text: Christ was born for us because God loves us.  He became human to demonstrate that love, and to teach a world in disarray about that love, and how we could demonstrate that love to each other, for each other.  Being human, Christ was going to die.  "I love you so much I will die as you die, and then show you that death is not the end, when I reveal the resurrection and what can be after."  The method of Christ's death, the cross, was chosen by humans, by religious and political leaders threatened by his teachings.  The method of death was interpreted as a sacrifice by followers steeped in the necessity for sacrificial atonement  belief of their Hebrew culture and history.  I have come to feel it was undergoing death that was the sacrifice of Christ.