Some great comments came from Part 1 of this question. See earlier entry here.
As you know, when a question is posted to you, there are a myriad of ways to take it. What assumptions are behind the question? What is the questioner really getting at? What does he or she want to know? This is one of the challenges of an apologist these days: questions are not always as they appear. We can often lose the questioner by taking their question so literally that we miss it's meaning or elaborating too long and lose the audience. Sometimes we can only guess and ask for follow-up...
Below is the response I gave to the original email to the question... feel free to comment...
On your question, it all depends on what he was sacrificing… it may not have been a big sacrifice if it was merely death, for he rose again from the dead. But one could argue that for the first and only time in reality, the Father had to turn his back on the Son while the Son took the sin of the world on his shoulders. If we understood the purity of Jesus and awefulness of sin, if we understood the deep love within the Trinity, it would be boggling to think that God would even consider such an act for puny human creatures.
And it seems from Scripture, the scars are permanent.
The second person of the Trinity who has always existed from before time now has scars? What are humans that God is willing to do such a thing? There is more to him than we realize. There is more to us than we realize.
