His character is perfect Holiness, an absolute Standard that is not possible of compromise. The Cross is proof of the inflexibility of God's statutes. Sin, the breaking of the Holy Law, required a death penalty that only God's Pure Son could take. No way around that death penalty. Christ satisfied God's Law by His perfect life, and satisfied the justice of that Law in His vicarious death, executed by the very real sentence of death my sin earned for me.
Every person earns the death penalty from the womb.
For he is a sinner. And especially are we blind to our own prospects of execution. Certainly not me. Mere rebellion of an infant's rage sets up its courtroom of guilt unto death. The universe is set on a legal basis.