One night, twelve years ago in Georgia, USA, an 18 year old man broke into a house and stole $60. During the course of the robbery he tied the occupants, Mr & Mrs Sawyer, to a tree and shot them. Mr Sawyer died. The murderer, Nicholas Ingram, was duly captured, tried and, after many unsuccessful appeals, was finally put to death on 8 April 1995.
Interest in the case in Britain stemmed from the fact that Mr Ingram was both a US and a British citizen. The Archbishop of Canterbury received the news of his death with regret, having appealed to America, "as a great Christian country, to search their consciences about the use of the death penalty" not believing that a state execution could be God's will. Dr Carey is not alone in his sentiments. Even some evangelicals would agree with him. The media is uniform in its opposition to the death penalty. But what does the Bible say?
THE PIVOTAL TEXT
As ever, Scripture is unequivocal. Genesis 9:6,7 is part of God's covenant with Noah and his descendants. The covenant is in force to this day (verse 12). It is clear that by Noah's time, violence was rife. In an act of retributive justice, God, therefore, destroyed the earth by a flood. From that time, at least two things changed. The eating of meat (provided blood was not consumed) was now lawful and if any man or animal should kill a human being, they in turn must be killed. Capital punishment for murder is not man's invention. It is something that God demands that man carry out as his agent. Man is made in God's image (albeit now fallen into sin) and whoever destroys that image must forfeit his own life.
THE REST OF SCRIPTURE
In the rest of the Old Testament we have laws specifically for the Jews in the main. However, the principles underlying these laws continue to dictate the way life must be conducted to this day. Robert Martin's excellent little book on the subject (The Death Penalty - God's Will or Man's Folly by Robert Paul Martin, 1992) points out two things we must notice.
Firstly, the way the law is both repeated and qualified. The law of Moses makes it quite clear what is murder and what is not. An unavoidable accident or legitimate self-defence are the only mitigation. The heat of passion is no excuse.
Secondly, the death penalty is instituted for other crimes. Capital punishment can be appropriate for crimes other than murder. In the New Testament the key texts are Acts 25:11 and Romans 13:1-7. Paul sees civil government as God-ordained. Civil rulers are God's servants and his agents of vengeance to punish evil doers. Their power to execute murderers and other evil doers acts as a deterrent.
OBJECTIONS
There are, of course, many objections to all this. Some are easily answered. When Bill Clinton had problems, he went to his pastor, Worley Vaught, back in Little Rock, Arkansas. Pastor Vaught was rightly able to assure him that Thou shalt not kill is more correctly translated: You shall not murder. God prohibits all unlawful killing, not killing per se
Romans 12:19 is often used to argue that we would be wrong to execute murderers. However, that verse calls on us to leave room for God's wrath; it is against personal revenge, not retributive justice. Some remark that God did not require Cain to be killed, or David after David had clearly engineered the death of Uriah. God has every right to direct affairs as he pleases, we on the other hand are bound by his commands.
Others are convinced that capital punishment is inherently barbaric. Have they never heard of the desert island escapees who rightly rejoiced when they espied an island where there were gallows? They knew they had reached civilisation!
Then the possibility of an irreversible error or miscarriage of justice is often raised. The Hanratty case is usually mentioned. However, mistakes are extremely rare. Believers remember that the Lord himself was innocent when he died and, if the sovereign God turns such a seeming tragedy into such eternal good, surely there is a sense in which God will watch over every situation in which men are striving to reach the truth! God knows that men are fallible and it is God that has given the instructions!
The most commonly heard argument is that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent. The denial of retribution as a vital feature of justice lies behind this. Once we understand that God has declared the punishment to be a moral act of retribution, we see the fallacy of the argument about deterrents. In fact the argument is probably flawed anyway. For example, it is often said that, though more of the southern states of the USA use the death penalty, the murder rate is higher there. However, even in those states which retain the death penalty, a murderer is still 95% certain of escaping capital punishment. This removes the basis for any comparison. Tragically, our leaders have rejected the word of God. They prefer their own wisdom. God has given them over to folly and wickedness. We cannot be sure how much further the Lord will allow us to fall but we take comfort in the fact that he is not only a God of wrath but also a God of mercy.
