Justice and Grace

It sounds like they're two opposites, doesn't it? Justice is getting what you deserve and grace is being shown mercy, i.e., not getting what you deserve. As Christians, I think we fall into one of two traps: we either ignore grace and try to earn everything or we ignore justice and forget that our sins, any one of them, are enough to earn us hell for eternity. In other words, we forget either grace or we forget justice because we figure that they both can't apply, being opposites.

I want you to look at this a different way. I want you to consider how meaningless grace is without justice. If you were in a foreign country and broke one of the laws they have there that they don't have here and a cop stopped you, told you what you'd done, and then let you go without a penalty, it wouldn't mean much if your violation was one that didn't have a penalty associated (there actually are such laws, oddly enough). You could do that violation over and over and the worst thing that would happen is an inconvenient conversation with an officer, asking you to stop but powerless to make you do so.

Now imagine the penalty was 20 years in prison. It wouldn't matter whether you thought the penalty was fair. You are in another country and subject to their rules. (Ignore for now things like your country's gov't stepping in to negotiate.) You're quickly found guilty and sentenced. As you're being hauled off to jail, the judge steps in front and says, "Let him/her go. I will serve the sentence in their place." The guards take off your handcuffs and put them on the judge. Then that innocent judge goes willingly to take your place while you are set free. How much does grace mean to you now? That judge took your place so you could be forgiven.

"Why didn't he just acquit me?" you may be asking. Because if he did, he'd be making a mockery of the law that he has sworn to uphold. The law, and by extension, the judge's integrity, demand that someone be punished for the crime. If there was no punishment, it would not truly be grace, but corruption. God did exactly this for you, but on a much grander scale, saving not just you, but all who would call on Him from punishments infinitely worse than 20 years in prison. He created the laws, knowing full well you would break them and be guilty of the punishment necessary. Then, because He cannot be holy or good if He is not just, He knew that someone had to bear the punishment for our sins, so He took it on Himself because He loved us.

"Why not just not make the laws in the first place?" 

Because in that case, too, God is neither holy nor good. You are without crime in a state without laws, but you're not law-abiding. You are in an amorphous state where neither good nor bad exist. God cannot be in this state and be holy at the same time. To be holy, by definition, requires the possibility of unholiness. 

Perhaps even more importantly, the core of God's laws are choosing Him instead of yourself.  The purpose of the Universe, after all, is to glorify its Creator.  If there is no law, then there is no difference in which you choose, which would greatly diminish Him, which is something that cannot happen since we will never be even fractionally comparable to God. Conversely, if God compelled obedience, then there would be no possibility of love, since love, like holiness, requires the possibility of its opposite to exist.

Thus, the laws are required for God to be holy and good.  His laws require both the possibility of breaking them and, once they are broken, punishment for those infractions, or else they are meaningless.  That punishment was taken by Jesus because He wanted to be merciful to us.  Without the law, though, that grace and His sacrifice would have been meaningless.