Note 1 at Lk. 23:18: What happened to Barabbas is a picture of what happens when a person gets born again. Barabbas was guilty; Jesus was innocent. Yet Jesus suffered the death that Barabbas should have experienced and Barabbas went free.

Likewise, we were all guilty (Rom. 3:23) and condemned to death (Rom. 6:23) yet Jesus suffered our punishment so that we might go free (2 Cor. 5:21). Just as Barabbas didn't ask for this substitution, so "God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).

Barabbas was freed but he had to choose whether or not to accept this new start and remain free or go back to his old ways and come under the judgment of Rome again. Likewise, we have all been freed through the substitutionary death of Jesus, but we have to choose whether to accept our freedom by putting faith in Jesus or reject it by denying him.