The Substitute

Introduction

In 1857, Frederick Douglass wrote the following response after the Supreme Court expanded the institution of slavery in their Dred Scott decision—He said, “The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world. It is a very great, but the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. The Chief Justice can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities…he cannot reverse the decision of the Most High. He cannot change the essential nature of things—making evil good and good evil.” Douglass wrote that about a specific moment in history, but those words could be applied to just about any worldly government or power throughout time, and these words would certainly describe well the situation we encounter today in Mark 15. These words could very well have been written to Pontius Pilate after that first Good Friday.

You can do many things, Governor Pilate, but you cannot thwart the will of God, you cannot change the essential nature of things, you cannot make evil good and good evil. That’s what we see in this passage, all these forces around Jesus trying to stop him, trying to shut him up, trying to get rid of him, accusing him of evil of which He is certainly innocent. And though he will die on the cross, they will not succeed. These powerful people: the chief priests, a Roman governor, an unruly, none of these can stop the will of God!

The scene is the trial of Jesus before Pilate, it may look like all is lost, that these accusations will lead to defeat and these powers prevail. But it will not be so, and this is our main idea today: Jesus makes no defense of himself and goes in our place to bring us salvation.

The Lamb is Silent

Chapter 15 picks up on the morning of Jesus’ crucifixion. As soon as it was morning the priests and elders bound him and delivered Jesus over to Pontius Pilate (v.1). This is significant because it is a fulfillment of what Jesus said about Himself, in Mark 10 that he would be delivered over to the Gentiles after being condemned. Though it seems as though he’s at the mercy of earthly powers, Jesus remains in control.

He is delivered over to Pilate for a final trial:

Mark 15:2 “2 And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.””

Are you King of the Jews? That’s a slightly complicated question. There was some political weight behind this, not only theological or cosmic weight. Pilate cares very little for a Jewish Messiah, instead he cares about any political power that threatens the empire he is represents.

Was Jesus the King of the Jews? Yes. But not in the political, material sense that Pilate would have understood. And how does the Lord respond? Some sort of assent, “it is as you say.” But the force of the conversation is this: Jesus offers no defense or explanation. He doesn’t try to explain that “Yes, I’m king, but not in the way you think.”

And he says nothing else. Look at the rest of this trial: Mark 15:3–5 “3 And the chief priests accused him of many things. 4 And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.” 5 But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.”

Jesus made no further answer. After listening to the chief priests, Pilate challenged the accused to defend his position! But to his astonishment, Jesus refused to defend himself. Surrounded by unbelief, hostility, he remains silent and shows himself to be the suffering servant messiah we read about in Isaiah.

This was our call to worship today, but hear again these words. Isaiah 53:7 “7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

In his silence, Jesus is fulfilling prophecy. He doesn’t open his mouth to defend himself.

What is our instinct when we’re criticized? When someone accuses us of something? Maybe even something we’re truly guilty of? What is our natural response? Defense! To defend ourselves and our reputations. To self-justify! To make it seem right! To explain away the situation or our error.

But Jesus does no such thing and He is the only person in history who was well within his right to defend Himself against any charge or accusation that came his way. He makes no defense, instead he trusts God wholly.

But what about us? Our instinct is toward self-defense. This is our condition in our fallenness. We’re self-advocates like no other. It’s not like we have to teach our kids to make excuses for their misbehavior, they learn that pretty quickly. Our three-year-old, caught in the act, will just lie and deny! No I’m not!

I think of two categories for us—first is when we justify and defend ourselves when it comes to our own sin and wrongdoing. When we are quick to excuse ourselves, we’re showing a need to be justified but also that we don’t fully trust in the justification and forgiveness we already have in Christ.

PAUSE

We want so badly to be justified in the face of others, it seems we, at times, value it over our forgiveness and justification in the Lord. We don’t need to do this, we don’t need to blame-shift, explain, or justify, or minimize our sin. Instead, we take our sin, our weakness, our failures to the one who perfectly advocates for us, and who knows all these things about us already, and we trust in the forgiving work of the cross. When it comes to sin, let us be quick to confess rather than quick to excuse.

PAUSE

The other category is when we face false accusations. What of when people lie about us or charge us completely apart form our character? The question is not whether or not to speak up for ourselves, but rather what drives and motivates our hearts when we do. Are we defending ourselves out of a sense of God’s justice in our lives, or is it because we long to be thought well of by others. Do we merely want revenge, to prove someone wrong, to be vindicated by others? Jesus, falsely accused, made no defense of Himself; he certainly cared far more for the approval of the Father than of any person.

We can trust that Jesus will defend us because he made no defense of Himself so that we could be saved!

PAUSE

Praise God for the suffering servant, for the lamb that kept silent. And do you see how Pilate responded? He was amazed, this was so counter-cultural, such an unexpected response.

The envy of the leaders

The passage continues on from this sham Roman trial, for we see it was Pilate’s tradition to offer a sort of amnesty to a prisoner on the occasion of these feasts, in this case Passover. We’ll talk about recipient of this amnesty—Barabbas—in a moment, but I want to looks at v. 9-10 here and see the reaction of the religious leaders. Pilate is ready to give this amnesty to Jesus, for he has found no fault in him, he’s ready to release him.

Mark 15:9–10 “9 And he answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 10 For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.”

Pilate has identified the animating sin of the religious leaders: envy! They envied Jesus, they coveted him. These charges that were dressed up as treason were not motivated by the chief priests loyalty to Rome, instead their motivation is revealed to be hatred borne from envy. Why?

We understand that they were threatened by him, his followers, his growing influence, and his message of grace rather than the legalistic demands they preached. But envy? Were they jealous of his influence? Jealous of the freedom from legalism in which he walked? Did they covet his closeness with the Father?

Whatever it was, we see to where their envy led. Do you see the corrosive work envy did in the hearts of these leaders: they sent the messiah to be killed! Their envy caused them to totally reject God!

This verse should startle us, shake us out of a complacent attitude toward this sin. Because, if we’re honest, isn’t envy one of those sins that just doesn’t seem that bad? That’s one of the sins we’re quick to allow, that we accommodate for. Oh, it’s really not that bad.

But the Apostle Paul, in Colossians 3, calls us to put to death covetousness which, he calls, idolatry. That’s the seriousness of this sin, it is essentially idolatry. When we envy or covet we’re are making the object of our envy into an idol in our hearts. For these religious leaders, their envy caused them to turn to idols, to the idols of themselves, idols of their legalism, their laws, their power, and their influence away from the truth of God!

When we give ourselves over to envy we are saying: God, I don’t trust you with what you’ve given me, I need more, it’s not enough! We’re also saying of our neighbor, they don’t deserve that, I deserve it more.

PAUSE

Do you resent the success or blessings of others? Does scrolling on social media and seeing the good things in your friends’ lives cause you to become bitter? In your work place, do you find yourself hoping others will fail because you haven’t had the same success? Are you unable to celebrate friends’ engagements, pregnancies, or other milestones because your heart longs for these things?

Grief and sorrow over unmet longings is reasonable. But envy, unchecked will cause us to pull away from others, isolate ourselves, or hope for the failure or pain in those around us.

Brothers and sisters, let us put to death envy in our hearts and let the example of the chief priests be a warning to us. Envy, left unchecked, can corrode our hearts away from God and away from others, to reject our messiah! But how can we overcome these things? For the answer to that, we must look at the rest of this passage.

The substitute for the crowd

Envy is not the end of the story for the priests or the crowd, it leads to something more. You see, Pilate has discerned their envy and yet he is still uncomfortable with condemning this man who is so evidently innocent.

Mark 15:12–15 “12 And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” 13 And they cried out again, “Crucify him.” 14 And Pilate said to them, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.” 15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.”

Pilate gave them two options: I’ll release this prisoner Barabbas—this murderer and insurrectionist—or I’ll release this one who has done nothing wrong.

Here’s something so fascinating about the choice presented to the crowd. Barabbas, we learn from the book of Matthew, is not his first name. His first name is Jesus. Jesus Barabbas. Jesus, not an entirely uncommon name, but Barabbas, what does it mean? It’s Aramaic—bar abbas—son of the father. This insurrectionist’s name is Jesus Son-of-the-Father.

Pilate gives them the choice: Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God or Jesus Barabbas, the son of the father? The choice is between these two Jesus’s, of these two who does the crowd choose: the one that is like them! They don’t want this Jesus that is so different, that is so righteous, whose message they could not abide. They wanted the political freedom fighter, the one like them that would advocate for them in the way they wanted! Barabbas is condemned and the crowd wants to substitute him for Jesus the messiah.

That’s the heart of this passage: they want a substitute, they want to treat the guilty one, Barabbas, like an innocent man, and the innocent man they want to treat like a guilty one, condemned to death!

They choose a messiah in their likeness, in line with their desires and values and they reject the Son of God. They want a political leader who will bring an earthly kingdom, not the Kingdom of God that transcends our human frailties and weaknesses.

They substitute the true messiah for one who looks like them. And the irony is this, that in going to the cross, Jesus will become like them, he will become like all of us in taking on our sin. He is treated as we ought to be treated. 2 Corinthians 5:21 “21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The tragedy of Pilate’s amnesty program is that a convicted murderer is set free and in his place the innocent Son of God is condemned to death. Of course, Pilate has no authority to make that which is evil good and good evil. This is all done in accordance to the will of God our salvation.

It is not difficult to see in this prisoner exchange, the greater substitution for us all! Romans 5:8 “8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Barabbas, guilty, goes free while Jesus, innocent, is condemned. This is our story! This is what’s been done for us.

The crowd wanted a substitute, they got Barabbas in his place. Jesus the messiah saw that we needed a substitute and volunteered to go in our place.

It’s easy to read a passage like this and our impulse is to distance ourselves from all the people in it. We’re like like Pilate or the priests, we’re not Barabbas, and we’re not like the crowd, we wouldn’t have been a part of that! But the truth is we have more in common with Barabbas than we do even with the crowd. We’re the guilty who have gone free while our savior, perfectly innocent, went to the cross!

And it is when we more and more deeply understand this startling reality—the glorious work of Christ as our perfect substitute—that all other things we face fade away, all other challenges and trials, all the enemies we face are disarmed in light of the Gospel of Christ’s substitution for us.

We’ve talked about the idolatry of envy, we’ve talked about our instinct to self-justify, to defend ourselves. We have no need for envy when we see what we have in Christ! We have no need for self-justification when we understand we already have an advocate who went willingly as our substitute so we can be truly forgiven.

We don’t focus so intently on the weight of need for forgiveness and grace so we’ll feel guilty. No, we focus on this so we can more readily and deeply rest in the good news!

I want to close with an illustration from a novel, it’s one of my favorite pictures of the gospel in any story. Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, the novel ends during the French Revolution. Political prisoners are being killed for no reason other than the family in which they were born. Such is the case with Charles Darnay, a young husband and father, condemned to death. Late in the novel, Sidney Carton, a friend who looks strikingly like Darnay, switches places with him in prison. Sidney Carton willingly trades place with his friend, substitutes himself, knowing he will die so his friend could go free and be with his family.

And this is the moment that is so beautiful. On his way to be executed, Carton is transported with other prisoners, one is a fearful young woman who knew the first man and she recognizes that this is someone else. He shushes her and she says: “Are you dying for him”? “Yes. And his wife and child. Hush!” “O, stranger, will you let me hold your brave hand?” She will later say, moments from their deaths: “If not for you, stranger, I should not be so composed…you have raised my thoughts to the Lord Jesus who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here today.” She sees the a great substitution up close and she is filled with hope!

You see? When we come face-to-face with the extraordinary substitutionary work of Jesus for us, we have strength and comfort and hope to face whatever trial lies ahead! Resolve enough to face whatever temptation. Encouragement enough to find our rest and hope fully in the Lord.

Are you dying for them? Someone might have asked Him. Yes, them and so many more.

Let us rest in this: the substitute for us, the lamb who was crushed instead of us.