“King of the Jews”
Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. -Mark 15:6-11
(Due to an unexpected interupution we must return to our study of Mark for a day, our study of John will recommense tommorrow.)
Sin should be feared. The actions of the crowd in today’s passage should remind us of just how powerfully sin destroys mans capacity to reason. All involved knew Jesus was innocent, and yet they demanded the release of a murderer. There is no way to explain how this happened except that they had lost their ability to think rationally.
Equally as frightening, however, is that the majority of men in the 21st century exhibit the same absence of reason. Multiple so-called “great religions” maintain murder and violence as legitimate, indeed noble, forms of service to their god’s. In the West, the self-styled “enlightened” count the sacrifice of tens of thousands of unborn children a day as a necessary means to the maintenance of their mode of life. And even some circles of Christianity view retaliation in kind as the only true way of stopping injustice. We are surrounded by mad men.
Judging by the way we are inclined to treat each other, those of us managing to avoid falling into the above camps are still susceptible to periodic fits of mania, less severe though they may be, but which still succeed in preventing us from being “one” as Jesus commanded us to be.
Left to ourselves, we should be afraid of what lurks both around and within. However, praise be to God, we are not by ourselves. The power of sin is frightening, but it is not to be compared with the power of God. The mind controlled by sin is capable of despicable things, and every day we encounter such minds. But our God has restrained that power, for which reason we are able to live in relative safety; but more than this, his power is capable of restoring fallen man to a state of grace.
In Acts we are told how Stephen was murdered in cold blood by a frenzied crowd, and that one of those overseeing the crowd was a man called Saul. This man looked on murder as an acceptable act in the service of his god. The power of sin ran amuck in his life. However, the power of evil was not strong enough to hold on to him. The power manifest in Christ, as a result of his death and resurrection, overthrew sin in Saul and changed him into Paul the saint. That same transforming power is available to us. Therefore, as fearsome as the world seems, we have every reason to face it, and seek its change through the Word and prayer.