God's justice

“But just as every good promise of the Lord your God has come true, so the Lord will bring on you all the evil He has threatened, until He has destroyed you from this good land He has given you.” Joshua 23:15
Many people are quite happy to receive the blessings of God (and not even thank Him for them), but when it comes to receiving punishment for sin, they complain that He isn’t fair. But fairness, or justice, is one of God’s primary attributes that we see in the Bible.
God’s holiness means that He cannot tolerate sin – it is repulsive to Him. His justice means that He must punish sin – it would not be just or fair to allow it into heaven. If He allowed, say, lying, into heaven, on what basis could He refuse to allow stealing? We see various sins on a kind of spectrum of ‘badness’ – murder is worse than stealing; adultery (cheating on your spouse) is worse than lying. But all of them break God’s standard of holiness, which is perfection.
On the other hand, think about it this way: was it fair that Jesus was punished for all of our sins? Not at all! But He bore them willingly, because of His love and the Father’s love for us. God’s love is another of his primary attributes shown to us throughout the Scriptures. It is only because of His love and patience that the earth still endures and hasn’t been judged yet.
I heard an interesting thing the other day. God’s love is spoken of as being everlasting, but not His grace and patience. There comes a limit. If we reach that point and still refuse to accept the forgiveness of sin found in Christ, God cannot let it go. This is not unfair – He gave us plenty of time and opportunity to take action, when He didn’t need to give us any in the first place.