If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. -Romans 3:24

Sin can never merit anything but punishment, and repentance is no atonement for sin. Not that God is bound from any necessity of His nature to forgive every one that repents, because repentance has not in itself sufficient efficacy and power to merit forgiveness at the hand of God. Yet, nevertheless, it is a truth that, because God is just, He must forgive every sinner who confesses his sin. And if He did not-and mark, it is a bold thing to say, but it is warranted by the text-if a sinner should be led truly and solemnly to make confession of his sins and cast himself on Christ, if God did not forgive him, then He were not the God that He is represented to be in the Word of God: He were a God unjust, and that may God forbid, such a thing must not, cannot be. But how, then, is it that Justice itself actually demands that every soul that repents should be pardoned? It is so. The same Justice that just now stood with a fiery sword in His hand, like the cherubim of old keeping the way of the tree of life, now goes hand in hand with the sinner. “Sinner,” He says, “I will go with thee. When thou goest to plead for pardon, I will go and plead for thee. Once I spoke against thee: but now I am so satisfied with what Christ has done, that I will go with thee and plead for thee. I will change my language I will not say a word to oppose thy pardon, but I will go with thee and demand it. It is but an act of justice that God should now forgive.” And the sinner goes up with Justice, and what has Justice got to say? Why, it says this: “God must forgive the repenting sinner, if He be just, according to His promise.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0255.cfm

“It is finished!” – John 19:30

If you will please for a moment to consider how terrible were the agonies of Christ, which, mark you, He endured in the room, the place, the stead of all poor penitent sinners, of all those who confess their sins and believe in Him;…Doth Justice come to thee this morning, and say, “Sinner, thou hast sinned, I will punish thee?” Answer thus-“Justice, thou hast punished all my sins. All I ought to have suffered has been suffered by my substitute, Jesus….” But if Justice still accuse, and conscience clamour, go thou and take Justice with thee to Gethsemane, and stand there with it: see that Man so oppressed with grief, that all His head, His hair, His garments bloody be…Dost thou see that Man there!…In a whole hell there is not so much dignity of vengeance as there is in the garden of Gethsemane…Come, Justice, to the hall of Pilate. Seest thou that Man arraigned, accused, charged with sedition and with blasphemy! See Him taken to the guard-room, spat upon, buffetted with hands, crowned with thorns, robed in mockery, and insulted with a reed for a sceptre…Let me show thee this Man on the pavement…Stand, Justice, and listen to those stripes, those bloody scourges, and as they fall upon His devoted back and plough deep furrows there, dost thou see thong-full after thong-full of His quivering flesh torn from His poor bare back! Art not content yet, Justice? Then what will satisfy thee? “Nothing,” says Justice, “but His death.” Come thou with me, then thou canst see that feeble Man hurried through the streets! Seest thou Him driven to the top of Calvary, hurled on His back, nailed to the transverse wood? Oh, Justice, canst thou see His dislocated bones, now that His cross is lifted up?..And lastly, O Justice, dost thou see Him bow His head, and die? “Yes,” saith Justice, “and I am satisfied; I have nothing that I can ask more; I am fully content; my uttermost demands are more than satisfied.”

Guilty though I am and vile, can I not plead that this bloody sacrifice is enough to satisfy God’s demands against me? Oh, yes, I trust I can. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0255.cfm

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. -2Corinthians 5:21

Jesus, the eternal Son of God, “very God of very God,” who had been hymned through eternal ages by joyous angels, who had been the favourite of His Father’s court, exalted high above principalities and powers, and every name that is named, He Himself condescended to become man; was born of the Virgin Mary; was cradled in a manger; lived a life of suffering, and at last died a death of agony. If you will but think of the wondrous person whom Jesus was-as very God of very God, king of angels, creator, preserver, Lord of all-I think you will see that in His sufferings, the law received a greater vindication than it could have done even in the sufferings of all the men that have ever lived or ever could live. If God had consumed the whole human race, if all the worlds that float in ether had been sacrificed as one mighty holocaust to the vengeance of the law, it would not have been so well vindicated as when Jesus died. For the deaths of all men and all angels would have been but the deaths and sufferings of creatures; but when Jesus died, the Creator Himself underwent the pang, it was the divine preserver of the world hanging on the cross. There is such dignity in the Godhead, that all it does is marvelous and infinite in its merit; and when He stooped to suffer, when He bowed His awful head, cast aside His diadem of stars to have His brow girt about with thorns; when His hands that once swayed the sceptre of all worlds were nailed to the tree; when His feet that erst had pressed the clouds, when these were fastened to the wood, then did the law receive an honour such as it never could have received if a whole universe in one devouring conflagration had blazed and burned for ever.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0255.cfm

To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. -Romans 3:26

Justice has been satisfied through the substitution of our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. When man sinned the law demanded that man must be punished. The first offense of man was committed by Adam, who was the representative of the entire race. When God would punish sin, in His own infinite mind He thought of the blessed expedient, not of punishing His people, but of punishing their representative, the covenant head, the second Adam. It was by one man, the first man, that sin entered into the world, and death by sin. It was by another man, the second Adam, who is the Lord from heaven, it was by Him that this sin was borne; by Him its punishment was endured; by Him the whole wrath of heaven was suffered. And through that second representative of manhood, Jesus, the second Adam, God is now able and willing to forgive the vilest of the vile, and justify even the ungodly, and He is able to do so without the slightest violation of His justice. For, mark, when Jesus Christ the Son of God suffered on the tree, He did not suffer for Himself. He had no sin, either natural or actual. He had done nothing whatever that could bring Him under the ban of heaven, or subject His holy soul and His perfect body to grief and pain. When He suffered it was as a substitute. He died-“the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” Had His sorrows been personally deserved they would have had no efficacy in them. But inasmuch as for sins not His own He died to atone; inasmuch as He was punished, not for any guilt that He had done or could do, but for the guilt incurred by others, there was a merit and an efficacy in all that He suffered, by which the law was satisfied, and God is able to forgive.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0255.cfm

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. -1John 1:9

When the soul is seriously impressed with the conviction of its guilt, when terror and alarm get hold upon it concerning the inevitable consequences of its sin, the soul is afraid of God. It dreads at that time every attribute of divinity. But most of all the sinner is afraid of God’s justice. “Ah,” saith he to himself, “God is a just God; and if so, how can He pardon my sins? for my iniquities cry aloud for punishment, and my transgressions demand that His right hand should smite me low. How can I be saved? Were God unjust, He might forgive: but, alas! He is not so, He is severely just. ‘He layeth justice to the line, and righteousness to the plummet.’ He is the judge of all the earth, and He must do right. How then can I escape from His righteous wrath which must be stirred up against me?”…It is true that God is just…let hell’s bottomless lake declare what is the awful vengeance of God against the sins of man. Let the sighs, and groans, and moans, and shrieks of spirits condemned of God, rise in your ears, and bear witness that He is a God who will not spare the guilty, who will not wink at iniquity, transgression, and sin, but who will have vengeance upon every rebel, and will give justice its full satisfaction for every offence.

Wonder ye heavens! be astonished O earth! that very justice which stood in the sinner’s way and prevented his being pardoned, has been by the gospel of Christ appeased; by the rich atonement offered upon Calvary, justice is satisfied, has sheathed its sword, and has now not a word to say against the pardon of the penitent. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0255.cfm