I Am Barabbas

I wake up with things on my mind. Sometimes words. Sometimes melodies that feel like they found me instead of the other way around.

This morning it was a song… I Am Barabbas.

So I opened a story I thought I already knew. I’ve read it a hundred times. I could’ve quoted it without looking.

But today, the truth didn’t inform me. It undid me.

His name wasn’t just Barabbas.

It was Jesus Barabbas.

Bar meaning son.

Abba meaning father.

Jesus, son of the father.

And suddenly the trial wasn’t ancient. It became personal.

Two Jesuses stood before the crowd. Two sons. Two choices.

One looked like them. Breathed like them. Sinned like them…

He was familiar.

He didn’t ask them to change. He didn’t ask them to kneel. Didn’t have others look too closely at their own hearts..  He let sin stay comfortable… Wrapped it in justification, and called it freedom.

On the other side stood Jesus.. quiet, bruised, unarmed. The Son of the Father.

The One who healed what no one else could touch and who spoke truth like fire. The One who didn’t just forgive sin, but demanded it be left behind. He exposed them..

The crowd didn’t choose evil over good.

They chose comfort over transformation.

They chose the Jesus who required nothing

over the Jesus who would change everything.

They chose a mirror instead of the miracle.

And I wish I could say that was just their failure. That they chose wrong, but I see myself in that crowd. Because we are still asking for the same thing.

A God who blesses but never disciplines.

A Savior who forgives but never confronts. Inheritance without walking in obedience.

We demand obedience from our children while negotiating it with God. We want grace that costs us nothing and freedom that never asks us to die.

And still… Jesus steps aside.

Still the guilty walked free. Still the man who was innocent shouldered the cross.

The false “son of the father” is released and the true Son of the Father is crucified.

Not because love lost, but because love chose substitution.

The crowd shouted and Jesus stood silent.

He didn’t force their choice He just took the weight of it…

Because He knows how human we are. How often we choose what feels familiar over what would make us new.

And even now… two Jesuses still stand before us.

One who lets us stay the same and one who will remake us.

One who reflects us and one who redeems us.

The cross has already been carried.

The nails have already been driven.

The sacrifice has already been made.

But the question was never whether He was willing to be crucified.

The question is whether we are.

Are we willing to carry a cross that has our name on it? To crucify our own flesh, our comfort, our pride, our hidden negotiations with sin?

Are we willing to let the Jesus who doesn’t mirror us expose us… Change us… Lead us where we wouldn’t choose to go on our own?

Because the crowd’s decision echoes forward in time not as history, but as invitation.

And the question remains, hovering in the air, unanswered.

Do we want a Savior who died for us…

or a Lord we’re willing to go to the cross with?