This was Jesus the man that paid the debt.
Yes, but Jesus the Man is also Jesus the God -- you can't separate one from the other.
Really? If Christ was not sinless, He would have had to pay a debt for His own sins. He could never, then, have paid the price for me.
Why not? Who are you to tell God -- in whatever form he takes -- what He can or can never do?
Don't get me wrong, I agree that if Jesus was, indeed, God, then he was sinless -- since God cannot disobey Himself, now can He?
God.
If the penalty is not paid then the criminal is still in debt.
Any debt can be forgiven. Christians are, in fact, called upon to be forgiving; it's one of Christs' most important lessons.
Does a Christian's forgiveness have strings attached?
No man was going to do it. So Christ had to come and do it.
But a man did come and do it -- Christ. In addition to being God, Christ was every bit as human as you and me.
Otherwise, all would suffer eternal separation from God.
Because God cannot forgive without a blood sacrifice? How limiting.
You're right. He doesn't "have" to do anything. Does HE. But, He does.
So the truth is that the cross, the atonement, the whole cosmic melodrama, was God's choice.
God didn't "have" to arrange a sacrifice to forgive sins; He could've simply said, "you're forgiven!" and that would've been that. But, He didn't. He chose the melodrama.
You're really stuck on "to Himself" aren't you. Well, I'm glad you see Jesus and God being one. Now just imagine that they are also separate. Kind of like when the company "board" is made up of several people. Yet they are one board. While in a Supernatural way the trinity is much more connected and "one" than the board of humans.
So one member of the board makes a sacrifice because another member demands it -- except since, in a Supernatural way the trinity is much more connected and "one," the board analogy is pretty much shot right there.
I can't really see the difficulty here.
You made an interesting analogy, and then admitted that it doesn't apply here. The funny thing is, a board can decide to do something even if not all the members agree on it -- majority rules, and all that.
Is that the case with the trinity?