THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY: Free from Condemnation

He was “guilty as sin.” There was no doubt he deserved to be on death row. No one would miss him. He was a cut throat—a cold, cruel, calculating killer—lawless from his youth and incorrigible in adulthood. But, as he neared the day of his execution, his outward bravado only masked his inward terror. Death would come with the echoes of the prison guard’s steps resounding on the stone floor. A rattling key in a lock, the squeal of iron hinges as a heavy door swings upon—a portal into darkness.

Would he feel pain? How intense? How long would it last? His brutish hands that had been used to steal someone else’s possessions and that had squeezed the life out of helpless victims were now as clammy as those belonging to a corpse—a corpse—that’s what he would soon be. He rubbed his neck and felt beads of sweat trickling down—little rivers of fear tracing a path down to—to where? Hell? If hell existed, that was his impending fate. No doubt about that. As a caged animal he began to pace back and forth in the small cell—faster, faster, trying to find a way out of the panic. His heart pounded—doom, doom, doom—quicker, louder.

Then he was paralyzed by what he heard. Crowds were gathering. These would be the gawkers who lived for the moment of seeing justice fall—a morbid curiosity that magnetically pulled them to the public spectacle of blood. The numbers were growing, the murmuring building from a low hum, into a rising tide of noise—and then silence. Following that, there was a certain ebb and flow of sound.

One distant voice spoke. He could almost make out the words, but no—what was he saying? Then like a knife stabbing into his throbbing chest, he heard the mob cry in unison, “Barabbas! Barabbas!” They were calling his name.

Then he heard the lone voice—the obscure muttering lying on the threshold of comprehension—and next the choral response to this hidden conductor, building to a crescendo, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Like a rogue wave, the words broke over him, washing him into a place of numbness. The room began to swim and his knees buckled. Vomit came erupting out of his mouth, and then blackness.

How long? Minutes, seconds? He awoke with a start as he heard the hobnail boots pounding down the corridor, drawing ever near. A nightmare. I’m awake. A nightmare alright—a real one—and so, this is how it ends. Yet, the thought that was immersing him ever closer in insanity was this, “I’m going to hell!”

His former bravado was gone—vanished like the end of the key as it was thrust into the rusty lock. The guard grunted and strained a bit, as the massive door opened to—freedom! Had he heard correctly? Impossible! He had lost his mind. “Get out! You’re free!” A cruel joke—one last game the executioner plays. Just a little more torment of the helpless rat in a trap. Then his chains were removed from his chaffed wrists and he was kicked—forcefully—in the rear, “Go, you scum! A better man than you is dying in your place today!”

Wonder of it all! The pieces of the puzzle were fit together by him later. The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, had given the crowd a choice, “Do you want me to release to you, Jesus, called the Christ or Barabbas?” That’s when he heard the crowd call his name, “Barabbas!” Next Pilate asked the bloodthirsty band, “What do you want me to do with Christ?” What Barabbas thought, that the crowd was calling for him to suffer, was aimed at another, “Crucify Him!”

I am Barabbas. So are you, if you are indeed a Christian. Jesus bore the condemnation we deserved and because of this we are free, and thus Paul writes, “There is therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!” (Romans 8:1)