HE … SHALL BE SURELY PUT TO DEATH

This command confirms that for the crime of murder capital punishment is a divine institution. The context shows that acci­dental killing does not attract the supreme penalty, but premeditated murder does. It was after the flood that God first gave the mandate to inflict such a severe sentence, Gen. 9. 6. Human life is sacrosanct, for man was made in the image of God, so to take life is flagrant disrespect for Him, hence His insistence on the ultimate penalty.

It is the responsibility of the state to maintain this divine institution, for a man in government is seen as a ‘minister of God’, Rom. 13. 4. ‘He beareth not the sword in vain’ and he is ‘a revenger’; these statements indicate the duty of government to maintain law and order in the divinely ordered way. Many saints have a problem with the idea of capital punishment and declare that they could never bring themselves to pull the lever of the trap door, or throw the switch, or inject the lethal dose. You are not asked to; that responsibility rests with the state.

Critics of the Bible allege that the book is inconsistent, in that one verse of Scripture insists on an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life, while another instructs us to turn the other cheek. When context is taken into account there is no con­tradiction. In the first, guidance is being given for Israel’s judicial system; ‘as the judges determine’, Exodus 21. 22. In the second, the Lord Jesus is instructing His harassed disciples to avoid a spirit of vengeance, Matt. 5. 38-42.

Argument has raged as to whether or not capital punishment is a deterrent. From a biblical perspective, that issue is not part of the debate. There may be the suggestion that the fear factor can be a curb on reckless conduct, Rom. 13.1-5, but, in the Bible, pun­ishment was meant to be punishment! For lesser crimes there would be an appropriate penalty, but it was not treatment, re-education, or rehabilitation: it was punishment. Ignoring God’s command never pays. David closed his eyes to the fact that Absalom was a murderer and, consequently, thousands of others perished, 2 Sam. 13-20. Of the murderer it is said, he ‘shall be surely put to death’.