Barabbas
A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did. "Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate, knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
Mark 15:7-11
Jesus was killed instead of Barabbas, a man who deserved to die. Perhaps you would not resent it if you were murdered in place of a righteous man, but if he were only a common criminal how would you feel? That's exactly how it happened with Jesus, but Jesus did not blame the man. Could you do such a thing easily? I think you are not confident. Jesus came as the Son of God but he was killed in place of the worst criminal, and not even by righteous men but by Roman soldiers who were only on a distasteful errand.
Would you be willing to die as Jesus did? What kind of value would result? It would mean that anyone on that level could he freed. By Jesus' forgiveness of Barabbas and the Roman soldiers, the lowest hell could be liberated spontaneously.
The Age of Repentance
September 1, 1978
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