A strange question, but I think that I understand why it is asked.

Do you remember Abraham?  The Patriarch who was told by God to leave his home and go to live in a distant land.  He was then told to take his son Isaac, the greatest gift he had ever received, and sacrifice him on the holy mountain.  And just as he was about to plunge the knife into Isaac’s chest, God told him to stay his hand and a different sacrifice was provided by God in his place.   And this was attributed to Abraham as faith and as love.  Abraham’s willingness to offer his only son to God as a blood sacrifice is one of the great stories of the Old Testament.

So imagine for a moment that God did the exact same thing for us.  That would be an incredible testamony to His love for us.

But now, why would God have to do such a thing?  If Jesus’ crucifixion was to make atonement for our sins, couldn’t God just say to all of humankind, “Hey, I forgive your sins, all of you and all of your sins.  I forgive them.  Now go and live your life and be happy.”  What would that message be that God just gave us?  The first thing that he would be saying is, “I forgive your sins.”  The second thing he would be saying is “It is no big deal to forgive sins.”  If sins can be forgiven just by God’s say so, then sins must not be very important.  But that is not the testimony of scripture.  In the Old Testament, for a man to be forgiven sin required a blood sacrifice, and blood is a big deal.  To be forgiven sin required a death.  Either a man or a beast had to give up a life to pay the price for sin.  What that means is not that God is blood thirsty, but that sin is very serious business.  For a few hundred years the Temple in Jerusalem did not exist.  It was destroyed by the Babylonians and the Temple was the only place where sins could be atoned for.  So atonement not only required blood, but it required it to be offered on the Altar in the Temple.

Can you imagine what it was like to live when sin, any sin, could not be forgiven?  Can you imagine living your life knowing that you would someday pay the price for everything that you did wrong for your entire life?  Can you imagine living knowing that when you died you were going to Hell to be punished eternally for everything that you ever did wrong?  Those people did not live in fear for their lives, they lived in fear for their souls.

A lot of people back then lived with that fear.  Today, none of us do.  Even the most terrible sinners are told that they can be forgiven by the sacrifice of Jesus.  So, how did Jesus’ crucifixion show God’s love for us?  He reminded us that sin is a big deal.  He reminded us that the stain of sin is forever.  He reminded us that eternal punishment awaits us for the many sins that each of us have committed.  And then He provided the blood sacrifice for our sins.  All of them.  For every one of us.  For all time.  God himself paid the debt for our many sins by actually offering the blood and the life of His only son on the Altar of the cross.  Just as Abraham was going to offer his son and was given a reprieve, God made the sacrifice of His son, Jesus, so that you and I would one day have a share in His eternal kingdom.

There is an odd play on words surrounding this whole subject.  We call the instrument of Jesus’ death a cross.  In Latin that is Crucis.  And from that Latin word we get another word that tells us what the cross really is.  It is crucial.  It is the only crucial thing in all of creation.  The Cross is Crucial, because by it sin and death were defeated and no longer pose a threat to any of us.