Why did the Messiah have to die? I know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the only Being Who had both the Godlike ability to take upon Himself the infinite weight of sorrow of billions of souls without collapsing into a black hole, and at the same time also had the ability inherited from His mortal mother to actually die. I know that death, even for the Son of God, is an essential part of the Plan of Salvation. I know that the law required the death of Jesus to satisfy the demands of justice. But why did the Messiah have to die? I’m using the term Messiah deliberately. When Jesus was born, the Jewish people were under the subjugation of the Romans. Before that it was the Seleucids and the Greeks. Before that it was the Persians. Before that it was the Babylonians. Before that it was the Assyrians. Before that it was the Philistines. Before that it was the Egyptians. Practically every empire within a couple of thousand miles for the last couple of thousand years had kicked the little Kingdom of Israel around like a football. It is not hard to understand how amidst all of these enslavements and occupations and subjugations and displacements and slaughters and desecrations, the prophecies of the Messiah began to take on the air of a Comic Book Superhero. When the Messiah came, He would break the chains of captivity, cast down the walls of oppression, drive out the enemies of Israel and crush and grind them under His feet. The Messiah would be Almighty, Invincible, the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts, a grand general for an unstoppable army of righteousness, the stone cut out of the mountain that would topple all of the other kingdoms. It is clear that even on the very night before His death, Jesus Christ’s Apostles, His very closest friends, still more than half believed in this kind of Messiah. Roughly one fourth of the entire Gospel of John, chapters 13-18, is Jesus Christ trying to explain to these men that He did not rise up as the Messiah to lead an army to vanquish Rome. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27). The Peace that Jesus gives looks different from the peace that His disciples and the rest of the Jewish people imagined that the Messiah would bring. He gives the same message to Pilate. “Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” (John 18:36-37). If the Kingdom of the Messiah were of this world, then would His servants fight. If this world were all there was, then of course God would be out there, using His omnipotence to stop every war, halt every crime, catch every fall. But there is more to our existence than this brief mortal life. The Messiah had to die to show all of us that worldly success is not guaranteed, and that is OK. His followers had to know that just because they had chosen to follow the Messiah, this did not mean that they would be marching from one victory to the next, adding glory upon glory, never again in a position where they might be tempted to feel small or weak or afraid. They had to accept that He was in truth the Messiah, and that He would be killed anyway. They had to see for themselves that death was not the end, that God’s Kingdom was not of this world, that they would be hated and reviled and even like their beloved Messiah killed and that even after all of this, all these things would work together for their good in the end.When Pilate asked Jesus if He was a king, Jesus said, “To this End was I born,” but I would like to rearrange that phrase. “I was born to end this.” Jesus was born to end the whole notion of Kings and Empires and wars and struggles for power or dominance. Every pursuit of power is rooted in the idea that pain and suffering can be kept at bay if one has enough power and influence. The Messiah had to die to show the truth that this idea that we can avoid pain is a lie. The most powerful person ever born suffered more pain than everyone else who has ever or will ever live put together. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:20-22,33). The Messiah had to die to show us that the only way to arrive at true peace and joy, the kind that no man can take from us, is through sorrow. We may know in theory that Christ descended below all things, but it is only when we have been dragged to the depths of Hell that we see for ourselves that Christ is by our side every step of the way. It is hard to believe when we are wallowing in sorrow that any amount of joy could be worth this much pain, but when our sorrow is turned into Joy, I know through the power of the Atonement that we will remember our anguish no more.