While We Were Yet Sinners

Mark 15:6-15"Now it was the custom at the Feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested. A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did. "Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate, knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead. "What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked them. "Crucify him!" they shouted. "Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified."Barabbas was a leader of a Jewish uprising against Rome. He was a bandit revolutionary (lēstēs) John 18:40, Josephus, Eisenman). The name "Barabbas" is a Hellenized version of the Aramaic Bar-Abba (son of the father) which could both mean Son of God the Father or more plausibly, son of Abba (also a common name for man around that time, his son would also be called "Barabbas" in Greek). Also, another theory is that "Barabbas" may not have been the man's family name but a cognomen or even possibly a monicker (i.e., 'Mahatma' Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh) given to him by his followers in the rebellion he led. In any case, Barabbas was a rebel, it seems to symbolize us in one sense and in another sense, we are also symbolized in the crowds that called for Barabbas release and Jesus' crucifixion, and we can also see ourselves in Pilate. This shows how we are all responsible for the crucifixion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the apostle Peter said in Acts 2:23 that Jesus of Nazareth "was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, taken by lawless hands, have put him to death by nailing him to the cross" –One of the greatest interplays of God's sovreignty and humanity's free will. This is ultimately, and amazingly, foreordained in God's reconcilliation plan for humanity's rebellion, borne of our sacred gift of free will. This was the greatest act of Divine Justice ever carried out, done in "the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God" and for the highest purpose. Jesus' death on the cross secured the salvation of you and me, and countless millions and provided the only way God could forgive sin without compromising His holiness and perfect righteousness. Christ's death was God's perfect plan for the eternal redemption of His own. I just love this part of the Gospels; this is the Gospel — the Good News of Divine Exchange: http://youtu.be/PVZeQkJgVyYSome Trivia: In this movie "The Passion of the Christ," the director, Mel Gibson, was the one whose hands you see actually driving the nails through Christ's hands. He did it that way to remind himself, and everyone else, that it was our sins that nailed Jesus to the cross. (that sounds like what the painter Rembrandt usually does in his depictions of scenes from the Gospels, putting himself – the artist, in the situation.) Here's one of my other favorite paintings: "Ecce Homo" (Behold the Man, 1871) by Antonio Ciseri, where I added, vis-a-vis Barabbas as ourselves in a Divine Exchange, a very apt verse:
~01.09.2014