The contrast between good and evil, light and darkness, the product of this world and that of another, has now been definitively shown by John. It is personified in the exchange of Jesus for Barabbas, each coming from the environment of two distinctly different worlds. One, the product of a dark world filled with evil, producing such hatred that when run its course takes life; the other from a world of Light filled with love, whose ultimate end is to give life. One can almost see the scene in the mind of this "cold war" exchange, two men passing under heavy guard, each silent in that eternal moment when time seems suspended and the whole world focused upon that passing point, one guilty and condemned to die marching toward freedom, the other innocent toward a death undeserved as a substitution for all men.

The cross meant for Barabbas, now freely taken up by the Savior. Barabbas should and would have died that day were it not for Jesus, and in him we see ourselves: guilty and condemned, but set free. Barabbas, the everyman for whom Christ came to die, a representative of all who are guilty and who live in darkness, the anthropos of 3:1, as implied by his name: Bar-abbas, "son of father" -- any man, every man, this man, me! We do not know of Barabbas' fate, but we do know on this day Christ died that he might live. Lazarus returned from the dead, Barabbas, spared from the cross: Jesus, the lover of men, giver of life! But yet even today's hostile world would crucify Him afresh! One cannot help but wonder, when this exchange took place, if the eyes of these two men, personifying the contrast of two different worlds, ever met? And if so, what of Barabbas's thoughts toward this substitutionary Savior?

But more important than our desire to know of his belief, is whether I have accepted His substitutionary death for me! Barabbas, like Lazarus, lived to die another day; but of what effect was Christ's death to him then? And of what effect to us in our final hour as it comes? And it will come. You may be one who does not like to think of this for now, but how will you face it when the inevitable finally comes to you? Or worse still, if it were to come, as it does for some, unannounced and no time for deciding then?

Evil, born of the seed sown by Satan in the heart of man, will spawn hatred, that when run its course will take life. On this day it found its target in Jesus; it will now take Him to the cross. Evil born in the secret of evil men's hearts has now manifested itself in a twisted and tortured human and Holy body hung upon a tree raised from the Earth for all the world to see! God Incarnate in human form, rejected by the crown of His creation, tortured, crucified, bleeding, and now dying! How His Heart Must Have Hurt in those final moments!