PASSOVER/EASTER STORIES: SCAPEGOAT FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
A quaint little story that shows what Jesus has done — it’s sufficient.
A quaint little story that shows what Jesus has done — it’s sufficient.
Brace yourself! It is the detail which makes me a boring person that brings the Bible alive for me.
Man-splaining one of the Old Testament Bible stories where the obvious is not easily seen.
If you type, “scapegoat,” into any search engine there will be a plethora of hits with titles along the lines of, “Jesus is our Divine Scapegoat.”
But is The Reverend Doctor Google correct? Did he actually read the words in Leviticus? Or didn’t he need the Bible because he had his own opinion? Surely everyone knows that story.
Let’s check, just in case.
When we read Leviticus 16:7–10, it is written that:-
• The Lord commands two male goats be brought before Him.
• He selects one upon which all the sins of Israel are imputed.
• The anonymous goats now have two working titles
° Guilty Goat ° Good Goat.
• The Guilty Goat is then taken into the wilderness and set free. Goats flourish in the wilderness.
• The Good Goat is then accepted by the Lord as a Sin Offering. He dies.
So what?
This makes no sense until Matthew 27:15–26 where Pilate offers the choice between Jesus and Barabbas. Religion opted for Barabbas. (The time of the morning implies that it was only the major players from Religion who decided the issue, not the general rabble.)
• Barabbas was a convicted rebel and murderer; a breaker of the law.
• Not only was his first name Jesus, but his last name, Barabbas, means son (bar) of the father (abba). [There is debate within the Scholastic fraternity about the name of Barabbas being ‘Jesus’. I won’t be drawn into that because I have no Theological qualifications. However, being a bit of a mystic, I lean toward it being true.]
• Jesus had always referred to Himself as the, “Son of the Father” (and His adversaries had always refused to acknowledge that He was).
• So now we had two men named Jesus, each a “son of the father”, but different fathers.
• Jesus was an innocent man about to be murdered, and Barabbas was a murderer about to be set free.
Compare the candidates.
Barabbas was guilty.
. . . . . Jesus was innocent.
Barabbas was doomed to die and knew it.
. . . . . Jesus took his place, therefore the punishment that was rightly Barabbas’s.
Barabbas went free.
. . . . . Barabbas did nothing to deserve his freedom except accept the gift.
We are all walking in the shoes of Barabbas.
Jesus is not the scapegoat — we are.
The forgoing evidence has not been presented to convince any reader but to allow a personal decision to be made. There is much more to know about this subject. Perhaps you’ll pay another visit, sometime.
All Glory to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
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