I think most of us accept that God required the death of his Son as a sacrifice for our sins, but that we wonder why God required such a sacrifice. Why, for example, why not simply forgive us for our sins, without the painful death of Jesus required? Many thoughts crowd in: God is perfectly holy, therefore some sort of recompense had to be made for the misuse of our free will that is sin. But I really think that God meant to save the world primarily through Christ’s teaching, but that when it became apparent that some wanted to put Jesus to death, God made a deal with Jesus, and said to him, “If you let yourself be put to death out of love for human beings, I will save those same human beings, nearly all of them [for I, that is Debbie Zeller, believe in universal salvation], and all of them will owe their salvation to your sacrifice, Jesus.” I believe that God spoke to Jesus about this “deal,” as I call it, the salvation deal, and that this is certainly part of the reason Jesus was often thoughtful and went off on his own to pray. And the Victory that is said to have been won was just this–that God so loved the world, and Jesus did too, that he gave his life for us. I think that God wanted to see if his Son so loved human beings that he would give his life in order to save them. This all sounds ordinary, I think, but the idea I have that is perhaps not ordinary is that Jesus had a choice whether to save us, and he made the choice to save us, and he made this choice in dialogue with God the Father. Although a Messiah had been prophesied for a long time, the exact manner of his saving humanity was, at least I think, not known – and I think that his teachings are so important, “Love thy neighbor,” and so on, that he would have saved humanity in some sense even if he hadn’t died on the cross. But death on the cross was, as the prayer goes, “a death he freely accepted,” and that is the Victory that has gained us all everlasting life. (I believe that purgatory exists, but that eventually all are rehabilitated). So this is my explanation of why God required the sacrifice of his Son. He gave Jesus the option to save humanity. If Jesus had, say, hidden himself or otherwise removed himself from danger, God would have, I believe, still loved his Son and thought that he was within his rights. But Jesus went the extra mile and a half, so to speak, and opted to save all of humanity. Jesus’ love for us must have been very great.