Mark 15:15 “…Pilate released Barabbas for them, and after having Jesus scourged, he delivered Him to be crucified.”
Observation: It was Passover, but one unlike any other. The chief priests, elders and scribes bound Jesus and delivered Him to Pilate, demanding his crucifixion. Pilate’s questioning of Jesus led him to believe Jesus’ innocence, but the chief priests whipped the crowd into a frenzy, demanding that he be killed. On Passover. Like sheep, they went astray. Ultimately Pilate yielded to the crowd’s bloodthirst, releasing Barabbas rather than Jesus, while Jesus was led to the Place of the Skull. Barabbas had been awaiting his own well-justified death sentence, having committed murder as part of an earlier insurrection. Passover’s tradition demanded that Pilate commute the sentence of one so condemned, and despite his offer to release Jesus, Barabbas received the nod instead.
Application: Matthew Henry’s commentary on this passage contains profound insight: “The unwearied industry of wicked people in doing that which is evil, should shame us for our backwardness and slothfulness in that which is good.” Ouch. There could hardly be a more prescient explanation for society’s degradation today. Some things never change. On the day Jesus would be crucified it only took a small number of evil plotters to lead the people off the proverbial cliff.
The priests ought to have been before an altar, slaying the usual sacrificial lamb, but it seems that tradition was subsumed into their desire for sacrifice of a different kind of lamb without spot or blemish. This lamb would take away the sins of the whole world.
This is all I hear of Barabbas. As things turned out, he became the first to be redeemed because of Jesus’ date with a Roman cross. I more frequently think of the thief on the cross who would proclaim Jesus’ innocence and thereby gain paradise by nightfall. A friend once had a vision of a single-file line of people stretching to the far horizon behind that thief, representing countless souls who would experience a similar deathbed conversion.
But think about it. Isn’t there a similar line of people behind Barabbas? I can’t know the set of Barabbas’s heart upon his release. Was he repentant and grateful, or did he arrogantly strut off Pilate’s portico into eternal damnation? I don’t know, but I suspect the latter. So many souls are standing in Barabbas’s shadow, fully aware of the horrible price Jesus paid for their sin, yet with a heart unrepentant and unyielding to the love offered by this particular Passover lamb.
Prayer: Father, I hear astonishing stories of supernatural ways that you meet men and women on the cusp of eternity, reminding them of what they already know: they have need of you. Move countless souls today from Barabbas’s shadow to the thief’s. And then do it again tomorrow, then again the day after. ‘Til Jesus returns to call His people home, keep eternity in view of us all.