I dozed off at about 2 am this morning on the couch at my brother’s bachelor party, while most of the guys were still sitting around the dining room table finishing a friendly game of poker. I awoke at around 5:30 am to find many of these same guys still sitting around that dining room table, only this time they were talking theology.
It was a friendly conversation and I wasn’t awake to even know what started the whole thing. However, one question in particular caught my interest:
If our sins are punished by eternal separation from God (or, eternal hell), why did Jesus only have to suffer momentary separation and punishment?
Its not a new question, but one that I have often pondered over the years. In this conversation, the question was meant (among other things) to be something that would “leave everyone speechless” and to help serve to illustrate the supposed assumption that “there are a lot of Biblical things that we just can’t understand”.
And to be honest, it is a difficult question. At the moment it was presented, I wasn’t certain enough of my thoughts to walk over and say anything. In fact, in order to jog my memory and try to confirm what I have heard in the past in regards to this question, I have spent the last couple hours (its now almost 8 am) doing a little online research to find some Christian answers to this question.
Here are two answers that I found from two trusted and widely respected pastors/theologians:
John MacArthur
I guess the staggering thing for me is this, Christ only suffered on the cross for about three hours, then He died. How is it possible that He could bear the full penalty for sin, for all who will ever believe, when if they had to bear it they would all spend eternity in Hell and it would never be enough?
Amazing, isn’t it? If even an eternal Hell can’t pay the penalty when endured by the sinner, how in the world can all the penalty for all who will ever believe be accomplished in three hours? The answer is, it was, which should take you somewhere into the realm of understanding the infinite punishment that Jesus endured. All the eternities of Hill that all the redeemed should have suffered were collectively endured by Christ in three hours.
He is infinite and He bore almost an infinity of wrath in three hours. The fury of God spent itself in three hours. Why? “This is My body which is given for you.” It would take us forever and we still couldn’t satisfy God. “This is My blood shed for you.” He took the guilt of all our sins and the full fury of God’s wrath as our penal substitute. It’s the sacrifice of Christ, a sacrifice to God, a submission of Christ, a submission to the will of God.
John Piper:
That’s a good question, and I think there’s a pretty clear answer.
Another question would be, How can one man suffer when millions should’ve suffered? Same kind of issue. How does one suffering become the suffering of millions? The math doesn’t work! How does suffering for 3 hours on a cross correspond to delivering people from eternity in hell? All those kinds of questions apply here.
The answer is that the degree of suffering, indignity, reproach, degradation, and fall that Jesus endured is not simply determined temporally. And it’s not simply determined by the exquisiteness of the pain of a nail cutting through a nerve in your wrist.
It’s determined by the difference between the glory that he had with the Father in heaven and the ignominy that he suffered, naked and hanging like a piece of meat as the Son of God on the cross. It’s that distance that is the magnitude that provides the scope needed in his suffering to cover an eternity in hell and to cover the sins of millions of people.
The way to think about it is that we commit a greater indignity against God, not just in accord with how many sins we commit or how bad they are, but in accord with how great he is. Therefore our sins are infinitely great because they’re against an infinite person and deserve an infinite punishment.
Christ, being an infinite person, became so low that that drop in suffering, that drop in indignity was such a huge drop-it was an infinite drop-that it suffices to cover the sins of millions and to cover the entire length of eternity that we deserve to be in hell.
He is a great Savior.
— I like both of these answers, and I think they are pretty much saying the same thing. What do you think? Are there any other good (Good = Biblical) explanations out there? Please share.
