Anyone but Jesus

Mark 15:6-15
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, September 05, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Gregory Broderick

Mark 15 continues a streak of grave injustices visited upon our Lord Jesus.  After all, He lived a perfect life in thought, word, and deed.  He never sinned and He always obeyed the Father exactly.  Yet the local religious leaders, who said they studied the same Scriptures that were written about Him, have been angling to kill Him for many years.  Even Jesus’ close and trusted friend Judas betrays Him for some money, and the rest of His disciples abandon Him, even fleeing naked to avoid arrest.  Jesus is subjected to a Stalinist show trial in the house of the high priest.  He is struck and He is condemned as worthy of death.

All He did was preach that the kingdom of God was near.  All He did was perform outstanding miracles that they could not deny.  So why did they kill Him?  They killed Him because He claimed to be the Christ, the Son of the living God.  It is their testimony.  They say so in John 10:30 and in Mark 14:63–64.  They killed Him for this claim, but that is exactly who He was.  He is who He said He was.  And He proved it.  He proved it by fulfilling many prophecies about the Christ.  He proved it by performing many miracles in full view of the public.  And He proved it by His preaching of the word and by His perfect life.

But they refused to even consider the possibility that He was the Christ.  No, He must die.  Nor does Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, seem to care.  He doesn’t care that Jesus committed no crime.  He goes right along with it.  Our Mark 15 account contains no crime and no evidence.  Pilate simply acts to satisfy the crowd (v. 15), and he attempts to wash his hands of the whole thing, saying “Not my problem.”  He knew it was out of enmity and envy that they handed Jesus over to be crucified, and Pilate went right along with it.

We often breeze by this account, but what I want to focus on this morning is a shocking account.  Pilate offers to release Jesus Christ, but the crowd refuses.  They ask instead for Barabbas, an insurrectionist and a murderer (v. 7).  They ask for the murderer to be set free and for the sinless Savior to be murdered, to be crucified, to be executed in the most brutal fashion for no particular crime.  And Pilate goes right along with it, for political expediency.

This may seem extreme when we stop and think about it, and it certainly is that.  But it is also reflective of the true state of all human beings before they are saved, before they are regenerated.  Every one of us began as an enemy of God, a hater of God, against God.  When you are against God, anyone or anything else will be preferable to Him.  Just get rid of this Jesus.  Get Him out of the way.  I will take anything else you have to offer.  A murderer like Barabbas?  Fine, I’ll choose him.  A false god like Buddha or the god of Islam?  Fine, I’ll take that.  No god at all, and a position that my life is a meaningless, random accident?  That will be fine.  Anything but Jesus.  Anyone but Jesus.  Stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel.

The Grave Injustice

First, let us look at this grave injustice.  It is critical to understand the gravity of the injustice visited on Jesus here.  To understand it, you have to be clear: Jesus never sinned.  This is a unique accomplishment.  We use the word “unique” to mean “rare,” but that is not what it means.  This is a singular accomplishment.  Jesus is the only person ever to live who never sinned.  Romans 3:23 tells us, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”   First John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”  I could go on and on, proving verse after verse that we are all sinners.  But the truth is that we all know that we are sinners.  We know that we ourselves have done wrong, multiple wrongs, and sometimes terrible wrongs to other people.  And if we are shaky on that point, we at least know that everyone else has done wrong to us.  If you doubt that, just go ask some parents.  Their children seem so nice and so sweet and so innocent.  But every parent can testify that every one of their children has sinned against them.

We may try to excuse our sin.  We may excuse it by saying, “It was a small sin,” or, “It was justifiable in the moment,” or, “Nobody’s perfect,” or, “That lie that I told was just a little white lie.”  But we know that we have all sinned.  And we know that somewhere deep down that there is an absolute moral standard that God has.  It is objective and not relativistic.  Our own conscience tells us so.  We still have our conscience.  The remnant of the image of God in us is marred by sin, certainly.  But that conscience tells all of us we have sinned and done wrong.  If you need an example, just look at those who wanted to stone the adulteress (John 8:3–11).  Jesus said to them, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”  And the older people, being wiser, went away quicker.  The younger people took a while to come around to the idea.  But they all went away because they all understood: “I have sinned.”

God gave man clear commands that he must follow, clear commands for how he must live:  “Worship God only.”  “Do not murder.”  “Do not steal.”  “Honor your father and mother.”  “Do not commit adultery.”  “Do not lie,” and so on.  These are clear, simple commands.  They are difficult to follow but easy to understand.  And any time we violate any of those commands, we sin.  This is the definition of sin.  As Westminster Shorter Catechism question 14 puts it, “Sin is any lack of conformity to or transgression of the law of God.”  In other words, we do something that God said, “Don’t do,” like lie or eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree.  Or we refuse to do something that God has told us to do:  “Honor your father and mother,” “Worship God on His day,” and so on.  We have all violated these commands, and we know that the penalty for each violation is severe.  Romans 6:23 tells us, “The wages of sin is death”—physical death in this life, to be sure, but more importantly, eternal death.

The surprising thing is not that we sinned, if we take some time to reflect upon it.  Just turn on the television or go to the office or babysit someone’s kids.  You will see that we all sin.  So it is not shocking.  The shocking thing is that Jesus never sinned, not even once.  Look at the sinless Savior.  No one could ever prove Jesus guilty of sin, not even a little tiny sin.  We know, of course, that He refused the devil’s direct temptation to sin, both in the desert and in the garden.  The devil brought every temptation to Jesus.  He suffered the maximum temptation, and yet Jesus refused to sin.  He never stole.  He never murdered.  He never committed adultery or fornication.  Jesus never lied.  He never worshiped false gods.  He never dishonored His parents.  He kept the whole law perfectly all the time, actively and passively.

The whole Bible lays out Christ’s life.  It certainly lays out His entire ministry life, and yet there is no indication in there that He ever sinned.  Indeed, there are positive statements that Jesus never sinned.  Speaking of the young Jesus, Luke says, “He went down to Nazareth [with His parents] and was obedient to them” (Luke 2:51).  Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus was like us in every way, yet without sin.  In 1 Peter 2:22, we read the words of Jesus’ close associate Peter who lived with Him every day for three years.  Surely, if anyone saw Jesus do anything wrong, it would have been Peter.  Here is what Peter says towards the end of his life.  Speaking of Jesus, he said, “He committed no sin and no deceit was found in His mouth,” quoting the book of Isaiah.  And I would remind you that Peter died defending that truth.

Jesus was certainly not found guilty of any sin by Pilate’s court.  Verse 14 of our text shows Pilate somewhat bewildered by the calls for Jesus’ crucifixion.  He exclaims, “Why?  What crime has He committed?”  Verse 15 tells us Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified not because of any crime but simply to satisfy the mob.  Matthew 27 has Pilate’s wife proclaiming Jesus as “that innocent man,” and Pilate famously washing his hands of Jesus’ blood and disclaiming responsibility.  In other words, Pilate is saying, “I am not condemning this person.  I have nothing to do with it.  I am just giving in to you.”  The book of Luke records Pilate as saying, “I find no basis for a charge against this man” (Luke 23:4, 14).  It also says that Herod found no crime in Jesus (Luke 23:15).  When Jesus returned to Pilate, Pilate says it again in Luke 23:20, 22.  This is also recorded in John 18.  So no one finds any basis for a charge in Jesus.  And those who tortured Him, the soldiers who oversaw His execution, even confessed Him as the Son of God, or, in other places, as a righteous man (Luke 23:47).

The clearest proof of Jesus’ sinless life is that He rose from the dead.  We said that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).  Jesus certainly died—He was brutally flogged, brutally beaten, then crucified, stabbed with a spear, and put in a grave for three days.  He certainly died, but He also certainly rose from the grave.  He rose because He never sinned.  As Peter exclaimed at Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2, “Death could not keep its hold on Him.”  The reason is because He never sinned.  He was not due the wages of sin.

Thirty-three years without one lie.  Thirty-three years of honoring His father and mother.  He even honored His mother as He was dying on the cross.  Thirty-three years without stealing or lusting or any of these things.  Thirty-three years without even entertaining sinful thoughts in His mind, without speaking sinful words, without doing sinful things.  It is frankly beyond our capacity to understand how this could be achieved.  Sin is such a part of our nature.  It is such a part of what we do that even those of us who are redeemed from slavery to sin.  Sin is still in us.  It is still bound up with us.  It is still a part of us and what we do.  But not Jesus.  He never sinned, even once.

This is what makes the injustice visited upon Him so grave.  Of all the men who ever lived anywhere, this is the one who never did anything deserving of punishment.  Yet they put Him to death, and an accursed death at that.  The greatest act of injustice ever perpetrated is recorded in our Bible.

It is interesting to note that these people were given every opportunity to back off of this injustice.  Remember, at Jesus’ first trial before the high priest, there is conflicting insufficient evidence, and no one agrees with what any other witness said.  That is all part of that Sanhedrin show trial.  Then Pilate decreed, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.”  That was an opportunity to say, “We’ve made a mistake here.  Let Him go.”  There was Herod’s lack of finding of any basis for a charge.  That was another opportunity to let Him go.  Then they offered here in our text a way out—the Passover pardon.  But no, no, no.  They drove ahead at every stage.  Jesus must die.  That is the grave injustice.

Anyone but Jesus

We are shocked not only at the Roman and Jewish governmental apparatus, but also at the crowd.  They are all shouting for the release of Barabbas, who seems quite guilty.  And they are all shouting for the crucifixion of Jesus, who is obviously innocent.

This Barabbas was a bad man.  Mark 15:7 says that Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists.  Barabbas had committed murder in the uprising.  Matthew 27:16 refers to Barabbas as a notorious prisoner.  Acts 3:14 refers to Barabbas as a murderer also.  This is a bad man.  The Greek in John 18:40 indicates that Barabbas was a robber or a bandit (lēstēs, robber. See also John 10:1).  Barabbas was not a popular hero.  This was no Robin-Hood figure from the cartoons.  He was not a popular hero who stood for the people.  He was a bad guy who took advantage of the chaos and murdered and robbed and engaged in rebellion.

So we are left to ask why.  Why did the crowd cry out for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be crucified?  Surely it should have been the other way around.  Barabbas, the murderer and robber, should hang, not our sinless Savior.  Why did the crowd cry out for the opposite?  The primary reason is enmity.  Sinful man hates God.  (GTB)  In his total depravity, sinful man is against God, against the Lord, and against His Anointed One.  Man is a sinner and he knows it.  Holy God—the sight of Him, the talk of Him, thoughts of Him—is an affront to sinful man.

Man was made good in the garden (Gen. 1 and 2).  He sinned in rebellion against God (Gen. 3).  Sin is a part of the nature of every person.  All people, being sinners, have sinned (Rom. 3:23).  All people are spiritually dead in their transgressions and sins (Eph. 2:5).  We all know it and we all attempt to suppress this truth by our own wickedness (Rom. 1:18–21).  All people begin as God’s enemies, and we are powerless to do anything to change that status.  We are dead in our transgressions and sins, so we cannot make ourselves alive.  We cannot make ourselves do what is right.

We all have this inborn enmity, this againstness towards God.  This must have been magnified greatly by Jesus’ physical presence in front of them. He was sinless and unconvictable.  If the abstraction of God is enough to drive sinful man crazy, to make him suppress the truth, and to make him say there is no God, how much more with Him standing there in front of you, perfect and sinless, confronting you by His very physical presence?  What an affront to sinful man!  And what a silent accusation against sinful man!

So they call for Jesus’ death.  They do it because they, like all men ever born, hate God.  That explains why they would call for Jesus’ death.  But why choose Barabbas?  He is a bad guy—an insurrectionist, a murderer, and a robber.  Perhaps He even had robbed some of them or killed someone they knew.  So why chose Barabbas?  He was simply the available alternative.

When unregenerate and sinful man is presented with God or some alternative, he will always choose the alternative.  Anyone or anything else is always preferable because of this enmity that I spoke about.  Innocent Jesus, or murdering robber and public enemy number one Barabbas—it is an easy choice for sinful man.  Give me Barabbas every time, because I hate Jesus. Jesus or the prophet Mohammed?  An easy choice.  Jesus or Buddha?  An easy choice.  Shiva the destroyer, Ganesh with the elephant head—they will pick them over Jesus every time.  One false god or a hundred—they will pick anyone but Jesus.

Western man, being generally wealthier and thinking himself superior to all others, came up with an even better idea:  “I don’t need an alternative at all.  I can just go with atheism, nothingness, the idea that everything came from nothing with no cause, no purpose, and no reason.”  This is the alternative in our culture.  The inescapable conclusion of that alternative is that life is totally meaningless; that there is no right and no wrong nor could there be, but there is only power.  And that there is nothing significant about human life any more than there is about the life of an ant or the life of a microbe.  It is all one big cosmic coincidence.  This is Western man’s great contribution to the world.

Now, this is totally irrational.  It is, in fact, self-maledictory.  It is disproven by history.  It is disproven by our own experiences.  It is even disproven by man’s own behavior.  But it doesn’t matter.  The irrationality of it doesn’t matter.  The self-maledictory conclusion doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter.  “I will subscribe to it and I will vigorously defend it, no matter what.  Just don’t give me Jesus.  Don’t push Jesus on to me.”

The depth of man’s enmity towards God is so great that man even chooses eternal hell and rejects God’s free offer of salvation out of enmity.  We may think it is bad enough for them to choose guilty Barabbas over innocent Jesus.  But sinful man also chooses eternal hell for himself instead of choosing Jesus.

God offers salvation to all people (Rom. 10:13), so it is made available.  Murderers can be saved.  Adulterers can be saved.  Whatever sin you did, you can be saved, praise the Lord.  The wicked King David, who committed adultery and murder, can be saved.  The brutal Saul of Tarsus, who committed many, many crimes, and many, many sins, can be saved.  God offers his salvation to all people.  Indeed, God even desires that all people would be saved and that none would perish (1 Tim. 2:4).  Yet sinful man freely chooses hell out of enmity towards God.  This is cutting off your nose to spite your face.  Such a person will not say, “I choose eternal hell.”  He will deny the existence of eternal hell.  But he chooses his sin, which he knows, deep down, will take him to hell, and he rejects God, all out of enmity.

He would rather go to hell eternally than submit to God, confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, repent of his sins, and live in obedience to God.  That is deep, deep enmity.  If you don’t believe it, look at Matthew 27:25.  They say, speaking of crucifying Jesus, “Let His blood be upon us and our children.”  That is enmity to the greatest degree.  Not only upon me, but upon me and my children.

We are no better than this crowd that we have been speaking about, this crowd who chose Barabbas over Jesus.  Everyone is born a sinner with inborn enmity towards God.  It is an inescapable consequence of the Fall that we begin life as God’s enemies.  We all said in our own way, at some point or another, “Crucify Him,” just as the crowd did.  We all said in our own way, “Stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel.”  And because of our enmity, we, like them, wanted nothing to do with this God, this Christ, or His free offer of salvation.

Left to himself, sinful man will always choose against God and against Jesus Christ, and so did we.  Whatever the cost, whatever the evidence, whatever the logic, it doesn’t matter.  We will always choose against God.  Isaiah 44 speaks about man forming an idol.  It says that he goes out and gets some wood.  Half of it he uses for fuel, and the other half he calls God and worships.  We recently read about Jeroboam and the golden calves.  He set them up and said, “Here are your gods who led you up out of Egypt.”  The people all knew it wasn’t true.  They were probably there as Jeroboam made these things.  They certainly had the oral history handed down to them.  But Jeroboam set these things up and said, “These are your gods who led you out of Egypt,” and most people said, “Okay.  This is what we are going to do now.”  Notice the enmity, the againstness, the illogic of it all.  Left to ourselves, we all did, and we all would still say, “Anyone but Jesus.  Anything but Jesus.  Give us Barabbas.  Let Jesus’ blood be upon us and our children.”

The Good News

But now I have good news.  Praise the Lord, we are not left to ourselves.  God in His great mercy and rich love made a way for us dead sinners to be saved.  In His great love, God offers salvation to all.  In His great love, God enables some to say “Yes” to this gracious offer of salvation.

This is speaking about regeneration, where God moves in the heart of a dead sinner and makes Him alive.  God describes this for us in Ezekiel 36: “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit.”  The old heart is dead, and the old spirit is against God.  “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and .  .  .  keep my laws” (Ezek. 36:26–27).  This is amazing—amazing grace.

We were all dead sinners.  We were all spiritually dead in our transgressions and sins.  Yet God Himself intervened.  He moved in us, He raised us up, and He saved us by grace through His gift of faith (Eph. 2:5–8).  It is not that we were morally superior to those people in the crowd and so we chose God based on our superior faith or some other inherent quality.  No, we didn’t choose God; He chose us.  He chose us and He made us alive.

There is some element of mystery here.  God must choose us and make us alive, or, as I said, we will all choose sin, hell, and death every time.  I do not know why He chose me and not someone else.  Our Pastor says all the time, “I don’t understand election, but I like it.”  So I do not know why He chose me and why He chose Pastor Mathew and why He chose many of you but not someone else.  But I know this: He chose you to come here today.  He chose you to hear this word today.  He loved you enough to offer you salvation by faith in Jesus Christ alone.  He loved you enough to arrange all human history so that you sit there, and I stand here to deliver His message for you personally.  That is a lot of choosing by God, isn’t it?  That is a lot of love by God.

God even reassures you that He will not refuse you if you come to Him.  If you cry out to Him, “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” He will save you.  It doesn’t matter where you came from.  It doesn’t matter if you grew up in the slum or you grew up in the church.  It doesn’t matter if you made a false confession or if you have rejected Him before.  He will save you if you cry out to Him, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

So do it.  Don’t be like the fool who chooses hell’s eternal suffering out of spite for God.  Instead, choose life.  Choose Christ.  Choose glory with God.  Don’t say, “Crucify Him,” out of your enmity.  Don’t say, “Give me Barabbas or Buddha or atheism.”  Say, “Give me Jesus.  Save me, Jesus.”  Say, “I believe the Lord Jesus died for me and I want to live for Him.  Save me, Lord Jesus.”  And He will save You today.  He always does.  He promised that He would do so, and He keeps His promises.

The Unstoppable, Unjust Execution

One last reflection.  I pointed out how unjust it all was.  Remember the absurd show trial before the Sanhedrin, the ridiculous decisions by Herod and Pilate to condemn Jesus while declaring Him innocent, the envy of the chief priests, the obvious motivation for why they were putting Him to death, and the irrationality even of the crowd in calling for the release of a menacing murderer instead of the sinless Teacher.  We are left to wonder, why didn’t this stop at any one of those checkpoints?  Any one of those checkpoints was an opportunity for them to say, “It doesn’t make any sense.  We have to let this man go.  What are we doing?”

If you are wondering why or how that could happen, the answer is simple: God decreed that it must happen.  This is explicitly stated in Acts 4:27–28.  It says, “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed.  They did what Your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”  Without God’s decree, perhaps it would not have happened.  But it happened due to God’s decree.

Without the death of this sinless Savior, we could not be saved.  He had to die.  He died the death that we deserve (Rom. 3:23, “The wages of sin is death”).   We owed the infinite debt to God due to our sin, but God paid it for us, pouring out all His wrath on the God-man, Jesus Christ.  He was infinite God, so He could take the infinite punishment.  But He was also fully man, so He could stand in our place as our representative.  Then, after He died, God raised Him from the grave—both because He never sinned and so death could not keep a hold on Him, but also to show that His payment in our behalf was acceptable and sufficient.

It all seems so unjust that Jesus had to die, and in human terms, it was.  It was necessary that this earthly injustice occur so that divine justice could take place, so that God could forgive our sins.  But God loved us.  He so loved the world that He gave His only Son to pay the debt that we could never pay ourselves.  Jesus Christ the Son loved us so much that He did not shrink back, but He bore all God’s wrath and died the terrible death in our place.  It was all for us.  It was all for God’s chosen people throughout history.

Had Pilate or Herod or the Sanhedrin or the crowd performed earthly justice and said, “Let Him go.  Let that sinless Savior go.  He didn’t commit any crime,” we would still be dead in our transgressions and sins.  Our infinite debt would remain unpaid.  God could not justly forgive all our sins, in that event.  That is why God’s power and will decided beforehand that this injustice must occur, and it must be seen through to the end.  It was all planned a long time ago.  It was all planned in eternity past.  God the Father planned it, God the Son agreed to accomplish it, and God the Holy Spirit would apply it to us by His regenerating action in our hearts.  It all happened for our eternal benefit and for God’s great glory.

God is glorified by His great love for us.  He is glorified by His rich mercy.  He did it all for us while we were still His enemies.  Praise God, for He accomplished eternal justice by means of this earthly injustice.  Because Jesus paid it all in our behalf, God the Father can now be both just and the one justifies (Rom. 3:26).  As I said, He offers it to all mankind.  The nice thing about an infinite payment is that it is inexhaustible.  It can cover all my sins and it can cover all your sins.  It is sufficient to cover all the sins of everyone who ever lived.  It is effective to cover all the sins of all who put their faith in Him.  Every background, every race, every age, sex, or sin you committed—no matter what, you can trust in Jesus Christ.  You can repent of all your sins, and you can be saved today.

Application

The application here is simple: Trust in Jesus Christ today.  Do not reject His gracious and merciful offer.  Do not continue to shout with the crowd, “Crucify Him!” Do not trade Him for Barabbas or anyone or anything else: for a false god, your perceived autonomy, the pleasure of sin for a season.  Whatever it is, don’t make that trade.  It is a bad trade.  Instead, confess Jesus Christ as Lord and cleave to Him as your Savior.  It is available today.  And I keep emphasizing today because I don’t know about tomorrow.  I don’t know if you will live tomorrow.  I don’t know if the world will end tomorrow.  But I know it is available today, so take advantage of it today.  Be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ today.

And having done so, then go out and live for Him all of life.  He tells us how to do it in His Bible, in His word.  Live a life of joyful obedience to God and to His word, for He died for you.  Live a life of praise to our God every day as you remember that you are saved today, saved tomorrow, saved forever—eternally secure in Christ Jesus.  Think of this life of praise as practice—practice for an eternal life of praise, an eternal life of glory, an eternal life of perfect, joyful, ecstatic obedience to God our Father forever.

Then tell everyone else you know about this good news.  Tell everyone the good news; it is for all people.  Romans 10:13 emphasizes that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  Go out and tell everyone, because you do not know whom God chose and whom He did not.  You don’t know why He chose you, and you don’t know why or whether He may have chosen someone else.  So go out and tell that good news.  Tell it to unbelievers, so that they may share in it and be saved.  Tell it to your fellow believers, not only so that they may examine themselves and make sure that they are in the faith, but also so that they may be built up in the faith and encouraged, remembering God did all this for me.  It is an encouragement in difficulty.  It is an encouragement through the long years of life.

So tell it to everyone, and tell it everywhere, for His glory.  Let us not be like the crowd that said, “Anyone but Jesus.”  Instead, let us say, “Jesus only, Jesus always, and Jesus forever.”  To God be the glory.  Amen.