Pause and Consider: A Picture of Grace

    I was reading Matthew 27 and 28 yesterday afternoon. Usually, reading that account and the matching accounts of Christ's crucifixion leave me with a white-knuckled grip on the table and an overwhelming sense of God's grace. Yesterday was no exception.  However, in addition to all that, something was brought to my attention I had not before noticed. I'm not going to try to establish a new theological point here; the following is mere speculation. However, if it was indeed intended as I saw it yesterday, it is a beautiful picture.

In Matthew 27, when Pilate asks the crowd whom they would rather he release, Jesus or Barabbas, they called for Barabbas and said of Jesus "Let him be crucified!" All of this is horrible enough, but it is even more so when we consider what Barabbas full name was.  He was Jesus Barabbas, Yeshua Bar Abba, Jesus Son of the Father.  So, if you like, we could say he is another Jesus, a fake, not the real one. So, in a sense, as we look at this picture, we have chosen the false Jesus rather than the true Son of God. (Yes, I say WE chose.  The idea that the Jews killed Jesus has been bandied about for centuries. That is false. Yes they were the tools on that day, but we have all rejected Him and those of us alive across 2,000 years up to today are just as guilty as those that said the actual words.)

But let us continue. They took Jesus and hung him between two thieves. These were not mere pickpockets, that type weren't usually crucified.  The word in the original text denotes a rebel and plunderer, a brigand. John MacArthur suggests they were probably cohorts of Barabbas. That was where I stopped and thought a while. Companions of Barabbas. Were these two brigands perhaps scheduled to be crucified with their fellow criminal Barabbas? Was Jesus, the real one, the Only Begotten Son of the true living God hanging between two rebels where Barabbas was supposed to have hung?  The innocent was taking the place if the guilty, while the guilty was set free. The innocent Lamb of God is crushed by the wrath of God, while we, the guilty, who should by all rights have been hanging there instead, go free. What a picture of God! Of His love, His justice, and His Grace.

"...And He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Isaiah 53:12