Did Jesus Really Suffer?

Introduction

A common talking point from YouTube atheists, like Matt Dillahunty and the Mindshift channel, takes a peculiar twist on Jesus’s resurrection. Even granting the story, they ask how three days of death can be a sufficient sacrifice if he comes back to life and resumes being God. According to sceptics, God doesn’t really give up anything, and Jesus sacrifices a weekend at most.¹,²,³ This framing, though catchy, betrays a shallow grasp of Judaism and Christianity. It reduces a profound narrative to a flippant caricature. Far from a trivial loss, Jesus’s death carries infinite weight, and here’s why.

Clearing Up Misunderstandings

Sceptics like the above, often link Jesus’s death to the Old Testament’s blood sacrifices for sin. They cite verses like Exodus 29:18 or Numbers 15:3, where burnt offerings please God, and then leap to equate it with “blood cults” like Baal or Moloch, claiming all such religions are fundamentally the same. This move lacks justification and ignores the broader scriptural context.

Yes, Jesus is the sacrificial lamb redeeming Israel, and the Old Testament does mandate offerings. However, sceptics either miss or sidestep passages showing God’s deeper intent. Psalm 40:6 declares, “In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted.” This is echoed by Psalm 51’s call for a contrite heart, Hosea 6:6’s “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings,” and Micah 6:8’s “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Jesus himself quotes Hosea in Matthew 9:13: “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’” Isaiah 1:11–31 critiques empty rituals, and Hebrews 10:1–16 seals it: “The law has but a shadow of the good things to come. It can never, by the same sacrifices, make perfect those who draw near. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Christ then says, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me. Behold, I have come to do your will,” establishing a new covenant through his once-for-all offering.

This thread runs deeper. Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:1–22, Galatians 3:6–9, and Hebrews 11:8–19 show Abraham credited with righteousness by faith, not sacrifice alone. Before Jesus, forgiveness came through faith and a contrite heart. The sacrifice was a sign, not the substance. It symbolided innocent blood shed for the guilty, pointing to Christ: an animal, blameless, dies silently for our sins, prefiguring the Lamb who takes our place.

Contrast this with Baal and Moloch worship: child sacrifices to appease fickle gods for crops or victory. Those were transactional and coercive, driven by human desperation. Jesus’s death is God’s self-initiated act of love. John 3:16 states, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” The direction flips. God sacrifices for us, not us for him. Lumping these together isn’t just sloppy. It’s a false equivalence.

The True Cost

The sceptic’s next jab, that “Jesus never gave up anything,” crumbles under scrutiny. Consider time. We know 10 seconds feels brief. Then, 10,000 seconds is 2.78 hours, 100,000 is under 28 hours, 10^6 (1 million) is 11.5 days, 10^10 is 317 years, and 10^12 is 31,710 years. The leap grows exponentially, yet from any finite number compared to infinity is a chasm dwarfing all prior jumps. Now apply this to God, a maximally great being, infinite in every positive trait. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, lowers himself to human form, which is an infinite descent.

Philippians 2:6–8 captures it: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” This "emptying" of Jesus (kenosis), isn’t about three days in a tomb. It’s the infinite stepping into finitude, suffering, and mortality.

But what of the three days versus eternal conscious torment (ECT)? If the damned face endless separation, how does Jesus reconcile us in so short a span? I don’t claim the three days were strictly necessary. God could have acted sooner. Yet Jesus ties it to Jonah: “As Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Practically, a briefer death might fuel doubts he truly died. Three days, with decay setting in (cf. John 11:39), silences that. Theologically, its power isn’t duration but identity. Jesus’s infinite worth makes any span sufficient.

Hell, as separation from God, isn’t punishment in the vindictive sense. It is it's consequence. If I drink two liters of whiskey a day and my liver fails, the alcohol doesn’t “punish” me. My choice does. Rejecting God, the source of life, yields eternal separation (Romans 6:23), as a natural outcome, not divine spite. Jesus’s death, though finite in time, bears infinite weight because of who he is.

This weight deepens with his intimacy with God. He teaches us to pray “Our Father” (Matthew 6:9–13), using “Abba,” Aramaic for “Papa,” a child’s tender term.⁴ Yet on the cross, he cries, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” or “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). From “Papa” to forsakenness, Jesus loses the Father’s presence, an infinite relational rupture. This isn’t a weekend inconvenience. It’s the heartbreak of God incarnate, dying to restore us. His suffering’s finite in time masks its incalculable cost.

References

1.https://thedeconvertedman.com/jesuss-crucifixion-wasnt-a-real-sacrifice/ 

2.https://youtu.be/GOyyXMg5xBE?si=YLWxCU89orZORXmE 

3.https://youtu.be/z2oJWDqKq24?si=YpeSFSNmut-FOQej 

4https://himpublications.com/blog/meaning-abba/