The Cross as Answer

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. — 2 Corinthians 5:21

The deepest answer Christianity offers to the problem of suffering is not a philosophical argument. It is a Person — nailed to a cross, crying out in agony, and rising from the dead. God does not explain suffering from a distance. He enters it.

God Does Not Stand at a Distance

Many theodicies attempt to defend God from the accusation of indifference. But the Christian gospel goes far beyond defense. It makes a staggering claim: the God who made the universe took on human flesh and suffered the worst that evil could inflict.

This is not a God who watches from a safe heaven while His creatures writhe. This is a God who descends — into a manger through the incarnation, into poverty, into rejection, into torture, into death, into the grave itself.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. — John 1:14

The Greek eskēnōsen (ἐσκήνωσεν) — “dwelt” or “tabernacled” — echoes God’s dwelling presence in the wilderness mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן, “tabernacle/dwelling place”). The root σκηνόω (skēnoō, “to pitch a tent/tabernacle”) resonates with the Hebrew shakhan (שָׁכַן, “to dwell”) — the root behind Shekinah, God’s glory-presence among His people. While the Greek and Hebrew words are not etymologically related, the thematic echo is unmistakable: just as God dwelt (shakhan) among Israel in the tabernacle, so now He tabernacles (skēnoō) among us in the flesh of Jesus. God has always moved toward His suffering people, not away from them.

The Incarnation as Divine Solidarity

The author of Hebrews insists that Jesus’ experience of suffering is not incidental to His saving work — it is essential:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. — Hebrews 4:15

Christ experienced:

• Poverty and displacement — “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20)
• Grief — He wept at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35). He grieved over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).
• Betrayal — Handed over by one of His own disciples, denied by another, abandoned by all (Mark 14:50)
• Physical agony — Flogged, crowned with thorns, nailed to wood, suffocated slowly on a Roman cross
• Spiritual anguish — “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38)

Whatever you suffer, Christ has been there before you. He does not counsel you from a textbook. He speaks from the cross.

Isaiah 53: The Suffering Servant

Seven centuries before Calvary, the prophet Isaiah described a figure who would bear the sins and sorrows of others:

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief… Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. — Isaiah 53:3–5

The Hebrew ‘ish makh’ovot (אִישׁ מַכְאֹבוֹת) — “man of sorrows/pains” — uses makh’ov (מַכְאוֹב), which denotes not mere sadness but acute, piercing pain — physical and psychological. The parallel phrase yedua’ choli (יְדוּעַ חֹלִי, “acquainted with grief/sickness”) reinforces that this figure knows suffering from the inside, not as an observer. This is no detached deity. This is a God who chose to be broken.

The Suffering Servant does not suffer randomly or accidentally. He suffers vicariously — in the place of others, bearing what they deserved, so that they might receive what He deserved. For a fuller treatment of the various atonement models, see the companion article.

The Cry of Dereliction

The most harrowing moment in all of Scripture occurs on the cross:

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — Matthew 27:46

The cry Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani (אֵלִי אֵלִי לְמָה שְׁבַקְתָּנִי) — a mix of Hebrew (Eli, “my God”) and Aramaic (sabachthani, from shevaq, “to forsake/abandon”) — is preserved untranslated in the Greek text, a rare moment where the original tongue of the speaker breaks through, too raw and sacred to paraphrase. Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1 — but He is not merely reciting a psalm. He is experiencing something no human being has ever experienced or will ever experience: God forsaken by God. The eternal Son, who had known nothing but perfect communion with the Father from all eternity, was plunged into the abyss of divine abandonment.

Theologians debate what exactly happened in this moment. Some, following Jürgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), speak of a real rupture within the Trinitarian life — the Father turning away from the Son who bore the world’s sin. Others insist that the divine nature cannot suffer or be divided, and that Christ experienced forsakenness in His human nature while the Trinity remained unbroken. What all agree on is that the cry is real, not theatrical — Jesus genuinely experienced the weight of humanity’s alienation from God.

This is the answer to every sufferer who has ever cried, “Where is God?” The Son entered the God-forsakenness that our sin deserved so that we would never have to experience it ultimately.

The Cross as Victory over Evil

The Greek stauros (σταυρός, “cross”) was a word of horror in the ancient world — the instrument of Rome’s most shameful execution, reserved for slaves and rebels. Paul’s insistence that this stauros is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18, 24) was a radical inversion of every expectation. The cross is not only a place of suffering — it is a place of triumph. What appeared to be evil’s greatest victory was in fact its total defeat:

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. — Colossians 2:15

The verb thriambeuō (θριαμβεύω, “to triumph over”) evokes the Roman triumphus — a victory parade in which a conquering general displayed his captives in public humiliation. Paul deliberately uses imperial imagery: the powers of evil, which appeared to triumph at Calvary, are in fact the defeated captives in Christ’s victory procession.

• Satan’s accusation is silenced — the debt is paid (Colossians 2:13–14)
• Death’s power is broken — “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54)
• Sin’s dominion is ended — we are set free (Romans 6:6–7)

The cross is God’s answer to evil not by explaining it, but by defeating it from the inside. God allowed evil to do its worst — and then turned it into the instrument of the world’s salvation. This is the pattern of divine wisdom: what man intends for evil, God transforms into redemptive good.

Resurrection: Death Is Not the Last Word

If the story ended at the cross, Christianity would be a religion of noble tragedy. But the story does not end there:

He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. — Matthew 28:6

The resurrection is God’s definitive declaration that evil, suffering, and death do not have the final word. It is the first fruits of a new creation (1 Corinthians 15:20–23), the guarantee that everything broken will be made whole.

The risen Christ still bears His wounds (John 20:27). He does not erase the suffering; He redeems it. The scars remain — but they are scars of victory, not defeat.

Hope for Those Who Suffer Now

For those in the midst of suffering, the New Testament does not offer escape but endurance sustained by hope:

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. — 2 Corinthians 4:16–18

Paul does not minimize suffering. He calls it “light” and “momentary” not because it feels that way, but because he measures it against the eternal weight of glory that awaits. The scales are not even close.

The final vision of Scripture is a world without suffering:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. — Revelation 21:4

This is not wishful thinking. It is a promise secured by the blood of the Lamb and guaranteed by His resurrection. The God who entered our suffering will one day end it — not by explaining it away, but by making all things new.

Until that day, we weep. We trust. We hope. And we look to the cross, where the answer to suffering is not a theory, but a Person with outstretched arms.