Many people have asked me this same question, often with pain in their voices: “If God is love, why did Jesus have to suffer so much?” It’s a question that lives in every heart that has ever felt sorrow, loss, or injustice. To understand why Jesus suffered, we must look not only at His pain but at the love that carried Him through it.
Jesus’ suffering was not meaningless. In the Gospels, we see that He chose it freely. He told His disciples, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). His suffering was the path through which divine love entered our broken world. On the Cross, He carried the weight of human sin—the pride, hatred, and violence that separate us from God—and transformed it with love.
The Church teaches that Jesus’ suffering reveals the depth of God’s mercy. Through His wounds, we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). Sin had created a chasm between humanity and God, but Christ bridged that divide by bearing its full consequence. It was not that the Father demanded suffering, but that true love demanded redemption. Jesus entered our darkness so that we might live in His light.
When we look at Christ crucified, we see not only agony but victory. His suffering was the seed of resurrection. Every tear, every thorn, every nail became part of the world’s salvation. It reminds us that our own pain, when united with His, can also become a path to life. When we suffer with faith, we share in His redeeming love, and our hearts begin to resemble His—humble, trusting, and full of mercy.
So when we ask, “Why did Jesus have to suffer?” we are really asking, “Why does love go so far?” The answer is simple yet infinite: because God would not stop short of giving everything to bring us home.
May we never see the Cross as a symbol of despair, but as the ultimate sign of hope. In Christ’s suffering, love triumphed over sin and death—and in our suffering, that same love can rise again.
— Fr. John Matthew, for Christian Way
