Within the Jesusonian-Christian set of beliefs of God based on the premise God is love and loves us eternally, consistently, and unconditionally, there is no room for the traditional concepts of sacrifice, atonement, and redemption. Those concepts and the subsequent human guilt and shame associated with the need for Jesus' death to wipe away the sins of mankind have frozen Christendom's ability to conceive of higher, more spiritual and reliable concepts of God. It is time to relinquish these aged interpretations in order for us to accept the truer God-concept: GOD IS LOVE. We cannot put the new wine of Jesus' loving-God concept into the old skin of traditional Judeo-Pauline-Christian theology.
Traditional Christian beliefs about God in effect indict God as a manipulative murderer of his own Son. Doesn't the belief that God sent his Son to his death as appeasement and atonement for the sins of mankind, whom God created, amount to an indictment of murder? God did not manipulate men to assassinate His Son. Would any loving father manipulate others to kill his son? No, not even a neglectful, indifferent human father would do that. So, it is inconceivable that a loving God would send his Son to die as a persuasion to Himself to forgive the sins of mankind He created. That is irrational.
God is not a heinous god, but a God of love and tenderness. He allowed His Son to go to earth, which for us would be a humiliating experience of profound proportions if we were in God's "emotional space" as a supreme and perfect spiritual being. No, God did not require the death of His Son. That was the work of unenlightened individuals. It was not the responsibility of mankind, the Jews, and certainly not of God.
As fathers and mothers, we forgive our children many wrongs and hurts because children don't have the awareness, the consciousness, to know that what they do is wrong. Jesus understood this, too, when he said, "Forgive them, Father, for they don't know what they're doing." Would our heavenly Father do any less? Never. God's love is so eternally and universally constant and complete that there is no need for sacrifice to buy His forgiveness. Forgiveness is ours immediately when we sincerely forgive others who we believe have harmed us.