We Are All Barabbas (Mark 15:6–12)

The scene unfolds with stark irony: The innocent is condemned. The inscription nailed above his head declares a charge that belongs to the guilty who goes free.

Mark intends for us to feel the perversion of justice. But he also intends for us to see, beneath the injustice, something more profound. Mark tells us this story not merely as background to the crucifixion, but as a window into its meaning. And the longer we look through that window, the more we recognize ourselves in it.

Table of contents

The scene
The significance
1. The king who reigns by dying
2. The innocent who dies in place of the guilty

The scene

The Jewish religious establishment has delivered Jesus to Pilate for trial (Mark 15:1). Pilate realizes Jesus is innocent and that the religious leaders have handed Jesus over not out of genuine concern for Roman law but out of envy (15:10). Jesus’s popularity with the people had become a threat to their authority and influence (see 11:18; cf. 3:6; 12:2; 14:1–2).

So Pilate invokes Passover’s annual amnesty tradition as a convenient pretext to release Jesus. Every year at Passover, the Roman governor, as a means of pacifying his subjects, would let a single prisoner go free (Mark 15:6)—a fitting tradition, given that Passover itself celebrated Israel’s emancipation from slavery in Egypt. Pilate is hoping the crowd will pick Jesus. That way, he won’t have to condemn an innocent man and, at the same time, can avoid upsetting the Jerusalem establishment by declaring him guiltless.

Enter Barabbas. The text describes him as an insurrectionist and murderer (Mark 15:7). Judea had been seething with anti-Roman sentiment for decades. This one called Barabbas was likely a Jewish nationalist, a freedom fighter, who had taken up arms against the Roman overlords.

According to Matthew’s account, Pilate has the crowd choose between Jesus of Nazareth and another Jesus, called Barabbas (see Matt 27:16–17; cf. Mark 15:8–9). In other words, Pilate asks, Which Jesus will you choose,¹ Barabbas, meaning “son of father,” or Jesus of Nazareth, who the reader knows is the true Son of the Father?

Pilate’s plan backfires, though, when the chief priests stir up the crowd to call for Barabbas instead (Mark 15:11). Asking what then should be done with this Jesus, called “king of the Jews,” the crowd demands his crucifixion (15:12–13). Pilate knows Jesus is innocent: “Why? What evil has this man done?” he asks (15:14). Yet he goes along with it. “Wishing to satisfy the crowds” (15:15), he caves to the pressure. He has Jesus scourged and then delivers him over to be crucified (15:15).

Pilate makes the cowardly but politically pragmatic choice. He would rather crucify an innocent man than risk causing disruption, a disruption that could threaten his governorship. He’s as spineless as he is selfish. For Pilate, this perversion of justice is a small price to pay in order to keep the peace and placate the influential leaders of Jerusalem. What is one eccentric Jewish teacher? He washes his hands to rid himself of guilt, as if he can (Matt 27:24).

The significance

Two interlocking themes emerge in this scene that together reveal the meaning of Christ’s death.

1. The king who reigns by dying

Pilate distinguishes Jesus as one called “king of the Jews” (Mark 15:9, 12). In fact, in the span of just thirty-two verses, this epithet appears a total of six times:

• On the lips of Pilate (15:2, 9, 12)
• In the soldiers’ mockery (15:18)
• In the inscription of his charge nailed above his head on the cross (15:26)
• By the sneering religious leaders as he hangs dying (15:32)

This title, of course, is given disingenuously. It specifies Jesus’s alleged charge as a failed revolutionary. The soldiers and religious leaders mock him with it, and yet Mark intends for his audience to see the irony: They are all, despite their intentions, telling the truth.

Incidentally, the crowd’s preference for Barabbas over Jesus reflects the type of messiah they were looking for. They wanted someone who would answer Roman occupation with violent resistance, who would take the kingdom by force. Barabbas was that kind of man.

Jesus represents a different type of Messiah. He is Israel’s true Messiah, the one the prophets said would establish an eternal throne, crushing every opposing kingdom under his feet (Ps 2:1–9; Isa 11:4–5; Dan 2:44–46). Yet he does not achieve that kingdom the way Barabbas tried to seize it. Rather, he comes to suffer for his people. The crowd chose the wrong messiah, not because Jesus wasn’t a king, but because they couldn’t imagine a king who reigns by dying (so too Peter: Mark 8:31–33; 14:47–48).

The crowd chose the wrong messiah, not because Jesus wasn’t a king, but because they couldn’t imagine a king who reigns by dying.

The cross, therefore, is not where Jesus’s kingdom–mission comes to its tragic end, but where his kingship is most revealed. Though they meant to mock him, calling him a “king” as he hung on a cross, Mark’s readers know it’s actually true: Jesus reigns from the cross. It is precisely in being crucified that Jesus is enthroned. On Calvary, he establishes his kingdom.

2. The innocent who dies in place of the guilty

And this king is a king who dies in place of the guilty.

Observe the irony. Jesus is charged with challenging Caesar’s rule by setting himself up as “king of the Jews” (John 19:15). Whereas Jesus is falsely accused of insurrection, crucified with two would-be revolutionaries on his left and his right (Mark 15:27), Barabbas, who goes free, is actually guilty of that very thing. Jesus is condemned for crimes in the place of one who is actually guilty of them.

Manifestly guilty, Barabbas deserves to die. In contrast, the passage stresses Jesus’s innocence. When Pilate asks, “Why [crucify him]? What evil has he done?” (Mark 15:14), the crowds are unable to provide an answer, because Jesus has done no evil. He does not deserve to be crucified. Jesus quite literally dies as the innocent in place of the guilty.

Added to this, Mark may in fact include allusions to Isaiah’s suffering servant, who suffers on behalf of God’s people, bearing their guilt.

• Jesus’s blood is “poured out for many” (Mark 14:24; cf. Isa 53:12).
• As he stood before Pilate, he made no answer (Mark 15:4–5; see also 14:61). As Isaiah 53:7 says, “He opened not his mouth.”
• Repeatedly across his Gospel, including this passage, Mark says Jesus was delivered to die (3:19; 9:31; 10:33; 14:10, 11, 18, 21, 41, 42, 44; 15:1, 10, 15), the same word used in Isaiah 53:6, 12 (LXX).
• Jesus repeatedly foretold that he would suffer many things (Mark 8:31; 9:12; cf. Isa 53:10), be rejected (Mark 9:12; cf. Isa 53:3), and give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45; cf. Isa 53:10).
• He is crucified between two criminals (Mark 15:27), “numbered with the transgressors” (Isa 53:12).²

In other words, even before we arrive at this scene, Mark has prepared us to understand Jesus’s forthcoming death as guilt-bearing and on behalf of others (see esp. Mark 10:45). The passion narrative is not where these themes first emerge—it’s where they lead.

In this way, Barabbas’s release becomes an exemplification of the effects of Christ’s forthcoming substitutionary death. As David Mathis explains, Barabbas

embodies our plight as rebels deserving death, in need of saving. Jesus, the innocent, is delivered over to the punishment of death; while [Barabbas] the guilty one, deserving of death, is released and given new life. This was a foretaste of the grace that will be unleashed at the cross. … As Pilate releases Barabbas, the guilty, and delivers over to death Jesus, the innocent, we have a picture of our own release effected by the cross through faith. In Barabbas, we have a glimpse of our death-deserving guilt and a preview of the astonishing grace of Jesus and his embrace of the cross, through which we are set free. Here, as Jesus is delivered to death and Barabbas goes free, we have the first substitution of the cross. The innocent Jesus is condemned as a sinner, while the guilty sinner is released as if innocent.³

Thus, Barabbas represents each of us. We are all Barabbas, deserving of death, yet the innocent Jesus dies in our place that we may have life. As the Reformer Benedictus Aretius put it,

Christ must die so that the robber may live; and so he lives by Christ’s gift, and rightly so. For we are the image of that robber—children of wrath, children of Adam, ministers of sin, instruments of Satan—and we could not be released if the innocent Son of God had not been made a sacrifice for us. Thus he is handed over for our great good.⁴

The story of Barabbas invites us to see in Christ’s death a deeply personal exchange, his taking our place. Jesus is a king who reigns by dying—and that on behalf of his people.

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Resources for further reflection

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1. Matthew’s account (27:16–17) contains a textual variant identifying his full name as “Jesus Barabbas.” Additionally, Mark’s text, “the one who is called Barabbas,” likely does not identify his personal name but his patronymic (meaning, “son of father”), meant to distinguish him from others with the same personal name. Mark L. Strauss, Mark, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Zondervan, 2014), 677; James A. Brooks, Mark, The New American Commentary 23 (Broadman & Holman, 1991), 251.
2. D. W. Pao, “Old Testament in the Gospels,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green et al., 2nd ed. (InterVarsity Academic, 2013), 632. Matthew S. Harmon, The Servant of the Lord and His Servant People: Tracing a Biblical Theme Through the Canon, New Studies in Biblical Theology 54 (InterVarsity Academic, 2020), 161–62; Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 279–80.
3. David Mathis, Rich Wounds: The Countless Treasures of the Life, Death, and Triumph of Jesus (Good Book Company, 2022), 67. So also Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 31; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Hendrickson, 1994), 1766; James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2002), 461.
4. Benedictus Aretius, Commentarii in quatuor evangelistas, 245r, quoted in Christopher Boyd Brown, ed., John 13–21, Reformation Commentary on Scripture 5 (InterVarsity Academic, 2021), 160. So also Wright, Mark for Everyone, 208–09.