Today's Devotion

Wednesday of Lent 5, March 25, 2026 (The Annunciation of our Lord) – Mark 15:1-15

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

It is the Passover. So one prisoner is to be released. It will either be Jesus, the innocent, “the King of the Jews,” whose name means “God saves,” or it will be Barabbas, the guilty, “who had committed murder in the insurrection,” whose name means “son of the father.”

Barabbas is a fit representation for all of us, for all of mankind: a participant in the insurrection of the fall: the rebellion against God and His kingdom. Every man is a son of a father – a father who likewise breaks the fifth commandment in thought, word, and deed, who is descended from a series of fathers extending back to Adam. Barabbas sits in prison awaiting judgment from the King against whom he has rebelled. He deserves death and hell, and certainly merits no divine mercy or clemency by virtue of his own deeds.

Jesus is the real Son of the Father, the New Adam, the only man who has not “committed murder in the insurrection” of the fall. He is the King of the Jews whose kingdom is not limited to “Jerusalem” and “all Judea,” but also “Samaria,” and even extends to the “end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Greater even than the Roman Empire, His kingdom knows no boundaries. It is “not of this world” (John 18:36) and yet it transcends, and thus includes, “all nations” (Matt 28:19).

But the Passover is about the angel of death passing over. It is about a sacrificial atonement, a Lamb whose blood will give life to the one who is marked by it. It is about freedom, release, and life in the Promised Land. It is about a “better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb 11:16). But in the Passover, it is the innocent who dies for the guilty. It is about grace through the flesh and blood of the oblation, offered on behalf of the one who deserves to die.

And so on this Passover to end all Passovers, we see Christ, “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the Son of the Father who “laid down His life for us” (1 John 3:16), who will suffer and die, while Barabbas, the everyman son of every father, will go free. And this is the very point of Christ’s kingdom. This causes Pilate – the governor who represents Caesar (who claims to be “filius dei,” the “son of a god”) – to be “amazed.” For when the crowds are given a choice between the Son of the Father, their King, the innocent one who healed the sick, forgave sins, and raised the dead, or the son of the father, their rebel leaders, the guilty one who killed the living, who took part in the fallenness of the world – it will be Barabbas who is set free. It will be Jesus who will be sacrificed. For this is “the Lord’s Passover” (Ex 12:11 KJV).

For the crucified Jesus, our “Paschal Lamb” (LSB 473:1), the one whose life is offered as a ransom (Mark 10:45) for all of us sons of our fathers and daughters of our mothers, is, in the words of the hymnist: “Our Servant King / Of whom we sing. / We’re justified / Because He died, / The guilty being guiltless” (LSB 557:2).

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.