The restoration of the guilty, therefore, was inseparably linked with the Crucifixion of Christ, and because the former was God’s will so also was the latter.  And since it was the Father’s will that he should suffer, it was the Son’s will also.

“My food”, Jesus had said, “is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work” (RSV, John 4:34).  That work of man’s salvation necessitated the willing sacrifice of himself as the cost of his mission to mankind.  Speaking as the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep, he said, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (RSV, John 10:17).

It was because the suffering of Christ was inseparable from the salvation of man, that the word “must” tolls like a bell through the Gospel record.  “…the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected…and be killed” (RSV, Mark 8:31, our emphasis) he had said while still in Galilee.  And at the time of his arrest in Gethsemane he said, “Do you not think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (RSV, Matthew 26:53,54, our emphasis).