I. All of life is one great warfare. Every thought, word, and deed is a portion of it. All the history of our race, from Adam's fall until our Lord, shall, at His coming, destroy Antichrist with the spirit of His mouth, is one long attempt of the evil one to set up his authority in the place of God's, and to dispute His sovereignty over His creatures. God offers us eternity of bliss, pleasures for evermore in Him: Satan so prolongs the present with busy thoughts and schemes and anticipations, as to hide from us an eternity of woe with him. All time is one history of this one manifold choice. All throughout the whole world is one choice between God and Satan, Christ and Barabbas. We know not, indeed, what we do; and so, again and again, our blessed Lord intercedes for those who deliver Him to His foes. But whenever a choice is given, if we have but any fear that we are choosing amiss, if we do what we suspect to be wrong, or worse, if we say wilfully what we think better unsaid what do we, in fact, but choose Barabbas?
II. We can never make any real progress in holiness, we can hardly take the very first step, we shall be constantly slipping backwards, until, by God's mercy, we have this stamped upon our souls, that we are ever anew making, that we must in all things make, this choice. There are degrees of choice; as there were degrees and steps in the rejection of our Lord. But there is no safety against making the very worst choice, except in the fixed conscious purpose, in all things to make the best. The character deepens unconsciously; and at last, in men's sight and but for some mighty interposition of God, it becomes fixed; because it has all along been secretly following or resisting grace, and so choosing God, or rejecting Him. Men will not think they sin; the Jews would not think that Jesus was indeed the Christ; but both crucify Him; and to persuade themselves that they do not only makes their repentance hopeless. Men desire to do things for Him, and then by some self-deceit seek to obtain for them praise of men; or they would give themselves to God's service, and then become ambitious, as they think, to promote His glory, and end in becoming worldly. They would love God, and end in loving self. What is all this but strictly to go on the way with Jesus, lead Him into the holy city, sing hosannas to Him, and then prefer to Him Barabbas?
E. B. Pusey, Sermons for the Church's Seasons,p. 274.