I Am Barrabbas
At the heart of Easter is the story of the innocent dying for the guilty.
Two men, different in every way, cross paths at the pivot point of history. Jesus Christ and Jesus Barrabas, as some early manuscripts referred to this notorious criminal.
We don’t know if the two ever met, if, when Jesus passed through Judea many times, Barabbas was within earshot, or if Barabbas and his murderous thugs were in the crowd at the temple when Jesus spoke or turned over the tables of the money changers. It seems unlikely.
Barabbas, having unsuccessfully plotted an insurrection against Rome, was languishing in a filthy prison with other convicted men. He wasn’t captivated by Jesus’ message. The one who would employ violence and deception as a mercenary, a freedom-fighter for hire, probably didn’t take too well to Jesus’ urging of love for enemies. I’m sure he did agree with the critiques of the religious authorities, often so subservient to their Roman overlords and protective of their power. But when Jesus commended the faith of a centurion as being the greatest in Israel? Crazy talk.
Their lives were so different. Jesus Christ, child of a poor Nazareth couple, a rabbi who heals and restores, and Jesus Barrabas, a dangerous revolutionary, gun for hire, who tears down and destroys. One, with unimpeachable character and perfect purity, and one whose guilt nobody doubted.
Barabbas, he didn’t know, couldn’t have understood the role he’d play in human history. What was Barrabas thinking as he paced the cold, dank Roman cell in the tense hours before what he thought was the end of his life? He knew his crimes. He knew what lay ahead. Crucifixion by Rome was the cruelest form of capital punishment, reserved only for the most heinous of criminals and for slaves and foreigners. Crucifixion was designed for maximum torture and maximum shame.
This is the death that awaited Barabbas and the two fellow insurrectionists to be strung up alongside him. What went through Barabbas’ mind, through the minds of the others, as they awaited the shuffle of the boots, the opening of the cell doors, and the rough hands of their executioners shoving them toward the ignominious hill outside Jerusalem? Was he recalling his life, regretting the path he chose for himself, one of a mercenary insurgent, a murderer for hire for a hopeless cause? Was he thinking of his mother or father, his home, wherever that was? Was there any remorse? Repentance? Relief?
What he couldn’t have known was the circus taking place outside Pilate’s court. He couldn’t have known a furious and self-righteous multitude was setting its sights on another Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth. He had no idea that his life hung in the balance, between a weak governor and a raging mob in the thin line between innocence and guilt.
The real story of Easter, as seen through the eyes of Barrabas, the one that pulsates from this very scene and spills onto the pages of eternity, is not the injustice of a corrupt legal system or the fecklessness of Pontus Pilate or the dark turn of the people demanding Jesus be crucified. The real story is that an innocent one, Jesus, died for the one who was so obviously and unapologetically guilty. If we cringe at this guilty man going free, we have to cringe at ourselves, who Scripture says are just as guilty before God. Every single member of the human race is Barabas. I am Barnabas.
We all went astray like sheep;
we all have turned to our own way;
and the Lord has punished him
for the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6There is no one righteous, not even one. (Romans 3:23)
This was not a popular sentiment in Jesus’ day. Nor is it popular today, even among some Christians. The truth is that in the eyes of a holy God, everyone, from the saintliest saint to the most morally repugnant villain, is guilty. Convicted and sentenced, not by a powerless governor like Pilate or an unruly mob, but by God himself.
Yet like Barrabas, like Adam in the Garden, we hear a voice outside the cell door of our hearts, the voice of God saying, “Where are you?” Inexplicably, our chains fall off, and we have the chance for freedom. Like Barrabas, we can walk out of the prison of sin and death, and experience new life, both here and in eternity.
I just love the way Sinclair Ferguson writes about the juxtaposition of Barrabas and Jesus:
Without knowing it, the religious leaders and Pilate and Barabbas were all part of a tapestry of grace which God was weaving for sinners. Their actions spoke louder than their words, louder than the cries of the crowds for Jesus’ blood. Jesus was not dying for His own crimes, but for the crimes of others; not for His own sins, but the sins of others. He did not die for Himself, he died for us!
Jesus was crucified for the crimes Barabbas committed. The one who resisted earthly revolution was crucified for treason, while the one who plotted sedition was set free. The cross was meant for Barabbas. The cross was meant for you and me. Even a fellow insurrectionist could see this, whispering in his dying breaths:
We are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43).
This promise, given by Jesus, is the real heart of Easter. The Son of God, the innocent one, pure and holy, God and man, went to that cross not ultimately because Pilate got it wrong or because the crowds lost their sense, but because this was God’s divine rescue plan all along. The prophet Isaiah says of Jesus that it “pleased the Lord to bruise him (Isaiah 53:10). The entire sacrificial system in the Old Testament, the killing of innocent animals as an atonement for sin all pointed to this moment when the Lamb of God would be slain for the sins of the world (Revelation 13:8), crying in his final breaths, “It is finished.” In many ways, that cross was made for Barabbas, and it was made for sinners, like you and me, but it was made for Jesus all along.
Jesus died the death Barabbas should have died, paid the penalty for sin we should have, but could not bear, and in exchange offers us freedom, freedom from sin, and reconciliation with the Creator who created us. “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive,” (1 Corinthians 15:22). This idea—that Christ is our substitute, that he took on the full wrath of God in our place- is central to the gospel, central to understanding what Easter is all about.
In those lonely moments on the cross, as a bloody and bruised Jesus gasped for air, the entire burden of sin of God’s people was thrust upon him. This is why the earth grew dark. At that moment, the ugliness of sin—Barabbas’ sins, our sins, the heinous and the evil from the beginning to the end of time—was on Jesus’ shoulders. He bore our sin. He took our shame. It is the greatest act of love in the world.
He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Barabbas walked free, with no charges against him. And so do you if you know Jesus as Savior and Lord. “There is therefore no condemnation,” we read in Romans, to those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1). You bear no guilt. You carry no shame. You are reconciled back to the Creator who created you.
I have always wondered what happened to Barabbas. What did he do with his new chance at life? Did he go back to his devilish ways, or did he look up at the cross where he should have been and wonder, in awe, how God spared his life? I want to imagine, though there is no tradition or proof that this actually happened, that Barabbas is there among many disciples gathered in Galilee when a resurrected Jesus declares that God has given him all authority in heaven and earth. When Jesus urges people to declare the gospel to the nations. I want to think that Barabbas not only saw Jesus as the unlucky innocent who was killed to satiate the bloodlust of a crowd, but also the spotless Lamb of God who took his place, that he saw Jesus as both his physical and eternal substitute for sin. We don’t know. Maybe we will see him in Heaven. Maybe we’ll call him brother Barabbas.
What we do know—what you can know this Easter—is that the innocent one nailed to the cross was nailed there for you. He bore your sins and took your punishment so you could have abundant and eternal life. Will you look up at that cross this Easter season and see your Savior?
This was adapted from The Characters of Easter: The Villains, Heroes, Cowards, and Crooks Who Witnessed History's Biggest Miracle