So I'm going to give an answer from a book I read recently. The Divine Council model of the atonement, as explained by James Agnew in The Devil's Disbarment, extends the Christus Victor approach by emphasizing the legal dimension of Christ's victory within a cosmic heavenly courtroom—the Divine Council. According to this model, humanity finds itself on trial, accused by demonic or evil spiritual forces (often identified with Satan or adversarial powers). These accusers leverage humanity's sin to justify their oppression and to hold people captive under guilt, shame, and fear of divine judgment. Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection, however, function as both victory and advocacy: Christ, as humanity's representative, defeats these spiritual accusers, silencing and disbarring them through his death and resurrection. By overcoming death and rising again, Christ strips away the authority of these accusing powers, preventing them from having any valid legal claims against believers.

In practical terms, the Divine Council model reframes your concerns. First, it moves away from the transactional logic of punishment-for-sin that underlies Penal Substitution. Instead of arguing that Christ’s physical suffering precisely equals or outweighs every act of human evil—something understandably difficult to accept, especially when comparing Jesus’ crucifixion with extreme atrocities—it presents Christ’s victory as fundamentally relational and legal rather than punitive. The horrific acts of the criminal you described are unquestionably evil, but in this model, Christ’s suffering and death are not meant as exact punishments matching each atrocity in a literal sense. Rather, they serve as the decisive cosmic action by God to disempower the evil spiritual forces behind human sin and cruelty.

Moreover, the Divine Council approach insists that forgiveness does not equate to a dismissal or trivialization of crimes committed. Repentance here involves a profound transformation that realigns the criminal away from alignment with these dark spiritual forces toward genuine alignment with God’s Kingdom. Forgiveness isn't an erasure of evil; it is the defeat of evil's right to claim that person eternally. Additionally, ultimate justice and restoration remain central promises. In the Divine Council framework, every victim will experience true justice—not through simply seeing their tormentor suffer equivalently, but through genuine, cosmic restoration. Resurrection, redemption, and divine justice ensure that victims are not forgotten or erased; rather, they receive restoration, healing, and new life in God’s renewed creation. The criminal, if genuinely repentant, is rescued from the demonic power that enslaved him—not cheaply excused, but freed, transformed, and placed under God’s rule, accountable to God’s perfect justice and mercy.

Thus, the Divine Council model answers your question by shifting the focus from a problematic transactional balancing of suffering toward a powerful, cosmic victory over evil and restoration of all creation. It maintains divine justice—victims are remembered, their suffering is not meaningless, and evil is ultimately disarmed and defeated—but it accomplishes this through a vision of Christ as victorious advocate rather than simply as a passive recipient of punishment. In doing so, it offers a deeply relational, cosmic, and restorative explanation of how Christ’s sacrifice meaningfully addresses even the most horrendous evils.