Living things are very focused on staying alive, whether they are bacteria or mammals. Humans are no different. People survive under extraordinary circumstances. Occasionally living beings will put themselves in danger for a greater good, notably protecting offspring, and perhaps when a pack defends its territory. Humans behave the same way.
Jesus chose to die, he accepted death, to demonstrate the power and the glory of God. That power and glory shows there is a reality beyond the struggle to stay alive followed by the inevitability of death. When we say “Christ conquered death” it’s exactly that struggle that he overcame. We are no longer locked in a relentless battle with an inevitable outcome.
We also say “Jesus saves us”. But saves us from what? Saves us from ourselves; saves us from all that we have done that makes us less than we could be, everything we regret, everything that diminishes the perfection with which God created us.
When we die and rise with Christ then all the accumulated baggage is removed, we become again a new creation, the perfect being that God intended. As Jesus was God and was revealed as such by his resurrection, so when we are resurrected, made new, our God-likeness is also revealed.
We are saved by dying. That isn’t what our instincts as earthly creatures might tell us. But it is what Jesus came to demonstrate.