How is Christ's death so significant?

(the question title isn't quite right; I welcome any better phrasing - it is not intended to sound inflammatory) This is a genuine question, that regularly occurred to me during my youth, and was recently reminded to me by an answer fragment: > ... However, the death of Christ on the Cross is such an infinite payment... I *always* had trouble with this. It is *honestly* not intended to dismiss the suffering of someone being tortured to death, but in the context of Christ as an infinite being in the Trinity, capable of miracles, healing, resurrection and immortal heavenly life, this seems... quite a minor event. And indeed, many many people have suffered similar treatment on all sides of religious quarrel (or non-religious, for that matter). Likewise, the sacrifice of God in "giving up" the Son - again, in the context of a being that is either many thousands of years, or ageless (in that time cannot be applied), a 30-something year stint on the earth (where God is omnipresent anyway) before re-ascending seems... an inconvenient errand rather than truly *giving something up*. It is probably way too late to save my wondering, but what is (/was) the reasoning that I missed on this?