For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
(Crucifíxus étiam pro nobis sub Póntio Piláto;)

Last week, we began look at the phrase “For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” I recounted how everything God has done in space and time has been for our sake and that the culmination of this work was when Jesus Christ was crucified. This is also the moment of his greatest glory: When he was lifted up on the Cross in this world, this action answered all the questions of human suffering. Let’s continue.

Christ accomplished our salvation through an act of unimaginable suffering, but if God is good and loves us, why does he permit suffering? Why did the Son have to suffer and die to save us?

The truth is, we will never completely understand why God does what he does or permits what he permits. He is so utterly greater than us that we could never comprehend the answer. But what we do know is why suffering and evil exist in the world. They exist because of sin. More specifically, they exist because of the result of free wills that chose to turn away from God. God gave angelic beings and human beings something that no other creatures have: free will. We can chose whether or not we follow God. When we chose to not follow God, we sin.

When we sin, evil grows. That is not, actually, the most accurate way to speak of evil, though. Evil exists only in those places where God does not. Because God is all-good, he and evil cannot co-exist. When we say “evil grows” that really means that “God withdraws from a place.” This is similar to why Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden. Before their sin, they could co-exist with God. After their sin, they could not be in communion with God in the same way as before. Evil had corrupted them and God could not remain with them. (Otherwise, they would experience the flames of God’s righteousness and would experience what some call “death by holiness”.) Adam and Eve had to be given the chance to turn away from their sin and back to God. But this process of turning back to God is challenging. It involves self-denial and suffering, because these are the ways that we humans train our desires and our passions so that they are obedient to our wills.

So: suffering exists because that is how us humans train ourselves to avoid evil and do good, and all of this is necessary because sin entered the world.

Still, some argue, God could snap his fingers and fix us. He could turn us back to him. Yes, he could do this, but this would not respect our free will. There is a reason that God is so protective of our free will: he desires our love. If he coerces our love, then it is not true love. While love is not a feeling, it is a decision, and we must freely chose to love someone, and we must be willing to put aside our own desires and wants and to suffer for that other person. If God snapped his fingers and fixed us, we might admire him, we might even worship him, but we could not truly love him.

In the suffering of Christ, God takes the first step of love. He shows us the intense love he has for us by showing us that he is willing to suffer and die for us. Not only will he suffer for us, but he has also promised to lift us up to Heaven as his Son was lifted up. Even greater still are the treasures he has stored up, that are waiting for us in Heaven. All we have to do is to respond to his invitation.

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ answers the questions of suffering and evil in many ways, but above all, two stand out. First, God showed his unquenchable and infinite love for each human being on the Cross. Second, God showed that he is willing to experience all the pain and suffering of human life alongside us. Christ tells us at his Ascension, “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) He means it. Christ lives compassionately in the heart of every baptized Christian. He lives our joys and our sorrows with us. There is nothing in our life that causes him to turn his love away from us.

Simply put: God’s answer to suffering is his loving compassion for humanity.