Can God love?

[possibletarian]

No. The flaw in your sentence is that God did not sacrifice an innocent person--GOD took the penalty on himself. A perfect sacrifice, freely given, was sufficient for everyone who wants to claim it.

 

None the less it was a sacrifice of an innocent, there is no way around this. And if god took the penalty on himself that makes it even more stupid that he simply didn't forgive.

If all he effectively did was pay the penalty to himself, how is that meeting the demand of justice? , why all the smoke and mirrors it really is ridiculous.

Jesus most certainly died--in every sense of the word. A couple of points of clarification:

not as we understand death he didn't no, he knew he would be raised (by himself) to pay the price (to himself) so he could satisfy the laws of himself.

1. It is impossible for man to atone for his own sin. 
2. So God decided to do so.
3. But in order to atone for man's sin, God had to become a man in order to stand in for us. So, the sacrifice was not simply "symbolic" as you put it. 
4. That means that Jesus was truly human. He was still God, so he was not just merely human. He had a unique dual nature. 
5. His human nature endured life, suffering and death. There is another thing that comes up--God (the Father) turned away from him at the time of his death because he represented the sins of the world. This was apparently a heavy thing to go through. 

Yes we understand the theology even though there is no way to assert it's truth.  People don't have a problem with god forgiving them as a concept but why all the silly sacrifice yourself stuff, he is god after all and he knew nothing was permanent and was in full control of the process throughout.  I mean he even provided himself a way out if the heat got too much.   There is no need for anyone to pay any price and certainly not a god.

One last point on this. You mention that you "forgive, and it's done". That is not the same thing as what is happening with the Christ's atonement. Christ's atonement does not forgive, it wipes the slate clean--as if it never happened. This is an important distinction in systematic theology that few ever take note of. 

Great so why didn't god simply do that without all the melodrama ? I know you think it makes sense, hell I used to even, but really it's just man made silliness. There is no evidence anywhere to make believing that humans were ever without error and or sin a sensible thing to believe.

Why would a god who made the universe and made the potential for whatever sin is, be then unable to handle it ? it's just plain bonkers.
Words like 'holiness' and 'sin' are simply as excuse to explain why  a god is indistinguishable to no god.
It gives god an opt out on serious interaction with his creation I really cannot understand why i believed this stuff.

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So an entity who created the whole universe and everything in it has to sacrifice himself to himself because in the end he's nothing but an idiot.  Just about all of the other thousands of silly religious fairy tales make more sense than the biblical one.

It really is fucking stupid isn't it !