Thanks so much for the responses,
Now as i`ve posted earlier i do understand the fulfilment of prophecy but God must have choosen how Jesus was to Die before the creation?
So why did he choose such a violent and barbaric death.
Maybe it was for impact, I know i felt ashamed after seeing the passion that one man had to suffer all that just so i might live.
There are many things that can be said about the suffering and death of Jesus. One thing to be said is that His suffering and death reveal His role as Messiah, in fulfillment of the OT prophesies. Another may be that His suffering and death show the depth of His love and devotion for each of us. You are right though, neither of these things were necessary to reopen the Gates of Heaven to mankind.
It may be said that these things were necessary for salvation, that if Jesus was not shown to be the Messiah through fulfillment of the prophesies, no one would know about His redeeming act, and so no one would be saved through Him. Or that the revelation of His love and fidelity was necessary so that we might find agreement and attraction to Him and His offer for salvation. Yet, neither of these things, though perhaps necessary for individual salvation, were not necessary for the redemption of mankind and the reopening of the Gates of Heaven to us.
So, was Christ's suffering truly necessary to that end? Or was it simply a peripheral that would draw us to Him? The answer, though not immediately obvious, is a resounding yes. Yes, Christ did need to suffer and die for the redemption of humanity.
So we come to your question: why? The answer is simply this: to redeem oneself, one must take upon himself the consequences of his trespasses, and submit his will to whom he has trespassed against.
Christ is the suffering servant. He is a servant because He must sumbit His will, and He suffered because that is the consequence of sin.
First, why was it necessary that Christ lose His own will to the Will of the Father? Because the sin of Adam, and of all men, is that of disobedience against God, it is to reject the will of the Father in choice of our own (which, in rejecting the Father's Will, is therefore contrary to it). Therefore, in order to redeem men, Christ had to submit His own will to the Father's. "Yet, not my will, but yours be done."
So Christ was a servant, He served the will of the Father from birth to death. His was a singular mission of salvation that He followed the whole of His life. He did not deviate from His servitude.
Christ was not merely a servant though, He was the "Suffering Servant," an image of the Messiah first seen in Isaiah.
In Genesis, we learn that the consequence of sin is suffering and death. In fact, the Hebrews of the OT referred to sin and suffering synonimously. The nature of sin and the nature of suffering were considered so intimately intertwined that they were often considered one and the same.
When we say that Christ took on the sin of the world, the sin of each and every human being from the beginning to the end of time for their salvation, we cannot separate that reality from the suffering that is the direct and indirect consequence of those same sins. Original Sin was not the only and singular cause of suffering and death. Every sin compounds and promulgates suffering and death. Suffering and death are the natural consequences of sin. Therefore, not simply by virtue of what it means to take sin onto oneself, but also by virtue of the necessity of accepting the responsibility of the sins and trespasses committed against God and His will, suffering and death are absolutely and vitally necessary for the redemption of people.
Crime and punishment cannot be separated. This is where another beautiful aspect of suffering is revealed to us through Jesus.
Before Christ, the punishment of a crime was nothing more than the natural consequence of the crime. Therefore, laws were made around this concept, and where a criminal suffered no immediate or clear consequence to his crime, one of equal magnitude to the crime was imposed. Thus, you get laws such as "an eye for an eye."
However, with Christ, and the suffering and death of Christ, you also acquire the redemptive quality of suffering and death. For, Christ did not simply suffer and die, but He was resurrected! Therefore, we now use punishments, personal suffering, as means of reparation for our crimes. Now, we call this consequence of suffering with the intention of personal redemption penance.
So we see many reasons for the suffering and death. The necessity of it is revealed in the fact that the acceptance of the consequence of sin is the taking-on of that consequence, which is suffering and death.
Beyond this, Christ becomes the model by which we find personal redemption in every day life within our interactions with each other, that of forgiveness and penance. Moreover, uniting ourselves to His sacrifice, uniting our own suffering, our own penances to God, through Him and His sacrifice, we find an ever more efficacious and spiritually rewarding way of achieving personal salvation. Not only do we accept Christ's redemptive act, but by uniting ourselves to it, through our own suffering, as meager offerings of our own, we share in the perfect sacrifice of Christ.
Yes, Christ's suffering and death were necessary. No other activity could have held the redemptive quality that was necessary for our salvation. Christ could not have been anything other than our Suffering Servant.
Just for your own edification, here are some things the late Pope John Paul II said about suffering, in general (and in regards to Christ's suffering).... if you're interested.
http://www.christianforums.com/t3297628-jpii-suffering-dying-and-death.html
