​One can speculate (and that means SPECULATE!) that since Jesus, Who was without sin, would have never died if He was not killed. But we know that, apart from the cross, Jesus did suffer while alive during His life and ministry, and this would be for His Father’s glory rather than because of sin. He told His disciples, “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials; and just as My Father has granted Me a kingdom, I grant you…” (Luke 22:28-29). He suffered physically, mentally, and emotionally through His temptations, in persecution from the Jews, in the faithlessness and lack of understanding of His disciples, in seeing people follow Him for food and healing but not for God’s ways, in seeing the religious leaders reject His ways of peace, in lack of food, sleep, and comfort, in seeing those He loved deal with suffering and death, in knowing the fate of Israel for their rejection of Him, and in seeing His impending death on the cross. In all these things, He exhorted His true followers to similarly take up their own crosses in suffering and even death. His way has always been to pursuit an inward life through an outward death.