Love is thinking of others, sin is thinking only of yourself.
Love gave us the Gospel, sin gave us abortion clinics, old age homes (where our elders are safely tucked out of our site--often unvisited by younger family members, their lives shortened by the feeling that they're unloved and un-needed), the "survival of the fittest" ideology of Nazi Germany, the ovens of Auschwitz, the labor camps of Stalinist Russia, etc.
God said He had no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 18:32), and He certainly takes no pleasure in the death of the innocent, so why did Jesus have to die?
On the night of His arrest, Jesus said:
...for them do I sanctify myself, that they also themselves may be sanctified in truth (John 17:19.)
It would appear from this that He expected His act of sacrificial love to have the power to sanctify others, but in what way?
Paul later wrote:
...scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:7-8.)
I believe Jesus was fully God and fully man, and His sacrifice demonstrated God's love, and how seriously God views sin, as nothing else could have.
A friend recently put it this way:
Jesus died to show us how much He loves His Father and to show us how much He loves us. If we turn and follow Him we don't have to go to hell. If a person turns from their sins because of Jesus' death He has in effect died in their place.
Because He died for me I turned from my sin and began to follow Him.
God Bless.