section of the book there is a red stamp.  That's the life of Jesus' paid for you.  Once you start thinking that God sees you as sinless, then you are forgetting that He pardoned you, and that the basis of the pardon is His payment of the very real penalty.   We are not acquitted of sin.   We are pardoned.   In an acquittal, you are found legally innocent and declared righteous, and that becomes the reason why you do not have to pay a penalty in the first place.  However, with a pardon, a penalty must be paid, because God assigned the penalty, because he considers you a sinner.    The penalty is due precisely because God reckons you a sinner.  He counts you as unrighteous in his sight.   Therefore, there is a penalty to be paid. 

            The penalty is pardoned because of His payment, not because some think God sees no sin in your account.    God did not pardon us because he views us as innocent.   That idea contradicts the very idea of pardon or forgiveness.   It is also unjust in God's sight and perverts the justice of God that he is trying to teach us with the gospel.   In the law, it is written:

                KJV Deuteronomy 25:1 If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.

                KJV Exodus 23:7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.

            This may seem trivial.  But it is not.  The fact is that the doctrine that God sees only Christ's righteousness in our account in heaven, and not our sin, has been around since it was introduced by a Catholic monk 500 years ago.   It is a doctrine that seeks to "justify the wicked."[1]  God declared this idea a false doctrine 3600 years ago when Israel came out of Egypt.  It is unjust in his sight to declare the ungodly righteous.  The matter is repeated in Proverbs.

                KJV Proverbs 17:15 He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD.