that so men might be saved from the terrible result of their sin, when He
didn't have to, except the have-to of His great heart.

I have spoken of sacrifice as one of the two outward, manward traits of
His character. But the truth is His Calvary sacrifice faced three ways:
upward, inward and outward. It faced toward the Father, for it was
carrying out the Father's plan, and that lets us see not only the Father's
love, but His estimate, as the world's administrator of justice, of the
horribleness of the sin which He was so freely forgiving.[15] It faced in
toward Himself, for it was the purity and perfection of the life poured
out that gave the peculiar meaning to His death, and it was His
sympathetic love that led Him up that steep hill. It faced outward, for
the love of it was meant to break men's hearts and bend their stubborn
wills, and so it did and has.

His sympathy--love suffering--came to have a new meaning as He went to the
last extreme in His suffering. Sympathy is sometimes spoken of as putting
yourself in the other's place so as to help him better. Our Lord Jesus did
this. He did it as none other did, or could. He actually put Himself in
our place on the cross. He experienced what would have come to us had He
not taken our place. He suffered the suffering that belongs to us because
of our sin. He felt the feelings that came through sin working out to its
bitter end. Indeed He went beyond our own feelings here. For because He
consented to suffer as a guilty sinner, we, who trust His precious blood,
are spared that awful experience.

Calvary was sympathy to the extreme of sacrifice. But both words,
"sympathy" and "sacrifice," get new depths of meaning at Calvary. This red
shuttle thread of sacrifice will appear again and again in the fabric
which His "Follow Me" weaves out for us. What a character He calls us to!