heart was both broken and healed in the same breath. Because I knew—no matter how hard I try, no matter how many words I write—I cannot manufacture what Erika displayed.
But Jesus can. And Jesus did.
And if you let Him, Jesus will do it in you too.