Jesus knew what He was getting into when, near the end of His earthly ministry, He determined to go to Jerusalem. After being betrayed by one of His own disciples, arrested and turned over to the authorities, Jesus was tried up to six times as Jewish and Roman authorities passed Him back and forth. There are a number of ironies that happen during these trials, but this post will focus on the comparison of Jesus and Barabbas.
One of the American Heritage Dictionary’s definitions for insurrection is “The act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.” This idea of insurrection is important in Jesus’ final trial before Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea and Samaria, who condemned Jesus to be crucified even though he saw no fault in Him.
An irony in this story is that there was a tradition whereby Pilate would release one prisoner as a way of doing the Jews a favor. Pilate asked the crowd whether he should release Jesus or a man named Barabbas, and the crowd insisted on Barabbas. Who is Barabbas? He was an insurrectionist and murderer. He had been involved in a plot started in Jerusalem to overthrow Roman rule.[1] The irony is that the charge against Jesus according to the Jewish leaders was that He was “misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.”[2] Anyone in Caesar’s realm claiming to be king was revolting against Roman authority. In other words, they were accusing Jesus of insurrection, while asking for the release of a man who had actually participated in an insurrection. This is also strange because one of the reasons the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus as Messiah was that He wasn’t actually going to revolt against Rome. They didn’t like that Jesus was not an insurrectionist.
Why did Pilate agree with the crowd about releasing Barabbas? Pilate was a man under higher authorities in the Roman empire, and one way he could lose his position is if he didn’t effectively silence any opposition to Rome. When the crowd grew more and more belligerent in their crying out for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be crucified, there was a risk of riots or even a larger uprising. Therefore, to keep from attracting unwanted attention and criticism from his superiors, Pilate decided to let the crowd have its way. Barabbas was released instead of Jesus because of what? The threat of an insurrection by this crowd.
There’s even another layer to this when we consider who Jesus is and what the name “Barabbas” means. Jesus is the only human ever who never participated in a revolt against the highest authority, His Father. He, the Son of God the Father, was condemned to die in place of an actual insurrectionist, Barabbas, whose name means “son of father.” Since everyone has a father, the meaning of the name Barabbas could apply to anyone. So symbolically, Jesus died in place of someone whose name represents everyone, or all of us, so we could be sons of the Father. In summary, Jesus was killed in place of an actual insurrectionist because the Jewish leaders didn’t like that He wasn’t really an insurrectionist but accused Him of being one anyway. This all happened in spite of the fact that Jesus is the only person ever to not commit insurrection against the highest authority, God the Father.
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 