As Old as God Himself, and as Free

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the hilasmos for our sins.
--1 John 4:10

This is incomparable love and immeasurable love, God giving his Son as a sacrifice to cover the sins of those who had treated him with rejection and contempt. It is a love as old as God himself, and as free.

Yet in its impulse toward forgiveness it does not set aside the need for sin to be expiated. Deep in the nature of God himself there is a necessity for a hilasmos.

But God not only requires it. He provides it; and he not only provides it, he becomes it. 

-Donald Macleod, Christ Crucified: Understanding the Atonement (IVP, 2014), 128