The Friday before Easter Sunday – The Guilty Set Free, the Innocent Slaughtered
Nothing would be good about Good Friday if it were not for the glorious victory on Sunday. Because of Easter, Friday’s cross is actually good. For you and me Friday’s cross is the greatest event of history. Because it was on that cross that the punishment for our sin was paid.
Reading
the events of the Friday of Passion Week brings to light a great diversity of
characters. Picture each one in your
mind. There is Pilate the politician who
tries to please both groups, the crucifiers and the crucified, vainly washing
his hands. There is Pilate’s wife who warns
her husband not to give Jesus up. There
is Judas who shows his true colors and dies a violent death. There is Simon who helps bear the cross. There are the Pharisees who are careful not
to break their ceremonial laws while murdering the innocent Messiah. There is Peter, warming his hands, who denies
and cries. There are the women who watch
and weep from a distance, faithful to the end.
There is the conversation of the two thieves on either side of Jesus –
one believes the other dies in unbelief.
There are the Roman soldiers who mock and murder but in the end profess
Jesus as the Son of God.
And
there is Jesus. He silently bears it
all, crying at the last while the Father places the sin of the world on His
shoulders to kill Him in our stead. What
pain He bears on Friday! The pain of separation
that He felt cannot be overstated. None
has suffered so. None has born such
weight. And yet in His pain and
suffering He still… takes care of His earthly mother, witnesses to a dying
thief and gives Him confidence of eternal life, pleads with the Father to
forgive His murderers.
“Man
of Sorrows, What a Name!
For the Son of God who came.
For the Son of God who came.
Ruined
Sinners to reclaim.
Hallelujah
what a Savior!” (Philip Bliss)
Observe
one more person. He is in custody too,
just like Jesus; he is awaiting death.
His heart is racing. Perhaps now
he is regretting his actions. No doubt his
thoughts turn to what happens in death and how quickly he will face the end of
life. We don’t know much about him. From the text we learn that he is a murderer in
an insurrection against the government.
He was deserving of capital punishment.
And yet he is released. Read
again the Biblical account.
“Now at the feast he used to release for them any one
prisoner whom they requested. The man
named Barabbas had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists who had committed
murder in the insurrection. The crowd
went up and began asking him to do as he had been accustomed to do for
them. Pilate answered them, saying, ‘Do
you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?’ For he was aware that the chief priests had
handed Him over because of envy. But the
chief priests stirred up the crowd to ask him to release Barabbas for them
instead. Answering again, Pilate said to
them, ‘Then what shall I do with Him whom you call the King of the Jews?’ They shouted back, ‘Crucify Him!’ But Pilate said to them, ‘Why, what evil has
He done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Crucify Him!’ Wishing to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released
Barabbas for them, and after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be
crucified” (Mark 15:6-15).
More than any of those mentioned above, I identify with Barabbas. Because Jesus died, Barabbas went free. Jesus was his substitute. He was guilty and deserved to die; Jesus was
innocent and deserved to be set free. In
a real sense all of us deserved to die there.
Because we have all sinned, we all deserve the death and separation from
the Father that Jesus endured on the cross.
We are all Barabbas, deserving death while receiving life.
Thank
you Lord and Savior, Jesus, for taking my place on the cross and freeing me
from the curse of sin and death. Thank
you, Father, for sentencing your Son to death instead of me.
“Therefore there is now no condemnation (sentence of judgment) for those who are
in Christ Jesus. For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of
death. For what the Law could not do,
weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the
flesh” (Romans 8:1-3).
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