Scripture Daily

Context No. 579 of 4322 · Mark

Context · Reflection

Mark 15:6-12: in context

6Now at the feast he used to release to them one prisoner, whomever they asked of him. 7There was one called Barabbas, bound with his fellow insurgents, men who in the insurrection had committed murder. 8The multitude, crying aloud, began to ask him to do as he always did for them. 9Pilate answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 10For he perceived that for envy the chief priests had delivered him up. 11But the chief priests stirred up the multitude, that he should release Barabbas to them instead. 12Pilate again asked them, “What then should I do to him whom you call the King of the Jews?”

At the festival Pilate had a custom of releasing one prisoner the crowd chose, and Mark makes sure we know exactly who the alternative to Jesus was. There was a man called Barabbas, he writes, imprisoned with the rebels who had committed murder in the insurrection. Barabbas is not an ambiguous figure. He is a killer, a violent man justly condemned, sitting on death row for crimes he actually committed. And Pilate offers the crowd a choice: Jesus, the innocent one he knows was handed over out of envy, or Barabbas, the guilty one. Stirred up by the chief priests, the crowd chooses Barabbas, and the guilty man walks free while the innocent one is led away to the cross.

Do not miss what literally happens here, because it is the gospel enacted in a single afternoon. Barabbas, a condemned man who deserves to die, is set free, and the reason he goes free is that Jesus takes his place. There was, quite literally, a cross being prepared, and Barabbas was meant to hang on it, and instead Jesus hangs there and Barabbas walks away alive. The innocent is condemned so the guilty can go free. And the deepest way to read this scene is to recognize that Barabbas is not a stranger in the story; he is me. I am the guilty one, justly condemned, who walks free because the innocent one took the cross that had my name on it.

That is not a doctrine to admire from a distance; it is a place to stand. It is far too easy to read the crucifixion as something done to Jesus by other people, the crowd, the priests, Pilate, and to keep myself among the horrified onlookers. Barabbas will not let me. He puts me in the one spot the story most wants me to see, the guilty man released because someone innocent died in his place. Do I see myself in Barabbas, set free at the cost of Jesus taking the cross that was mine, and am I living as someone who owes his freedom entirely to that exchange?

Sources