My father, a non-believer and critic of Christianity, said something that startled me today: "The law is like a blind man."
In this he is absolutely right. When a law is broken, there is a conflict between two parties - the plaintiff and the defendant. The plaintiff makes a case against the defendant based on the law. On his own, the plaintiff cannot make a case against the defendant, since there is no law to differentiate what is right and wrong. Therefore, a law, regardless of whether it's fair or not, is a line in the sand that states whether something is allowed or disallowed.
Yet, the law has no power on its own. The law requires an arbiter, a representative that stands in-between the plaintiff and defendant, to decide whether the defendant has broken the law. This individual is given the power of the law, to dictate the just punishment to be meted out to the defendant if found guilty. We expect this arbiter to be impartial, faithful to the law and nothing else. In other words, as my father said, the arbiter of law must be 'blind'. In order to be completely impartial, it too is a requirement that the arbiter be completely able to understand both the plaintiff and defendant.
This then is the case I bring to us, as creatures created to live with free will. We have come into conflict with God, the Creator of the universe, because we have broken His moral law by committing sin. A holy God cannot tolerate sin, and all men are judged based on His standard. And every man has been judged as having sinned, since breach of one law is sufficient to deem the whole law as breached. No man can lay claim to being free of sin.
And so we must find an arbiter, but no man can take up the role. God, by the very definition of God, must be omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. Since no man can say we can completely understand God, we the defendant cannot provide the arbiter from our party. God, in order to enforce the law He has set, then has to provide the arbiter in this court.
Jesus is this arbiter, since only a human being can understand the limitations of a human being. God cannot claim to understand us fully, since the very definition of God excludes Him from being able to connect with us on a human's level. Jesus is the Son of God, having in Himself all aspects of divinity and humanity. Only Jesus can arbitrate this court, and it is He whom God has appointed to judge all of humanity, each of us on the case of breaking the moral law.
For now, we live as men not needing to account for whether our deeds have been in keeping with the moral law. But we will all stand before the Judge of creation, Jesus Christ, to be judged. What judgment will He pronounce over you in that Day?
Postscript: One may question the role of lawyers in human courts of law, but that is fairly simple to understand. A lawyer is an appointed representative of the plaintiff or defendant. He does not get judged. The outcome does not at all affect the lawyers of either parties. For this reason, a man can just as easily represent himself in a human court of law, if he is certain he is able to present his case sufficiently well.
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