When Jesus and Barabbas were led before the people of Israel, the people were given a choice to release Jesus or Barabbas. The people choose to release Barabbas. Through the influence of the (religious) leaders of the people, the people didn’t choose for the good and for righteousness by releasing the innocent Man Jesus Christ, but they chose for evil and unrighteousness, by releasing the guilty prisoner Barabbas, who was a thief and murderer and deserved the death sentence. And so the guilty Barabbas, who deserved to be crucified was released and the innocent Jesus was scourged and crucified(မက်သယူး 27:15-26, မှတ်သားပါ။ 15:6-15, လု 23:13-25, ယော 18:38-40).
There are many aspects to this event, including the following two, အမည်ရ, that the people were influenced by the (religious) leaders and therefore chose evil instead of good and released the criminal; အပြစ်သား, and judged the Righteous, and that Jesus Christ took the place of the prisoner Barabbas, အပြစ်သား; the transgressor of the law, who deserved to be crucified and took the punishment upon Himself, while Barabbas was released.
Jesus or Barabbas?
Now at that feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they desired. And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection. And the multitude crying aloud began to desire him to do as he had ever done unto them. But Pilate answered them, ပြောနေသည်။, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews? For he knew that the chief priests had delivered Him for envy. But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify Him. Then Pilate said unto them, အဘယ်ကြောင့်, what evil hath He done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify Him. And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged Him, to be crucified (မှတ်သားပါ။ 15:6-15)
There are people, who don’t understand that when God’s people were given a choice between the releasing of Jesus or Barabbas, the people chose to release the guilty prisoner Barabbas, whose name means son of a father or teacher, instead of releasing the innocent Man Jesus Christ, and point with a judgmental finger to the people.
But isn’t it so, that in our age many do exact the same thing and reject Jesus Christ; စကားလုံး, and chose the sinner and sin through the influence of the words of the devil and by believing and following his words and do the works of the flesh and approve of sin?
They don’t choose to submit to God and walk in obedience to the Word after the Spirit in the will of God and do righteous works, but they reject the words of God and chose to walk after the will, တပ်မက်ခြင်း။, and desires of the flesh and do the works of the flesh and persevere in sin.
And so many approve of sin and/or persevere in sin
God is light and in Him is no darkness
This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 ယော 1:5-7)
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him (1 ယော 3:4-6).
But everyone, who is born of God and has received His nature and belongs to Him, should not walk in darkness and persevere in sin. Because in Him is no darkness and if we are in Him, then shall there be no darkness in us and we shall not do the works of darkness.
လူတိုင်း, who persevers in sin walks in darkness and not in the light.
If someone says to walk in the light, but do the works of the flesh and doesn’t repent, then the unrighteous works of the person show that the person belongs to the world; the kingdom of darkness, and not to Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God (1 ယော 1:5-11).
နှုတ်ကပတ်တော်ကဆိုတယ်။, that God has not called us unto uncleanness, သန့်ရှင်းခြင်းသို့ ရောက်၏။. He, therefore, that despises, despises not man, ဘုရားသခင်, who has also given unto us His Holy Spirit (1 သက်သာလောနိတ်မြို့ 4:7)
When you refuse to submit to God’s Word and His will and keep living in uncleanness; sin and iniquity, then you shall not be any different from the world. အဲ့ဒါတွေကြောင့်ပါ။, လောကကို ပိုင်သောသူ၊, belong to the generation of fallen man and walk as enemies of God and His Word as transgressors of the law of God in darkness and live after the flesh in uncleanness (ဖတ်လည်းဖတ်ပါ။: ‘If Christians live like the world of what should the world repent off?‘).
He that does righteous is righteous, ဖြောင့်မတ်တော်မူသည်အတိုင်း၊, but he that commits sin is of the devil for the devil sinned from the beginning
ချစ်သား, အဘယ်သူမျှ သင့်ကို မလှည့်ဖြားစေနှင့်: ဖြောင့်မတ်ခြင်းတရားကို ကျင့်သောသူသည် ဖြောင့်မတ်၏။, ဖြောင့်မတ်တော်မူသည်အတိုင်း၊. ဒုစရိုက်ကို ကျူးလွန်သောသူသည် မာရ်နတ် ဖြစ်၏။; အကြောင်းမူကား၊ မာရ်နတ်သည် ရှေ့ဦးစွာမှစ၍ ဒုစရိုက်ကိုပြု၏။. ဤအလို့ငှာ ဘုရားသခင်၏သားတော်သည် ထင်ရှားပေါ်လွင်ခဲ့သည်။, မာရ်နတ်၏အမှုတို့ကို ဖျက်ဆီးခြင်းငှါ၊. ဘုရားသခင်မှမွေးဖွားလာသူမည်သူမဆို အပြစ်မကျူးလွန်ပါ။; for His seed remaineth in him: ဒုစရိုက်ကိုမပြုနိုင်, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, မာရ်နတ်၏သားတို့၊: ဖြောင့်မတ်ခြင်းတရားကို မကျင့်သောသူမည်သည်ကား၊, ညီကို မချစ်သောသူလည်း မဟုတ်။ (1 ယော 3:7-10)
And so many believe the lies of the darkness and chose to submit to the sinful nature of the flesh and obey the will of the flesh and do the works of darkness, whereby they obey their father, မကောင်းဆိုးဝါး, who is a transgressor of the law of God and a liar, a thief, and a murderer.
Instead of choosing Jesus Christ; စကားလုံး, and obeying the Word and doing the Word, they choose and obey the devil and the sinful flesh and because of that, they show that they love sin and death rather than righteousness and life.
This not only happens in the lives of many believers, but also in the lives of many preachers, အသက်ကြီးသူများ, and leaders of churches, who suppose to be born again and spiritual and ought to walk as mature sons of God after the Spirit in de will of God, but instead, they carnal and walk after the flesh and do the will, တပ်မက်ခြင်း။, and desires of the flesh and a.o. lie, cheat, steal, drink, get involved with sexual uncleanness, မတရားမေထုန်, commit adultery, နှင့် ကွာရှင်းခြင်း။ and act like it’s all normal.
And if they are caught and people address their behavior and confront them with their deeds, their acting talents arise and they show some remorse and repent and are believed by the people and are restored and after a while, they revert to the same behavior and commit the same sin again and walk the same road as before, whereby they not only defile and damage the church, but also make a mockery of the gospel of Jesus Christ and crucify Jesus Christ again(ဖတ်လည်းဖတ်ပါ။: ‘ယေရှုကို လက်ဝါးကပ်တိုင်မှာ ရိုက်ထားပြီး အရှက်ကွဲအောင် ပြန်ထားနိုင်မလား။?‘, ‘‘Lay hands suddenly on no man, ပေါလု ဘာကိုဆိုလိုသနည်း။?, နှင့် ‘Can you be complicit with the sin of fellow believers?‘).
Many churches have become indifferent towards sin
Many churches have become indifferent towards sin and approve of sin in the church and allow the people to walk in sin and/or fall back into the same sin over and over again, even if they are in ministry.
Instead of condemning the sin and acting according to the Word and calling to repentance and the removal of sin, they condemn the believers of the church, who obey the Word and condemn sin, and to substantiate it, they use some pious words and subjects from the Bible, which are taken out of context, like false love, the grace, and forgiveness (ဖတ်လည်းဖတ်ပါ။: ‘What does it mean to deliver a person unto satan?’, ‘What is false love?’ and ‘Lost in the sea of grace’).
And so they turn evil into good and good into evil and because of their carnal humanistic behavior, they reject the Word and turn the truth of God into a lie and worship and serve the sinner and their sins and give power to the devil, who continues his destructive work.
The grace of God is not a permit to sin
ဒါဆို ငါတို့ ဘာပြောရမလဲ။? ငါတို့သည် အပြစ်၌ ဆက်ဖြစ်မလား။, ထိုကျေးဇူးတော်သည် ကြွယ်ဝလိမ့်မည်။? ဘုရားသခင် တားမြစ်သည်။. ငါတို့ဘယ်လိုလုပ်ရမလဲ, အပြစ်ကြောင့်သေကြပြီ။, ထိုအရပ်၌ မနေနိုင်တော့? မင်းမသိဘူးလား။, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? (ရောမ 6:1-3)
ဒါဆို ဘာလဲ။? အပြစ်လုပ်ရမလား။, ဘာဖြစ်လို့လဲဆိုတော့ ငါတို့က တရားဥပဒေနဲ့ မညီဘူး။, ကျေးဇူးတော်အောက်၌မူကား၊? ဘုရားသခင် တားမြစ်သည်။. မင်းမသိဘူးလား။, အစေခံကျွန်တို့အား ပေးသနားတော်မူပါ။, သင်တို့သည် နာခံသော သူ၏ကျွန်ဖြစ်ကြ၏။; သေသည်တိုင်အောင် အပြစ်ရှိသလော။, သို့မဟုတ် ဖြောင့်မတ်ခြင်းတရားကို နာခံခြင်း၊? (ရောမ 6:15-16)
But Jesus has not taken man’s place on the cross, so that man could remain living in sin. The grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ are not a permit to persevere in sin.
Just like sin reigned as king unto death in the old man, the grace reigns through righteousness in the new man unto eternal life by Jesus Christ and His perfect work of redemption.
Jesus has taken the place of (ကျသွားတယ်။) man on the cross, so that through regeneration in Christ; the death of the flesh and the resurrection from the spirit from the dead, (ကျသွားတယ်။) man would be healed (made whole, reconciled) and be truly free. Reconciled with God and free from the power of sin, free from the authority of the devil and the kingdom of darkness, where death reigns.
Just like what happened to Barabbas, the thief, and murderer. The sinner, the transgressor of the law, who was found guilty and deserved the death penalty, was released and Jesus took the place of Barabbas and carried sin (transgression of the law) and the punishment for sin, which is the death.
Jesus Christ gave His life and died for mankind
But what nobody knew, was that Jesus not only took the place of Barabbas and carried the punishment for sin, သေခြင်းတရား, but Jesus took the place of the whole human race.
Jesus Christ gave His own life and died on the cross for all those sinners, who were born of the seed of Adam and belonged to the generation of the old man, and by hearing the words of God and the confrontation with their sins and sinful nature and their state as sinner repent and lay down their own lives and follow Jesus Christ, ဘုရားသခင်၏သားတော်နှင့် အသက်ရှင်သောနှုတ်ကပတ်တော် (ဖတ်လည်းဖတ်ပါ။: ‘Someone has to pay the price!.’).
Do you love Jesus Christ?
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (ယော 10:10)
If ye love Me, ငါ့ပညတ်တို့ကို စောင့်ရှောက်လော့ (ယော 14:15)
As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you: continue ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love (ယော 15:9-10)
If you love Jesus Christ, you shall submit to Him and keep His commandments. အဘယ်ကြောင့်ဆိုသော် ယေရှုက ဤသို့ဆိုသည်။, that if you love Him you shall keep His commandments. And as long as you keep His commandments you will abide in His love.
But if your love for Jesus Christ becomes lukewarm and you don’t spend time with Him and don’t do what the Word says, but give priority to other things, it won’t take long before you will return to your old life and chose to please your flesh instead of the Spirit.
Jesus or Barabbas, who do you choose?
As soon as a person returns to his or her old life and listens to the carnal lusts and desires and is led by the poorly world spirits and does the works of the flesh, the person chooses to obey and serve the devil through sin and to reject Jesus Christ; စကားလုံး.
And so a person chooses the devil, who is a transgressor of the law; a thief and a murderer, above Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Giver of eternal life, and chooses death rather than life.
‘မြေကြီး၏ဆားဖြစ်ပါစေ။’
