Give us Barabbas!

"Kill him! Give us Barabbas!"                                   

 Luke 23:18–19

It echoes in my failure: You’re free.

It sings over my sin: You are loved, not because of who you are, but because of who He is.

 

Every time I read those words, they land heavy on my heart. Heavier now than ever before. Not just because of the injustice, though that alone is enough to crush the soul—but because of how clear, how final, how devastating the crowd’s choice was.

Two men stood before them.

One was a healer. A teacher. A man who fed the hungry, welcomed the outcast, spoke peace to storms, and whispered forgiveness into broken hearts. Jesus.

The other—a thief. A liar. A murderer. A man whose name was tied to violence and insurrection. A man imprisoned because he had stirred rebellion and shed blood. Barabbas.

And yet... they chose Barabbas.

I’ve wrestled with this story for years. As a student of the Bible. As a pastor. As someone who longs to live faithfully. But this year, something in it pierced me in a new way. Not from a distance. Not as a theological idea. But close—uncomfortably close. It was as if the Spirit whispered: “Don’t just look at Jesus in this story. Look at Barabbas. Look at yourself.”

I paused. I couldn’t turn away.

Barabbas didn’t deserve to walk free. And he knew it. His crimes were known. His sentence was ready. He didn’t beg for grace. He didn’t confess. He simply stood there, shackled by the consequences of who he had become. And yet, when the crowd shouted for a prisoner to be released, it was his name they screamed.

Not Jesus. Barabbas.

That moment—what a scandal. Jesus, holy and blameless, is handed over to be crucified. Barabbas, guilty and condemned, is unchained.

And something inside me aches with the wrongness of it.

But then—another voice within. Gentle. Relentless. This is the gospel. This is what grace looks like. This is what it cost.

Barabbas is not a name in someone else’s story. He is a mirror in mine.

I know what it means to be a thief—stealing moments from God to serve my own comfort, snatching glory for myself when it belongs to Him. I know what it means to lie—not always in words, but in the way I sometimes present myself, pretending to be more holy, more whole, more surrendered than I really am. And I know the murder of the heart—that quiet, cutting resentment that Jesus said is as deadly as a sword.

Barabbas is closer than I’d like to admit.

And yet... I am set free.

That’s the scandal of substitution. Jesus took my place—not just in theory, but in flesh and blood. The cross was not abstract. It was brutal, and it was real. And it was mine. But Jesus stepped into it, not because I earned it, not because I repented first, but because love made the first move.

I often wonder what Barabbas did after that day. Scripture leaves his story hanging. Did he pause to look back at the man who took his cross? Did he hear the hammer on the nails and realize that those blows were meant for him? Or did he run, disappear, vanish into the shadows, unchanged?

We don’t know. And maybe that silence is the question.

What do we do with grace when it finds us?

That question haunts me, especially when I think of all the times I’ve tried to live like I still belong in prison. Like the chains were never broken. Like I need to earn my release, even though it was already given.

Sometimes, I still carry the guilt of Barabbas. I still flinch at the thought of being chosen. I still wonder, why me?

And then I remember: grace isn’t about me. It never was. It’s about the One who loved me while I was still a thief. Still a liar. Still a murderer in thought and heart.

It’s about Jesus.

And the beauty of the gospel is that Jesus didn’t just die for Barabbas. He died instead of him. In his place. In my place.

When the crowd shouted “Give us Barabbas,” they unknowingly shouted the heartbeat of heaven. Give us the guilty, and take the blameless. Give us the rebel, and take the King. Let the sinner go, and let the Son be crucified.

This is not justice. It’s grace.

And that grace still speaks today.

It whispers in my shame: You’re forgiven.

Barabbas may not have understood what happened that day. But I do.

And I refuse to waste it.

So I walk forward—not in shame, but in awe. Not trying to earn what’s been freely given, but learning, slowly, how to live in response to it.

Because Jesus didn’t just die for the good and the grateful.

He died for Barabbas.

He died for me.

                                                                            Happy Easter!