What Do I Have in Common With Barabbas?

I do not typically think or necessarily want to focus on Barabbas, (the murderer who was chosen to take Jesus's place on the cross), at the time I am trying to focus on Jesus's resurrection. However, this year, I find myself with so many questions about this man.

Any time I have considered Barabbas, it has been in context of the crowds choosing him over Jesus, and how the world today makes the similar decision - evil over righteousness. I have never given too much thought to Barabbas in any other way, until now.

What do I have in common with Barabbas?

Jesus took Barabbas's place.

Here are the questions I pose out of pure curiosity:

• Did Barabbas ever give a second thought to the man who took his place?

• What were his first actions were when he was released?

• What were his thoughts when (/if) he heard others claim Jesus had risen from the grave?

  Did he ever believe this news? Was he worried for his own life? Was he worried of what Jesus would do if He ever found Barabbas? Was he worried of running into Jesus? Was he angry others were claiming the man who took his place was really alive?

• Did he go to watch the crucifixion of Jesus, to gloat & mock His suffering or to ensure someone really did take his place?

• Did he ever truly & fully realize the depth of Jesus’s actions?

• Did he ever come to realize that Jesus chose to give His life & was not simply forced to replace Barabbas against His will?

• Did he ever feel truly pardoned or did he struggle with knowing he never deserved pardoning?

• Say Barabbas went back into a life of crime and was arrested again. Did he ever think back on that time a man took his place on the cross and wonder if that man’s life was taken in vain? Here, he had been miraculously set free from facing death, yet he had turned back to what got him there in the first place.

• Did he ever feel unworthy? Or did he look back and laugh because those foolish crowds chose him, a murderer, to be set free?

• Say he redeemed his ways & turned over a new leaf. Did he ever testify to others of how a man once died in his place and how that was what changed his life?

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Now let’s reflect on our own lives.

Ask those questions about ourselves.

Jesus took OUR place.

• Do we ever give a second thought to the One who took our place?

• What were our actions when we were able to grasp the reality of what Jesus did for us?

• Do we live as though we know Jesus died for our sins so that we did not have to live in them any longer?

• Do our lives reflect our knowledge of the hope He gave us by rising three days later?

• Have we ever tried to fully grasp the gravity of Jesus’s actions? What He willfully endured with us in mind?

• Do we ever feel truly pardoned or do we struggle with knowing we never deserved pardoning in the first place?

• Have we ever gone back into a life of sin? Have we ever tried to satisfy ourselves with things Jesus died for - died to save us from?

• Do we ever put the cross to shame by willfully choosing sin? Choosing lukewarmness? Choosing to not prioritize Him?

• Say we are saved & living for Him. Do we ever testify of how our Savior died in our place & that was what changed our life? In what ways does our life testify? In what ways do our words testify?

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While I do not care to focus on Barabbas too much during this celebration of our Savior’s Resurrection, I do believe it is an important and symbolic element of this story.

I do hope we will let these questions help us reflect on our own lives & how we view & honor Jesus’s taking our place.

I deserved to be on that cross. Sometimes that weighs more heavily than others, but it is true all the time. We are never in a place of deserving what He did for us.

I can do nothing to deserve what He did, nothing to fully repay Him. But I do know that He died so that I did not have to be a sinner, but could become a forgiven child of God.

I still make mistakes.

There are times I even willfully choose sin and have to repent.

There are times when I wish I could’ve died on that cross instead.

But even though I can never repay His sacrifice, I want my life to reflect the One who signed my pardon.

So, what do we have in common with Barabbas?

I will let you decide this for yourselves. We can certainly all do our own reflecting.

I do know that Jesus took our place on the cross in the same way he took Barrabas's. In the same way a murderer deserved to pay for his sins, we deserve to pay for our's. But knowing this, Jesus chose to become the ultimate sacrifice - to die in our place!

If the story ended there, it would be tragic, heartbreaking, hopeless. But we know that Jesus conquered death by rising from the grave three days later, just as He promised.

There is hope for us all today - every single one of us!

No matter what you may have done, no matter how far you may have gone, there is always an abundance of grace reaching out to you. Jesus already paid the debt for your sins. All you have to do is repent and accept his gift of forgiveness.

What ever happened to Barrabas? We may never know on this side of heaven. But we can take what we do know, along with our curiosities, and use them to reflect on our own lives.

Mentions of Barabbas in the Bible (11 times):

Mat 27:16, 27:17, 20-21, 26

Mark 15:7, 11, 15

Luke 23:18

John 18:40

Allyson Million

Passionate Introvert