Christ did not endure suffering and death in order that we might be spared suffering and death. That is obvious, because we suffer and die.

He did not endure suffering and death to redirect God’s wrath/vengeance/justice away from each of us, as a partridge hen might lure the fox away from her hatchlings, and sate its hunger outside the nest with her own flesh. That is one of the darkest and most twisted thoughts ever to foul Christian theology, a mindless caricature of God and the Son.

On the cross, Christ sanctified suffering and death, as in his life he sanctified every reality of what it is to be human. Christ’s suffering warrants to us and reveals to us that our own suffering has meaning.