Nor is accepting death to help someone else extraordinary. It is valorous, but not uncommon, among soldiers. Every kamikaze pilot did this. To accept pain and death to save millions of people is not a hard calculation for someone with a decent sense of duty.

Moreover, the death of Jesus was to be temporary, and he knew it--- with greater faith than the rest of us can have. To be dead three days is hardly the blink of an eye.

So why is the Crucifixion so important? For so it is, by the evidence we have from the Bible and the theological deductions we can make from it. Somehow, the Crucifixion is a turning point in human history. That we can shoot down certain simple explanations, "Nobody has ever had to experience such pain," and "Because someone was willing to die for me," does not eliminate its importance.

One possibility is that the pain and death are significant because it is God who is suffering them. For the rest of us, pain and death are unavoidable. To be sure, the soldier who volunteers for pain and death could avoid them by shrinking from perfect fulfillment of his duty, but that is a huge caveat. By being a soldier, he is in a situation in which pain and death-- even if voluntary-- is the norm. But God did not have to put himself into human form.

Under this explanation, the pain and death of Jesus would be just as significant if it were from a natural death by cancer as from crucifixion. Whether natural or unnatural, for Him, unlike us, the painful death was avoidable.

A second possibility is that the pain and death are not what is important. Rather, it is the degradation of being mocked and wrongly punished by inferior beings. The scourging, and the mocking of Herod, were as bad as the Crucifixion. For someone as pure and exalted as Jesus, this degradation would be worse than pain and death. In this, He would not be unique; on a lesser scale, many a person would rather suffer pain and death than suffer degradation. Better death than dishonor.

A third possibility is that it is not the Crucifixion that is significant, but the Incarnation. For God to become Man brought Him degradation and pain, even apart from the events of Holy Week. The Crucifixion then becomes merely the epitome of Jesus's entire life.

Perhaps this is not a mystery, and some progress might be made in figuring out that one of these explantions is correct. Or, whether it is a mystery or not, perhaps one or more of them can be disproved. I'll leave the topic for now, though.