My answer to the question: No, I do not think that Jesus had to die.
I believe that saying Jesus had to do anything is putting limitations upon God. In Genesis doesn’t God simply destroy everybody and everything with a flood? I think that God should not be simply understood as a logic driven creature (a la systematic theology). I think that we should try to understand God through the lens of the scriptural narrative. Isn’t the point of the Biblical text to reveal God and his plan for creation?
The fact of the matter is he did die. He did come to the rescue. But I would not narrow the defeat of sins only to the death and resurrection, but also the life that he lived. I think we need to be careful not to separate Jesus’ death from his life (and visa versa). They are connected at the deepest levels. Thus, we should avoid discussing the death of Jesus as only the substitution for our debt of sin.
If Jesus’ only mission was to die for our sins, then Herod could have knocked him off when he was an infant. Plus there’s the question, “Why die on a Roman cross?” The lambs weren’t tortured when they were sacrificed. (But I digress.) I think that one of the reasons that Jesus’ death is debated and misunderstood so often is because it is narrowed down to just a substitution for our sin debt. Which leaves us with many loose ends.