In pouring himself out in the form of a servant, and in living his humanity as an offering up of everything to God in
love, the shape of the eternal Son's life was already
sacrificial in this special sense; and it was this
absolute giving, as God and man, that was made complete on Golgotha.
One need not deny the value of martyrdom in certain instances, or the selflessness of
sacrificial death that is sometimes involved in trying to live a life of
love, or even at times of pacifism (as a strategy, without believing in it as an
absolute principle).