During Holy Week we can feel varying levels of familiarity, and discomfort, with some of the characters we come across: Judas who betrays Jesus, Peter who denies him, the chief priests who despise him, Herod who mocks him, the people who call for his crucifixion, Pilate who appeases the mob and washes his hands, and Barabbas who is guilty but gets to go free whilst Jesus the innocent one is condemned.

In Luke 23 it’s interesting to note that Pilate declares Jesus’ innocence three times in vs15-22:

Vs15: “Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him.”

Vs 20: “Pilate addressed them once more, desiring to release Jesus…”

Vs 22: “A third time [Pilate] said to them, ‘Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death.’”

Three times in eight verses Pilate points to Jesus’ innocence. Pilate cannot find Jesus guilty of anything deserving death. But it’s not only in these eight verses. Throughout Ch 23, Luke continues to draw our attention to Jesus’ innocence. We might even call it the major theme of his version of the story. At the beginning of the chapter, in verse 4, Pilate had already said, “I find no guilt in this man.” Then verses 14–15 reflect back on what has already happened.

Not only had Pilate previously declared Jesus innocent (verse 4), but also Herod had. So, Pilate says in verses 14–15: “You brought me this man as one who was misleading the people. And after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us.”

Just after Pilate has said, “Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him,” Luke tells us in verses 18–19, “But they all cried out together, ‘Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas’.

It is Barabbas who is the guilty one, says Luke, “A man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder.” Barabbas is the same man called “a notorious prisoner” in Matthew 27:16, and Mark 15:7 tells us that Barabbas was “among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection.”

Rebellion is the precise thing the leaders and the people are charging Jesus with when they say he is “misleading the people” (verse 14) and “saying that he himself is Christ, a king” (verse 2). And murder is an offense that makes it clear that Barabbas not only deserves to be in prison, but he deserves death. Barabbas is no mere offender in rehab, but a murderer on Death Row.

Luke then reiterates for us Barabbas’s guilt in verse 25. “[Pilate] released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder …” In other words, remember Barabbas’s sin. He’s guilty as charged.

One way we could summarize Barabbas’s plight would be to say that he is guilty of rebellion deserving death. In contrast with Jesus, who Pilate says in verse 22 has “no guilt deserving death,” Barabbas is the guilty one who deserves to die but he was given life because of Jesus.

I wonder how much you can identify with Barabbas. I am the one so clearly guilty and deserving of condemnation but set free because of the willing substitution of the Son of God in my place. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” Jesus says in Mark 2:17. “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

A Prayer for Barabbas
O God of mercy,
You saw the man whose chains were loosed while Innocence was bound.
You let the guilty walk into the sun while the Lamb was led to slaughter.
Barabbas – a name heavy with the weight of all our names,
a shadow in which we all have stood.
He did not ask for grace, yet grace found him.
He did not seek the cross, yet Another bore it in his place.
Lord, teach us to tremble at such mercy.
Let the shock of unearned freedom break our pride,
and the memory of the Righteous One’s silence soften our hearts.
May we, like the man released, walk into the light not as fugitives,
but as the found bearing the mark of a love that chose us over its own breath.
Amen.

NB. We don’t really know what happened to Barabbas afterwards but I wonder if you can remember the film, Barabbas starring Anthony Quinn?  In this film, Barabbas becomes a Christian because of his experience of being a condemned man set free by an innocent man who didn’t deserve to die. It may not be true, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility, is it?

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