Mark 15:6-15 (NIV): Now it was the custom at the Feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 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.
“What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
“Crucify him!” they shouted.
“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
Pilate was no dummy. He knew that the chief priests had brought Jesus to him, not because He posed any real threat to the authority of Rome (When had the chief priests ever been concerned about challenges to Rome’s authority?), but because they wanted Pilate to do their dirty work for them by getting rid of someone that they found a challenge to their own authority.
When the people asked Pilate to continue his annual tradition of releasing one prisoner at the Passover, he figured that this would be the perfect avenue to free Jesus, and to stymie the plans of the Jewish leaders. After all, Pilate didn’t live in a box! He had heard of Jesus, and knew that, even though He was hated by the Jewish leaders, he was overwhelmingly popular with the common people.
But the chief priests had already been at work among the crowds, urging them to ask Pilate to release Barabbas (a man who really was guilty of sedition) instead of Jesus. In one of the most stunning turn of events in history, God’s people chose a known murderer over the giver of eternal life. They chose a rebel over the Son of the very God that they claimed to serve.
This left Pilate in a quandary. If he released Barabbas, what was he to do with Jesus? He could have simply released Him on the grounds that He had not been proven guilty of anything. But instead, Pilate asked the crowd what should be done. The crowd had already been turned into a mob by the chief priests; a mob that could be easily manipulated. So when Pilate looked to them for reason, he got back manipulated passion instead: “Crucify Him!”
Pilate was stunned. This really put him into a nasty corner. This crowd that had been turned into a mob was quickly threatening to become a riot, and that was the last thing in the world that he wanted. He had already been put on notice by the Emperor for the harsh way in which he had put down a couple of previous insurrections. One more strike, and he was out!
Pilate tried to reason with them. Crucifixion was a terrible thing to do to anyone, the most painful method of execution ever devised by sinful mankind. Pilate’s argument to the crowd was that Jesus had not been convicted of any crime, let alone one that deserved death by crucifixion. But the crowd was now beyond the point of logic. The steady chant of “Crucify Him” grew and grew until it overpowered Pilate’s voice, and finally overpowered His resolve.
Even though he knew that he was being manipulated, Pilate decided that the easiest path was to placate the crowd. It might be a miscarriage of justice (he could comfort himself by thinking that maybe Jesus really was guilty of something, even if he didn’t know what it was), but it was, after all, only one man. And what is one man in the grand scheme of things? So Pilate issued two orders. On released Barabbas from prison, and the other sentenced Jesus to be flogged, and then crucified.
Father, it is easy to believe that this was a gross miscarriage of justice, when the guilty one was set free and the innocent one was sentenced to death. But isn’t that really the gospel in a nutshell? When I receive salvation by receiving Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I am Barabbas, the guilty one who, for no good of my own, suddenly finds that I have been released from my own death sentence, set free from the bondage of sin. And, in my place, Jesus, the spotless, sinless Lamb of God, suffers and dies. So really, Lord, this was not a miscarriage of justice after all. It is instead an amazing picture of Your salvation, painted on the way to the cross. Thank You, Lord, for that amazing love, that amazing grace, that saves a wretch, a Barabbas, like me. Amen.