Christians: Is God a “just” god, or a “merciful” god?

With the right amount of mental gymnastics, anything can be twisted hard enough to mean anything else. The problem is, the passage requires you to ADD all of that into it yourself in order to try to "make it work". It's just special pleading on behalf of Christians that the sacrifice of Jesus be DIFFERENT, and somehow doesn't apply due solely to the fact that God later sends Jesus as a sacrifice. But there is nothing in scripture that establishes an actual difference. On its own, scripture does not distinguish between specific types of sacrifices, or imply that one type sacrifice from one party would be more acceptable than another type. It simply says "sacrifice".

The NT also seems to imply that "doing right" is not even a viable option that can save someone. In the addition to the aforementioned passage in Ephesians about salvation being a free gift from God so that no one can boast, both Jesus and Paul plainly state that "no one is good", and Paul says "all have fallen short of the glory of God". If no one is good, and all have fallen short, then how can doing right ever be a viable option for anyone to be saved? The two things can't both be true. And yet, that's exactly what seemed to happen in Moses case. So I still see a glaring hole in the theology.