We celebrated Easter not too long ago. How did you and your church worship? Did you reflect on the fact that God Himself, who made the plan, and put the rules into place, decided that we should not be the ones who have to suffer for our sins? Now that is grace, mercy, and love.
Isaiah 53:10 tell us that it pleased the Lord to crush Him, His chosen, His anointed; because, as we saw clear in the beginning in Genesis 3, the Lord never planned to pour out the full punishment for sin on us. That is love. He made the punishment, and it's a pretty severe one, but He was willing to take it upon Himself so we wouldn't have to suffer it. Who does that? A God who loves us.
Don't be confused though, we are not saved by His love. We are saved because of His love, but not by His love. We are saved by the blood of the Lamb, first the substitute in Genesis 3:21, then by the Passover Lamb in Exodus 12, then in Leviticus 4, and the fulfillment of that was found in Christ, proclaimed by John the Baptist in John 1:29. This is the meaning behind Jesus' proclamation "It is finished!" He completed the work of the Lord.
Yet John 3:16 says that only those who believe will be saved. His sacrifice was enough to cover the sins of everyone in the world, past, present, and future, offered to all, but only given to those who accept it. The amazing thing is that the Lord didn't wait for us to become better to offer it, He offered it while we were still sinners. He will take us as we are, where we are, but we have to be willing to allow Him to change us into His image completely.