WHY DID JESUS HAVE TO SUFFER?


10/6/18

Tomorrow’s second reading comes from the second chapter of the letter to the Hebrews and contains this passage (Hebrews 2,10):

“For it was fitting that he, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.”

Why did Jesus have to suffer in order to save us?   This question comes up when discussing Christ’s death, and our salvation through that death and subsequent resurrection, with both believers and unbelievers.   Couldn’t God have just said “Okay, you’re all forgiven” and open the figurative gates of heaven?   Why did He and His son have to suffer such a terrible death for our salvation?

One of the answers to the above question starts with the acknowledgement that the questioners are correct.  Jesus didn’t have to suffer such a death for our salvation; His Father could indeed have just forgiven everybody, as many have suggested.   But God willed His Son, and Himself through His Son, to suffer such a terrible death to show us the extent of His love for us.   That He could have achieved the same result without blood and suffering, but chose the latter, shows how much He is willing to do for us.

Another answer to the mystery of Jesus’s suffering is perhaps hard to fathom from the perspective of a modern Westerner.   While we all experience suffering and heartbreak to greater or lesser degrees, our lives are, in relative terms, quite comfortable; hence the expression “first world problems.”   But most of human history has been characterized by nearly unremitting suffering and difficulty.   Poverty, grinding poverty of the type we can’t possibly fathom, was the rule rather than the exception for most people for most of human history.   Even today, a tragic proportion of the world’s population lives in wretched conditions, always in doubt about what they will eat, wear, etc.    God had His son suffer so that most of humanity would know that their Savior could relate to the privations that characterize their lives.   As their lives are characterized by suffering, Jesus’s death can only be described as horrific suffering.   Their Champion knows what they are going through.   And our Champion knows what we are going through when we suffer the miseries and sorrow that frequently find their way into our relatively comfortable and care free lives.

God bless now and always.


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