There occurs often in history a kind of irony in which the whole
tendency of a time or of a conflict is summed up in a single act, and
certainly the fact which is referred to here is one of these. Let us
put it as it would have seemed to an onlooker then, leaving out for the
moment any loftier meaning which may attach to it.
Peter's words here, thus boldly addressed to the people, are a strong
testimony to the impression which the character of Christ had made on
His contemporaries. 'The Holy One and the Just' implies moral
perfection. The whole narrative of the Crucifixion brings out that
impression. Pilate's wife speaks with awe of 'that just person.' 'Which
of you convinceth me of sin?' 'If I have done evil, bear witness of the
evil.' 'I find no fault in Him.' We may take it for granted that the
impression Jesus made among His contemporaries was, at the lowest, that
He was a pure and good man.
The nation had to choose one of two. Jesus was the one; who was the
other? A man half brigand, half rebel, who had raised some petty revolt
against Rome, more as a pretext for robbery and crime than from
patriotism, and whose hands reeked with blood. And this was the
nation's hero!
The juxtaposition throws a strong light on the people's motive for
rejecting Jesus. The rulers may have condemned Him for blasphemy, but
the people had a more practical reason, and in it no doubt the rulers
shared. It was not because He claimed to be the Messiah that they gave
Him up to Pilate, but because He would not meet their notions of what
the Messiah should be and do. If He had called them to arms, not a man
of them would have betrayed Him to Pilate, but all, or the more daring
of them, would have rallied to His standard. Their hate was the measure
of their deep disappointment with His course. If instead of showing
love and meekness, He had blown up the coals of religious hatred; if
instead of going about doing good, He had mustered the men of lawless
Galilee for a revolt, would these fawning hypocrites have dragged him
to Pilate on the charge of forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and of
claiming to be a King? Why, there was not one of them but would have
been glad to murder every tax-gatherer in Palestine, not one of them
but bore inextinguishable in his inmost heart the faith in 'one Christ
a King.' And if that meek and silent martyr had only lifted His finger,
He might have had legions of His accusers at His back, ready to sweep
Pilate and his soldiers out of Jerusalem. They saw Christ's goodness
and holiness. It did not attract them. They wanted a Messiah who would
bring them outward freedom by the use of outward weapons, and so they
all shouted 'Not this man but Barabbas!' The whole history of the
nation was condensed in that one cry--their untamable obstinacy, their
blindness to the light of God, their fierce grasp of the promises which
they did not understand, their hard worldliness, their cruel
patriotism, their unquenchable hatred of their oppressors, which was
only equalled by their unquenchable hatred of those who showed them the
only true way for deliverance.
And this strange paradox is not confined to these Jews. It is repeated
wherever Christ is presented to men. We are told that all men naturally
admire goodness, and so on. Men mostly know it when they see it, but I
doubt whether they all either admire or like it. People generally had
rather have something more outward and tangible. It is not
spiritualising this incident, but only referring it to the principle of
which it is an illustration, to ask you to see in it the fatal choice
of multitudes. Christ is set before us all, and His beauty is partially
seen but is dimmed by externals. Men's desires are fixed on gross
sensuous delights, or on success in business, or on intellectual
eminence, or on some of the thousand other visible and temporal objects
that outshine, to vulgar eyes, the less dazzling lustre of the things
unseen. They appreciate these, and make heroes of the men who have won
them. These are their ideals, but of Jesus they have little care.
And is it not true that all such competitors of His, when they lead men
to prefer them to Him, are 'murderers,' in a sadder sense than Barabbas
was? Do they not slay the souls of their admirers? Is it not but too
ghastly a reality that all who thus choose them draw down ruin on
themselves and 'love death'?
This fatal paradox is being repeated every day in the lives of
thousands. The crowds who yelled, 'Not this man but Barabbas!' were
less guilty and less mad than those who to-day cry, 'Not Jesus but
worldly wealth, or fleeting bodily delights, or gratified ambition!'