No explanation is adequate which does not see God as shown to be just or righteous, legally in the right, in the way in which He provides salvation for sinners....the way God saves sinful man accords with what is right. God is just, not only in saving, but in the way He saves....The cross demonstrates the righteousness, the justice of God. In the very act by which sin is put away decisively, the death of Christ on the cross, God is seen to be just.. It is not the fact that God forgives that shows Him to be righteous, but the fact that He forgives in a certain way, the way of the cross. It is the cross that shows God to be righteous in the very act of forgiveness...
...God forgives in a way which accords with right. God does not set aside the moral law when He forgives. It can never be said that He forgives simply because He is too strong for the devil. That would mean that in the end with God might is right. The language of justification is a perpetual protest against any such view. It provides an emphasis on the truth that our God is just, is righteous, that He has regard to moral considerations even when He saves people who do not deserve salvation. God saves in a way which is not only powerful but which is right.
Leon Morris
The Atonement
Pages 194-195
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