What is the sword?

January 18, 20074:06 pm Hank Comments

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

I was reading a blog post by Dr. Ben Witherington III, a scholar who I respect but don’t always agree with and was blessed to hear him speak when he came to SBU last January or February. In that post he was dealing with the subject of capital punishment. This morning in my devotions I read Genesis 9:6 which says, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

Witherington made the case that capital punishment is unbiblical. He said that the sword here in Romans 13:4, which I most generally took to understand to mean the government could execute justice against those who harm its citizens whether foreign or domestic, is actual a weapon that Paul was saying Roman tax collectors could wear in self-defense so Christians should pay their taxes. He said in a later comment that Genesis 9 was a poetic statement of God’s moral justice system but falls under the Old Covenant that was fulfilled by Christ. Does the Bible favor capital punishment or reject it? I agree with Witherington that one innocent person is one too many, but one guilty person not punished adequately for his crime is one too many also. Which side is the most biblical?

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dave

Hmmm...good thoughts. I have never really considered that passage as an anti-death penalty story. But especially in light of recent history of innocent people on death row and even being executed, this does shed some light on that aspect of the death penalty.

HT

As I was reading my daily Bible plan to day, I cam across the story of Abraham and God discussing Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction. Abraham pleads with God to spare the city for first 50 people and narrows down the number to 10 people. For their sake, God would not destroy the cities. Now obviously all the two cities had were Lot and his family and so Sodom and Gomorrah cannot be found to this day. But this does as some more authority to the anti-death penalty camp in my mind. If God is not willing to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of 10 righteous people, then we as Christians should reconsider the whole notion of killing 10000 convicted murderers, deserving of death, at the expense of one innocent person. At least that is what the Spirit seemed to tell me as I read. I am more and more seeing an OT case for not executing the death penalty.

dave

if there was absolutely no possibility that this convicted criminal could escape I would see no need for the death penalty.
Well...the chances of prison breaks are way to minimal. How often do you think people escape from high security prisons?
Plus the prison would actually have to be a punishment, not a tax-payer funded resort.
If you are implying that the US prison system is a tax-payer funded resort, you don't know much about high security prisons.

HT

Well, if there was absolutely no possibility that this convicted criminal could escape I would see no need for the death penalty. However, that guarantee cannot be made. There is always the chance of a jail break. Some men like Hitler and Saddam and Bin-Laden (if we could catch that bugger) would have followers that have the resources to spring this man from prison to continue their reigns of terror over the lives of innocent people. But as you can see, this is only a rare case that I'm thinking the death penalty should be considered. Plus the prison would actually have to be a punishment, not a tax-payer funded resort. Death would be the only way that person couldn't come back to kill more people with a 100% guarantee.

dave

With that person dead, the world will be safer and innocent life would be protected with that person dead and guaranteed to never be able to kill or commit the crime again.
So would you not support the death penalty if there was absolutely no chance the person would be freed from prison (i.e. life without parole)?

HT

It is because of the offense committed. The crime was cold-blooded, premeditated. It was done by someone who has the intention of doing it again and again and in doing so destroying society as a whole. In that situation, with Hitler being the example here, the world would be safer with him being dead and having no way to get free and plague society with their terror and atrocities. However that person would have to be convicted in a court of law. With that person dead, the world will be safer and innocent life would be protected with that person dead and guaranteed to never be able to kill or commit the crime again.

dave

Okay...just checking.

So if you believe that there are certain crimes that are so serious that they demand death, why is that? What does death do that other punishments do not do? What benefit to society does killing an individual have?

HT

That isn't a biblical justification, just a serious issue in dealing with the death penalty. That by no way says that the Bible oks the death penalty.

dave

I believe that there are some cases where the only just punishment is to take the life of the person who committed the crime
How do you justify this biblically? Or is this what you were referring to later in the paragraph when you said this was not a Biblical justification?

HT

I was only saying I want justice and there can be injustice either way.

Adolf Hitler killed millions of people, and I don't think locking him in prison again would work because he could still get free and try another revolution. To leave him alive, in my own personal opinion, would be an injustice because of all that he has done and the risk he would still have posed.

But I do realize that the death penalty should be used in every situation because not every murder in this world is a premeditated murder done in cold blood. Many are done in the heat of the moment. Many of those people would never commit that crime again and they don't need to die because of it.

Then there are those who are executed but were wrongly convicted. I don't like to hear how someone was wrongly convicted and put to death. "The Life of David Gale" was a great movie and I enjoyed it very much, I recommend it to all as it tackles this issue from a non-biblical point of view.

Mainly, I believe that there are some cases where the only just punishment is to take the life of the person who committed the crime. But I don't want to sacrifice innocent people. But I do not want to leave blatantly dangerous people who have committed atrocities all over the land and will continue to do so go free and end up letting more people get killed because of it. That too would be just as grave as an injustice as killing the innocent person! But that is not a biblical justification for the death penalty, it is just the thoughts in my head as I grapple with this big problem.

dave

I agree with Witherington that one innocent person is one too many, but one guilty person not punished adequately for his crime is one too many also
You seem to be saying that a guilty person getting a life sentence would be "one too many" not being punished adequately. So the only adequate punishment for a murderer is to kill him/her? Is that what you are saying?

I know this - I would MUCH rather have a guilty murderer go free (even though that is not the argument, as the guilty would still be punished with life sentences) than an innocent man be killed for a crime that he/she did not commit.

dave

I replied with a new post, as it was going to be too long for a comment.

dave

First, let me start out by saying that that I don't have a ton of time to engage with this topic in the next couple of days, but I should be able to engage more early next week.

Second, I have written extensively about the death penalty here, and I will be taking much of what I have written over there and copying it over here.

Third, I would ask that you please read these two posts that I have written before I go into other issues here:

<ul><li>Death in Theory</li><li>Death in Practice</li></ul>These two posts will give you a background on the death penalty, primarily looking at arguments that are not biblically/theologically based.

I will begin to put together a general theological look in a moment, but you can start with the above posts.

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What is the sword?

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