Why Jesus Christ Had to Suffer to Save Us

By  Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

One drop of blood from Christ’s circumcision at the age of eight days would have been sufficient to purchase all of mankind’s salvation because Christ is God.  As God any form of suffering He endures no matter how small has infinite value, and would have been enough to pay for our sins.  Why then did He give us twelve quarts of blood instead of one drop?  Monica Miller author of the book, “Theology of the Passion of Christ”, says because Christ had twelve quarts to give.  In other words, love gives everything.

The strategy of war and of any games is to win with the minimum possible expense and sacrifice.  Love does not seek the minimum but the maximum.  Love seeks what is “best”, “befitting”, and “suitable” not just what works most efficiently.  The Old catechism of the Church’s answer to the question on why Christ had to suffer to redeem us, was “to show to us how much He loves us, and makes us see the evilness of sin.”  Love is best shown through sacrifice.  You can hardly believe someone if he really loves you if he would not be willing to sacrifice for you.  Christ had to suffer much to show how much He loves us and for us to love Him in return (hopefully).  The sufferings of Christ were also to show to us how evil sin is and that we should be horrified by it and avoid it because the greatest enemy of love is sin.

St. Augustine offers us more reasons on why Christ had to suffer.  First, to give us an example.  Christ taught us the virtues of obedience, humility, faithfulness, justice and other virtues to the highest degree in His Passion.  Second, as a ransom for Adam’s sin and the sins of all mankind.  Paying a ransom is always a form of sacrifice because the payee would lose something.  Christ ransom for us is not money but His blood.

Jesus Christ as man would represent man to repair the injustice of Adam’s and the rest of mankind’s sin to God.  While Jesus Christ being God would be able to offer an infinite sacrifice to make up for the infinite offense done to God.  Original sin and all of our sins would constitute an infinite offense against God not just by our sins combined massive quantity, but because of the Person Who is offended.   There is a difference in degree between offending a classmate and offending a teacher.  If you bad mouth a teacher with the same word of profanity you bad mouth a classmate, the degree of offense is not the same because of the higher dignity of the teacher.  Since the original sin of our first parents and the entire sin of mankind are an offense to God Who has an infinite dignity then it requires infinite justice to repair it.  It’s the reason why all the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament were not enough to fully satisfy God because those were finite sacrifices.  Thus, it took God the Son to sacrifice Himself to God the Father to fully satisfy the injustice done to God.