> I've more or less stopped attempting to systematize just exactly how the sacrifice of Jesus "works", and how through his sacrifice God was able to meet the demands of both His justice and His mercy and love. It always seems to me that God must have had some motive other than simply trying to balance out the equation of His divine attributes.

Of course he did. The Bible, and therefore God, are so complex as to be incomprehensible to us. But the flipside is that there are certain things we *can* understand about God -- the Bible, with its commands to study it and learn, makes that quite clear. I believe my analogy is incomplete regarding Jesus' sacrifice and what it means, but I also believe it is pretty much *correct* as far as the analogy presumes. Likewise, it is "incomplete" to describe God as infinitely just and infinitely merciful -- the two characteristics important to this discussion -- but that doesn't mean they are any less correct. We may not understand all of why God did what he did and what it meant when he did it, but we certainly better do our best to understand the facets of it God tries to teach us in the Bible.