What is the appeal of Jesus?
Part 4: How did the person of Jesus acquire universal significance? : Jesus the ultimate sacrifice
However, Christianity goes straight to the bottom line by giving us the ultimate sacrifice. God sacrificed himself in the person of Jesus in order for our sins to be forgiven. Note: This is the God of classical theism here, so you can’t get a bigger conception of God; you simply can’t get bigger than that either in theory or in practice. The Christian message is that God loves you so much that he died as a sacrifice for sin, so that you can be free of that sin. In this belief, people find ultimate and complete freedom.
Clearly, this message only works if you believe that Jesus was the Son of God. If he was just a man, then the Christian claim that God died for our sins is false. However, we are working within the framework of understanding that we will not credit anything beyond what science can tell us of the material universe. So, Jesus has to be a man because he can’t be God, because we are claiming that God does not exist in the traditional sense. God has become an idea which is a hub around which spiritual values are able to collect. So, I think it is possible to translate the old understanding into the new, with a profound meaning still intact.
Spiritual Devotion 