Barabbas
"You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to
rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for
your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you
can see, he has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I will punish him and
then release him." With one voice they cried out, "Away with this
man! Release Barabbas to us!" (Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an
insurrection in the city, and for murder.) (Luke 23:14-19)
Barabbas’ jail
cell contains a single square window about the size of his face. Barabbas
looked through it once perhaps. When he saw the execution hill, he lowered
himself to the floor, leaned against the wall, and pulled his knees to his
chest. That was an hour ago. He hasn't moved since. He hasn't spoken since.
Odd. Barabbas has been a man of many words. When the guards came at sunrise to
transfer him out of the barracks, he boasted that he would be a free man before
noon. On the way to his cell, he cursed the soldiers and mocked their Caesar.
But since arriving, he hasn't uttered a sound. For all his bravado and
braggadocio, he knows he'll be crucified by noon and dead by sundown. What’s there
to say? The cross, the nails, the torturous death – he knows what awaits him.
A few hundred
yards away from his small cell in the Antonia Fortress, a not-so-small
gathering of men murmur in disapproval. Religious leaders mostly. Tired, angry,
bearded men. On the steps above them stand a patrician Roman and a bedraggled
Galilean. The first man gestures to the second and appeals to the crowd. "’You
brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have
examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against
him. Neither has Herod … he has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I
will punish him and then release him.’ With one voice they cried out, ‘Away
with this man! Release Barabbas to us!’ (Barabbas had been thrown into prison
for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)” (Luke 23:14-19)
That last
sentence is all you need to know about Barabbas: he’s a rebel and a murderer.
Anger in his heart, and blood on his hands. Defiant. Violent. A troublemaker. A
life taker. He is guilty and proud of it. So, is Pilate, the Roman governor,
supposed to treat this man with grace? The crowd apparently thinks so. Stranger
yet, the crowd wants Pilate to execute Jesus instead – a man whom Pilate
declared had "done nothing to deserve death." Pilate has no
allegiance to Jesus. The Galilean means nothing to him. If Jesus was guilty,
let him pay for his crime. The governor is willing to crucify a guilty man. But
an innocent one? Jesus may deserve a lecture, even a lashing, but not the
cross.
Pilate makes no
fewer than four attempts to release Jesus. He tells the Jews to settle the
matter. (John 18:28-31) He refers the issue to Herod. (Luke 23:4-7) He tries to
persuade the Jews to accept Jesus as the prisoner released at Passover. (Mark
15:6-10) He offers a compromise: scourging instead of execution. (Luke 23:22)
He does all he can to release Jesus. And by concluding, "I find no fault
in Him at all" (John 18:38), Pilate becomes an unwitting theologian. He
states first what Paul would record later on: Jesus "knew no sin." (2
Cor. 5:21) Of equal ranking with Jesus' water walking, dead raising, and leper
healing is this Mt. McKinley truth: he never sinned.
It's not that
Jesus couldn’t sin; it’s that he didn’t sin. He could have broken bread with
the devil in the wilderness, or broken ranks with his Father in Gethsemane.
"[He] was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin." (Heb.
4:15) Jesus was God's model of a human being. Ever honest in the midst of
hypocrisy. Relentlessly kind in a world of cruelty. Heaven-focused in spite of
countless distractions. When it came to sin, Jesus never did.
We, on the other
hand, have never stopped sinning. We are "dead in trespasses and
sins." (Eph. 2:1) We are "lost" (Luke 19:10), doomed to
"perish" (John 3:16), under "the wrath of God" (John 3:36),
"blinded" (2 Cor. 4:3-4), and "strangers from the covenants of
promise, having no hope and without God in the world." (Eph. 2:12) We have
nothing good to offer. Our finest deeds are "rubbish" and
"rags" before a holy God. (Phil. 3:8; Isa. 64:6) Just call us
Barabbas. Or call us "wretched." John Newton did.
Remember the
descriptor in his famous hymn? "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that
saved a wretch like me." That
word sounds so antiquated today. Sin apparently went the way of powdered wigs
and knickers. In this modern day nobody is actually a wretch, are they?
Misguided, poorly parented, unfortunate, addicted, improperly potty trained, maybe.
But wretched? Read Jesus' one-paragraph definition of sin. “A nobleman was called away to a distant
empire to be crowned king and then return. Before he left, he called together
ten servants and gave them ten pounds of silver to invest for him while he was
gone. But his people hated him and sent a delegation after him to say they did
not want him to be their king.” (Luke 19:12-14) To sin is to say,
"God, I don’t want you to be my king. I prefer a kingless kingdom. Or,
better yet, a kingdom in which I’m the king."
Imagine if
someone did that to you. Suppose you go on a long trip and leave your residence
under the supervision of a caretaker. You trust him or her with all your
possessions. While you’re away, they move into your house and claim it for their
own. They engrave their name on your mailbox, place their name on your
accounts. They plop dirty feet on your coffee table and invite their buddies to
sleep in your bed. They claim your authority and then send you this text:
"Don't bother coming back. I'm running the show now."
The Bible's word
for this is sin. Sin is not a
regrettable lapse or an occasional stumble. Sin stages a coup against God's
regime, like Turkey did last week. Sin storms the castle, lays claim to God's
throne, and defies his authority. Sin shouts, "I want to run my own life,
thank you very much!" Sin tells God to get out, get lost, and don’t bother
coming back. Sin is insurrection of the highest order, and you are an
insurrectionist. So am I. So is every single person who has ever taken a
breath.
One of the most
stinging indictments of humanity is found in Isaiah 53:6: "We all, like
sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." Your way
may be substance abuse, my way may be accumulation, another person's way may be
sensual stimulation or religious self-promotion, but every person has tried to
go his or her own way without God. It’s not that some of us have rebelled. We
all have. "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who
understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together
become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." (Rom.
3:10-12)
This is an
unpopular but essential truth. All ships that land at the shore of grace weigh
anchor from the port of sin. We must start where God starts. We won't
appreciate what grace does until we understand who we are. We are rebels. We
are Barabbas. Like him, we deserve to die. Four prison walls, thickened with
fear, hurt and hate, surround us. We’re incarcerated by our past, our low-road
choices, and our high-minded pride. We have been found guilty. We sit on the
floor of the dusty cell, awaiting the final moment.
And our
executioner's footsteps echo against stone walls. Head between our knees, we
don't look up as he opens the door; we don't lift our eyes as he begins to
speak. We know what he’s going to say. "Time to pay for your sins."
But we hear something else. "You're free to go. They took Jesus instead of
you." The door swings open, the guard barks, "Get out," and we
find ourselves in the light of the morning sun, shackles gone, crimes pardoned,
wondering, “What just happened?” Grace happened. Christ took away your sins.
Where did he take them? To the top of a hill called Calvary, where he endured
not just the nails of the Romans, the mockery of the crowd, and the spear of
the soldier but the anger of God.
Saturate your
heart in this, the finest summary of God's greatest accomplishment: "God
in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through
Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to
take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are
made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his
life for us." (Rom. 3:24-25) God didn't overlook your sins, lest he
endorse them. He didn't punish you, lest he destroy you. He instead found a way
to punish the sin and preserve the sinner. Jesus took your punishment and mine,
and God gave us credit for Jesus' perfection. Incredible.
We aren’t told
how the first Barabbas responded to the gift of freedom. Maybe he scorned it
out of pride, or refused it out of shame. We don't know. But you can determine
what to do with yours. You can personalize it. As long as the cross is God's
gift to the world, it will touch you but not change you. Precious as it is to
proclaim, "Christ died for the world," it’s much sweeter to whisper,
"Christ died for me."
"For my sins he died."
"He took my place on the
cross." "He carried my
sins, today's hard-heartedness." "Through the cross he claimed,
cleansed, and called me."
"He felt my shame and spoke my name."
Be the Barabbas
who says, "Thank you." Thank God for the day Jesus took your place,
for the day grace happened . . . to you.
Grace,
Randy
No comments:
Post a Comment