Twenty Borrowed Years and a Life I Do Not Deserve.

The Story of Barabbas and Everyone Who Has Ever Received Unearned Favor

Adapted from Matthew 27:15-26, Mark 15:6-15, Luke 23:18-25, John 18:39-40

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“So Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them; and he delivered Jesus, after he had scourged Him, to be crucified.” — Mark 15:15

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Twenty borrowed years.

That’s how long it has been since I was scheduled to die.

Twenty years ago today, I sat in a dark, dingy prison cell, breathing what should have been my last breaths and waiting patiently to hang lifeless on a prisoner’s death cross. It’s what I deserved. It’s what I had earned ever since the day I enlisted in the Sicarii, that most ferocious sect of zealots that carried the curved dagger concealed in our tunic, ready to take a life at any moment the opportunity presented itself.

I meant well, leading the insurrection against the Romans, trying to free my people from their oppression. As one of the most passionate of zealots, I always dreamed of climbing to the top, to have my name known among my people.

Barabbas - Aramaic for “son of the father.” What a fitting name to be carried by a great warrior. But the end never justifies the means. And rebellion, thievery, and murder were the means I chose to try to climb the ladder of fame.

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It landed me in that dark cell underneath Pilate’s mansion, hopeless and future-less, awaiting my own punishment by death. “An eye for an eye,” they say. That gets costly when you’ve taken another man’s life. Death was my fate, and only hours away, until He showed up on the scene.

Jesus rode into town just a day before Passover. I knew the tradition of the “Paschal privilege” was nigh, but I would have never imagined that I’d be the prisoner released in exchange for another, much less in exchange for an innocent victim of a brutal plot against his claim to be the Messiah.

The smell of that wretched cell never leaves you.

Rot and human waste.

Dried blood baked into stone by a Jerusalem sun that showed no mercy to men like me. I had memorized every crack in that wall over the weeks I’d sat waiting. I’d counted them a thousand times. I had run my finger over each of them to feel the texture, trying desperately to quiet the deep agony of knowing I was powerless. And attempting to ignore the memories of the look on that man’s face the day I strangled life out of him with my very own hands.

I wasn’t anything close to innocent. I felt the warmth of his blood on my skin. I looked into his eyes as they went dark. I told myself it was for the cause, for the people, for the liberation of Israel from Rome’s crushing heel. I told myself that so many times that I almost believed it.

Almost.

Deep down, I knew that it was for my own glory. I knew in the depths of my heart that I wasn’t fighting for the freedom of my people, but for the glory of hearing my name shouted among them. I was addicted to glory, but not the glory of our Father or my people. I was bloodthirsty for the glory of my name.

Barabbas - “son of the father.”

I heard the crowd gathering outside before I could make sense of what was happening. The Passover feast. The governor’s custom of the Paschal privilege. I had heard the rumors that Pilate would release one prisoner to appease the people. I pressed my face between the iron bars and listened. Voices. Hundreds of them. Then thousands. The kind of sound that vibrates through stone and finds the marrow of your bones.

I heard them shouting a name. It must be the name of the one who would be freed.

Jesus.

Of course, it would be Him. I had heard His name many times. Everyone had. The Galilean. The healer. The one who turned the world upside down with His teachings and stories. Even here, behind these walls, His name had traveled. One of the other men in the block swore he had seen Him give sight to a man born blind. I told him he was a fool; blind men don’t suddenly see. I told him it was trickery. A magician looking for fame.

I’ll never forget what I heard from the crowd next. I had heard it in my dreams dozens of times, but never in my ears. I had given up on the possibility, because I’d disqualified myself a hundred times over. But, right there in the darkness of the prison cell, I heard it shouted, though not for the reason I’d always imagined.

“Give us Barabbas,” shouted one of the religious leaders of the Sanhedrin.

And then the crowd.

“Barabbas. Barabbas! BARABBAS!“

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Not once. Over and over. Like a drumbeat. Like a war cry. Like the sound of something I couldn’t yet comprehend. For a split second, I thought they were honoring me. And then reality hit.

They must have been preparing to celebrate my execution. The time had come, and my end was at hand. I kneeled beside the chains that held my feet in bondage. Images of my childhood began to flood my mind. Floating in the salty Dead Sea with my siblings. Lying in my mother’s arms late at night, feeling the warmth of a mother’s acceptance. Tears began to fall upon the dry dust of the prison cell floor.

The guard’s sandals scraped the floor outside my cell. The sound of keys. The groan of the door swinging open on its rusted hinge. I stood up, pressing my back against the far wall. Condemned men learn quickly that when a door opens unexpectedly, it rarely means good news.

The guard diverted his eyes from mine when he spoke.

“You’re free.”

Two words. I laughed at him. I thought it was a cruel joke, the kind soldiers play on the men they despise. I looked up at him and waited for him to laugh at me in disdain. But he reached in and grabbed my arm. I stumbled forward into the corridor. Into the light.

“What happened?” I demanded. “What is this?”

“The crowd chose you, sleazeball.” He shoved me forward, and my face hit the ground.

The crowd chose me.

I stood in the street and squinted at the sun I hadn’t seen in weeks. My legs were weak. My lungs burned with the first breath of open air. I could hear the crowd still chanting somewhere ahead, past the Praetorium. The shouting had shifted. The tone was darker now, angrier. Like a dangerous storm rising in the west, bringing death along with it.

I wanted to run away. Instead, I walked toward it. I don’t know why. Some invisible draw I couldn’t name.

I pushed through the edges of the crowd until I could see the platform. And there stood a man, mostly naked, beaten and bloody, with some thorny crown pierced into his head.

I had expected a brutal criminal. A hardened face and piercing eyes. A man who looked like he deserved the choice over a murderer like me. Instead, I saw a man already broken. His face was a wreck of blood and bruising. He was barely standing. And he looked so… I remember my mind searching for the word even as I stood there. He looked so INNOCENT.

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He wasn’t looking at the crowd. He wasn’t looking at Pilate. He was looking somewhere I couldn’t discern. Somewhere peaceful that had no business existing in the middle of all that chaos and cruelty. It appeared his body was giving up, but something else inside him, maybe His soul, was full of joyful anticipation. Whatever it was seemed to be giving him unimaginable hope in the midst of such torment.

“Crucify Him!” The crowd roared behind me, and I felt the sound rattle my chest.

Crucify Him. Crucify Him. Crucify Him.

A wave of nausea broke over me. I gripped the shoulder of the man next to me to keep from sinking to the ground. Because in that moment, I understood that I was the one who deserved to be standing in his place. This man, this innocent man, was about to experience the most brutal death Rome had to offer. And it was the death that I had earned.

I had taken a life, and somehow, in a transaction I could not explain, His life was being taken for mine.

I watched them lead Him away. I watched the cross laid upon those torn and bleeding shoulders. The crowd surged, and I stood still. I felt like a deserted island in the middle of it all. A man who should have been dead, watching a man who should have been free, marching toward a hill I should have been ascending.

I followed at a distance. I don’t know what I was looking for. Maybe I owed him my presence. Maybe I owed him that much. Maybe it would honor Him if I’d just take this journey alongside Him.

I watched Him fall. I watched them drive the nails. I watched Him lifted up against a rumbling grey sky. And I stood at the foot of that terrible hill, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to look away.

He looked down once, and I was sure His eyes met mine.

I don’t know why I feel certain He saw me, like REALLY saw me. Among all those faces, among all that screaming and sneering and weeping. That look. That same look I’d seen on the platform. I can’t begin to explain this to you, but whether I saw his lips move or not, I know in the deepest places of my heart that I FELT HIM SMILE.

And His eyes. Peace. Unbearable, inexplicable peace.

“It Is Finished.”

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After the hill went silent and they took his body down, things got deafeningly quiet for me too. I cried hundreds of tears in the days that followed, sitting alone with my new freedom and the unbearable weight of what it actually cost.

Three days later, it still wasn’t quiet. The city was still turned upside down. The tomb was empty. The stories were spreading like fire among dead evergreens. I heard them all. Every one of them. As a matter of fact, I sought them out. A man who didn’t even know who I was grabbed me outside the market and told me He was alive, that He had appeared to hundreds of people.

I didn’t argue with him. How could I?

I had stood at the foot of that cross. I had looked into those eyes. Something had happened there that my words are not eloquent enough to describe, something that cracked open the hard, calloused shell I had built around myself during years of fighting and scheming and killing for causes I told myself were holy.

I am Barabbas. Insurrectionist. Murderer. A man condemned by his own choices, who stood in a cell that smelled like the beginning of death.

And now I am free. At the cost of this innocent life.

Not because I earned it. Not because I deserved it. Not because the crowd suddenly discovered I was a good man worth saving. I am free because someone else stepped into the sentence that had my name on it, and He did it without a word of protest. Without lifting a finger to defend Himself. Without blaming His past, His enemies, or the system that wrongfully took His life.

I still don’t understand it. Maybe I never will, not completely, not in this life. But I know this, I spent years trying to liberate myself and everyone around me through force. Through fire. Through blood. Through my own power. And all it bought me was a stone cell and a death sentence.

He did what I could never do. In one moment. On one hill. For me.

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AND FOR YOU!

There’s a question I can’t shake loose, and I think you might be carrying it too. I’ve been carrying it for twenty years now on borrowed time.

If you knew that someone innocent had stepped into the punishment that was meant for you, taken your sentence, carried your weight, died your death, what would you do with the borrowed years you were given in return?

How are you going to use your borrowed time? Because you, too, friend, deserve death. And you, too, received life you didn’t deserve the day you bowed before that cross and recognized He was dying for YOU.

The spiritual life you now have, you attained in the same moment I received my unmerited bonus years. The moment he died a criminal’s death. During the three days he lay in the borrowed tomb. And it was sealed the moment Life surged back into his motionless, spiritless physical body.

What will you do with your remaining earthly life, co-criminal?

How will you respond to the gift of life you didn’t earn?

It’s in your hands. Just like my response is in my hands. I choose to return to Him the gratitude and service He earned by giving me life that I didn’t deserve.

Let’s together offer all that we have back to Him in response to His gift of all that we weren’t able to provide for ourselves.

Thank You, Jesus, for my twenty borrowed years!