A BANDIT, a highwayman, a murderer from lust of murder Barabbas was not. He had been caught in an uproar, and in the confusion of that uproar he had stabbed some one.
You well understand, that people rather see a common murderer behind bars, than as freeman with his dagger in the girdle in the street. Had Barabbas been nothing but a blood-thirsty bravo, the cry of the people: “Release unto us Barabbas” (Luke 23:18) would have been unnatural; and you can not psychologically explain it.
But the matter assumes an altogether different aspect, if Barabbas was a sort of patriotic hero of the people.
As is self-evident, especially on the part of the lower classes in Jerusalem, the relation with the Roman occupation was strained. Elsewhere in Canaan also people took offence at the Roman uniform, but yet in Caesarea or Joppe this uniform grieved the Jew by no means as much, as within the holy walls of Jerusalem.
No uncircumcised had ever been permitted to come within the holy precinct. Now they were not only there, but they were there with authority, and ruthlessly they took out the heart of all Israel’s national expectations.
Jewish leaders saw the impossibility of casting off the Roman yoke. What could their defenceless band undertake against the sharply-drilled and strongly-weaponed legions? Help from outside could equally little be counted on. Rome had subjected everything to itself. There was no free Egypt, no Syria, even no Assyria any more.
Hence the head was bowed, and for the offended national feeling, diversion was sought in Pharisaic overspirituality.
But no such wise prudence prevailed in the back streets of Jerusalem. There, in suppressed anger, from inflated and brutal national pride they continued to rail at Rome and everything Roman; and this occasioned frequent riots, uproars on small scale, collisions between the common people and the garrison. At one of these lesser insurrections Barabbas had been the great man, the rough customer, who had fought with more impudence than any other, and who now in the eye of the populace sat incarcerated, as a martyr for the sacred Jewish cause.
So you understand, it needed but a word, to make the mob that stood before Gabbatha, as with one voice to call for the release of Barabbas.
The Galileans had sung the Hosanna for Jesus, but the Jerusalem mob called boisterously for Barabbas.
Without doubt, therefore, while Jesus died on Golgotha, the excitable mob provided the liberated Barabbas a jubilant entry into the neighborhood where he dwelt.
While Jesus breathed His last, Barabbas with the wanton people revelled at the banquet that had been hastily prepared.
What was the suffering of Jesus in this?
Did Jesus attach to this choice of the rabble so much significance, that the preference of this coarse mob for Barabbas grieved Him? To see a brutal man like Barabbas chosen above Himself, could this occasion Jesus pain? Did He not stand superior, to be affected by the scorn, which this choice implied?
Did not Jesus, Who knew what is in man, understand the noisy mob that stood before the house of judgment, and did He not know, that all the sympathy of that turbulent mass of people was bound to be with Barabbas, the moment the tone-giving priests encouraged them but a little.
True, to us as to the Evangelists, it is dreadful, that such a man, whose hand was stained with blood, was preferred above Jesus Who would shed His blood for us. More still, in that choice by human beings of the murderer above the Savior there is to our human sense something deeply disgraceful, something that bears witness against us, and casts us down from our imagined height, since it demonstrates so lamentably clearly, how little hold the noble and the pure, even in an appearance like that of Jesus, has upon the human heart.
But what puts us to shame and what disgraces us, is not the real suffering of the Man of Sorrows.
NO, that suffering lay elsewhere.
It lay in Pilate’s classing together of these two from among all his prisoners.
For Pilate knew well what he did. He chose these two on purpose. Of course he had heard of the royal manner in which Jesus with the Hosanna to the Son of David had been conducted into Jerusalem. In Jesus he saw another popular hero of the people. A man like Theudas, a man like Barabbas. One of these fiery patriots, who stirred up the national feeling of the Jew against Rome’s Emperor. And just because Jesus to him was a man like Barabbas, therefore he gave the people the choice between the two. Barabbas the people’s hero from the back streets, and Jesus the imagined king of the Jews, the people’s hero from the despised Galilee.
It is the proud Roman, who, strong because of the spears of his soldiers, laughs at that impotent Jewish crowd, and would exhibit his superior power by releasing one of their two popular favorites. And would not the people readily prefer Jesus? He indeed was called king. And how much more attractive was Jesus’ noble appearance compared with the rude personality of Barabbas.
It was not a whim, to put the Lord Jesus on one line with Barabbas. It was not the endeavor to place a man whom Jerusalem feared by the side of Jesus, thus surely to direct the choice upon Jesus.
No, Pilate saw in Jesus a kind of Barabbas and in Barabbas a kind of Jesus.
Jesus and Barabbas both were men, who had stirred up the national pride of the Jews against the Roman Emperor, and had plotted against the invincible power of the Roman eagle.
And when you fix your eye on this, you will realize, what constituted the suffering of Jesus in this scene between Himself and Barabbas.
Had it not been His endeavor all the days of His life upon earth, to exorcise that false spectre which haunted His people? Had not at every step of His way, this false expectation of Israel barred His way and frustrated the coming of His Kingdom?
All prophecy had foretold His spiritual Kingdom, but Israel had become dull and obtuse. They had eyes, but saw not. Seeing they did not observe. They had falsified everything. They had put the false image of their earthly, narrow Jewish expectation before the spiritual image of prophecy.
Therefore they did not recognize the Messiah in Jesus; for in nothing was He like what they imagined.
And therefore every time again they had invoked that false spectre of their own carnal expectation against Jesus. Had He been willing to be the incarnation of that false spectre, they would have knelt at His feet.
This was intended when we read, that they wanted to make Jesus king; and Jesus had to evade that false spectre and flee into solitude. And when He refuses to be the incarnation of that false spectre, they take up stones to stone Him.
With that false spectre of a Jewish national hero who would oppose Rome, Jesus was pursued even in His own circle. How greatly Peter annoyed Jesus with that false spectre, so that He had to rebuke him, saying: “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Salome also vexed our Lord with it. In Gethsemane it was still the same.
It was all the work of the Tempter, who already in the wilderness had held up this false spectre as a tempting figure before Jesus’ eye. For thee all this earthly glory, if thou wilt kneel down and worship me.
The whole effort of Jesus ministry had been to redeem Israel from that demon. To make His people see how they deceived themselves. To open the eye of His followers to prophecy, and thereby to His true spiritual figure as king, and so to make the majesty to shine forth of the grace of God, Who had given His dear Son to the world, not to liberate a Jewish people, but to save that world forever.
And yet, all this would have been of comparatively little moment, if at least in the hour of His bitterest suffering when He must accomplish His decease, this evil, false spectre had no longer vexed Him.
But, alas, this even could not be.
When in Gethsemane Peter draws the sword, it is again the selfsame effort to force this false spectre upon Jesus, and to compel Jesus, not to be Himself, not to be the Savior of the world, but the incarnation of that evil demon, and the false messiah.
When He stands before Caiaphas, they curse Him and spit Him in the face, because under oath He had repelled that false spectre by the revelation of His spiritual Messiahship.
And when finally He came before Pilate He must face again the selfsame bitter ordeal, and with His spiritual kingship shake off the kingship of that false spectre that was forced upon Him.
Would this be the end?
Would He, now that He must die, at least be permitted to die as the true Messiah?
Or would they persecute Him, even till His death, even upon the Cross, with that false spectre?
Thus the question stood; and now comes Pilate with his Barabbas, and in this Barabbas there appears at length that false spectre incarnate as it were standing by the side of Jesus.
Yea, such an one, like this Barabbas, the people wanted Jesus to be, and with this incarnation of the false messiah Pilate places Jesus on one line.
See, said he to the people, I have two men under arrest. Both are the incarnation of your national pride. Jesus and Barabbas; whom do you choose?
So is Jesus pursued till His very death by that false, that demoniac spectre of the carnal messiah. No right is done to Him. They force upon Him what He is not, what He can not be, and will not be. And for what He is, no one has eye or ear.
He who would have redeemed Israel from that false spectre as from their curse, must suffer it, must endure it—as though He Himself had willed to be that false spectre—to be persecuted with His own caricature unto the death.
And when He hangs on the Cross, the superscription over His head still proclaims that false spectre to be Him.
And now, in that Barabbas, the incarnation of that false spectre, in such a revolting form, stands by the side of Him.
And Pilate says: Jesus or Barabbas, they are both the same.
More dreadful still, the people answer: If both are the same, then rather a Barabbas.
For us Barabbas, with Jesus to the Cross.