Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Capital Punishment in the Bible? | Torah | Genesis 9:1-17

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here to grow in your faith this year. What does the Bible say about the death penalty? Should Christians support capital punishment? While there are a lot of differing opinions, is there one correct opinion? In today's episode, Keith presents three ways Christians use the Bible to back up their opinion on the death penalty using Genesis 9:1-17. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Passages: Genesis 9:1-17 Related episodes: Does God Commit Genocide in the Old Testament? Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. I'm Jensen Holmick-Nair. And I'm Patrick Miller. We're digging into the stories found in the first books of the Bible. They're not just some of the best stories in the Bible. They're some of the best stories in all of human history.

Right now we're in the Book of Genesis. Are you as much of a sucker for a good email newsletter as I am? I have to admit I love them because they keep me informed. Unfortunately, they don't really help me grow in my faith. What if you gave Jesus access to your inbox? 10-minute Bible Talks is starting a weekly email newsletter. It will have a variety of things inside of it. Each week will be different.

Sometimes it'll have cultural background about the topics that we're talking about. Sometimes it will have insights into what it means to practice the spiritual disciplines. I think you're going to like the variety. All you have to do is go to the show notes and hit the link there. and you can sign up for the new 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. Are you ready for something just a little bit different today? I hope so because we're going to try to squeeze an important conversation about capital punishment into just 10 minutes, probably just enough time to get us all in trouble, but buckle up because

we're going to give it a shot. So first, a little context. We're going through Genesis on 10-minute Bible talks, and today we're ready for Genesis 9. Now, Genesis 9 has some really important verses on the death penalty to debate. So I thought maybe it'd be helpful to look at those verses, but also what the rest of the Bible has to say about this important topic. Romans 12, God says this. Vengeance is mine. I will repay.

Now, wouldn't justice be a lot easier that way? If God meted out vengeance, if God is the one who punished people for their crimes, then we wouldn't have to have long trials. We wouldn't have the frustration of hung juries. There wouldn't be any innocent people on death row. There'd be no need to search for criminals, some of whom are never caught. There'd be no heartbreak when the guilty go unpunished. So why doesn't God just punish people himself? Why delegate such an important job to an imperfect system run by imperfect people?

But that's exactly what God does do in Genesis chapter 9. He calls on human beings to administer justice. And I think that's at least in part because God knows that we'll take a far greater interest in maintaining justice and enforcing laws if we have responsibility for the system. Every employer, teacher, parent, everyone knows the value of delegating responsibility. Even if the teacher can do something better than the student, it's important for students to do things so they can learn. So maybe God wants us to learn the value and the skill of justice.

He's teaching us. He's overseeing it, but he's given responsibility of it to us, and we are free to succeed or fail in how we administer justice. But how should we think about applying the death penalty? Does the Bible command the death penalty? Does it prohibit the death penalty, or does it permit the death penalty, but not require it? At the risk of oversimplification, but remember, we've only got 10 minutes, we're going to divide up all the views into three camps. People in the first camp believe the Bible clearly commands the death penalty be applied in certain cases and that we should be executing far more people today. The second camp is more cautious. They believe that the Bible permits the death penalty in response to certain crimes, but a variety of social factors make them reluctant to implement it very often. The third group believes the Bible forbids the death penalty in all cases. So let's start with the view

that the Bible mandates the death penalty. One passage they turn to is Genesis Chapter 9. In fact, all views have to wrestle with Genesis 9 versus 5 and 6. I'll read them. And for your lifeblood, I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal and from every human being too. I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds blood, by humans shall their blood. be shed, for in the image of God has God made mankind. The logic here is simple. We're accountable to God for our actions, and if we take the life of a human being made in the image of God, then we forfeit our life. The death penalty serves to value life, because it demands a high price for

taking a life. Advocates of this position note that this command was given well before the law of Moses, and therefore applies to everyone everywhere, not just the nation of Israel. They also point to Romans 13, where Paul writes that the state doesn't hold the sword for nothing. They believe that God has given governments the right to punish certain crimes with the death penalty. So what about those in the second camp who believe that the Bible opposes the death penalty? They acknowledge that the Old Testament calls for the death penalty to be practiced in

certain cases. But they believe that with the coming of Jesus, everything has changed. The Mosaic law has ended, and therefore so did the death penalty as a means of justice. The death of Jesus established the value of human life, and therefore it made it unnecessary to execute murderers to maintain the value of human beings. Plus, they look at the command to love and forgive your enemies and fail to see how the death penalty fits within that framework. They also point to John Chapter 8, where Jesus refuses to condemn the woman caught in adultery, and instead of being stoned to death as a practice of the death penalty, she walks away a changed person. And that leads to their last point, which is that a person who is executed can't later come to faith in Jesus. Okay, what about

the third camp? I might call this camp the open but cautious. They believe the Bible permits the death penalty, but they're very cautious about its application. Like the rest, they agree that Genesis 9-6 calls for the death penalty to be applied when a person's life is taken. But they note that the mosaic law puts significant limitations on the application of the death penalty. For example, the death penalty is not applicable in cases of manslaughter or accidents. And circumstantial evidence wasn't enough. there had to be two or more witnesses in order for the death penalty to be applied. So they see that the Bible puts restrictions on the death penalty.

They do also see in Romans 13 that the state has the power to enact the death penalty, but it isn't required to enforce it. So those in the open but cautious camp believe that the death penalty is permitted, but that there has to be careful application of it. So, for example, they see that the Old Testament law says that punishment always has to be proportional. The punishment has to fit the crime, and therefore we have to be careful about where we apply the death penalty. And they also say there has to be certainty of guilt. The Bible has a pretty high standard of proof.

And then intent is important because the book of numbers says that capital punishment cannot be imposed when the offender did not act intentionally. In other words, accidents cannot be punished with a death penalty. Due process, like we said earlier, is really important in the Bible. It's not just whether a person was guilty, but whether that person had a fair chance to prove that they weren't guilty. All three camps have to deal with this reality. We are an imperfect people trying to manage a very imperfect judicial system. So we have to look at the social data, and we have to acknowledge that more than half the

death row inmates are people of color. We have to acknowledge that since 1973, 140 individuals on death row have been exonerated. In other words, they were proven to be not guilty. Almost all death row inmates could not afford their own trial attorney, and so they had an attorney appointed by the state. Now, those in the first camp who believe the death penalty is biblical and should be practice more often, acknowledge this social data. They look at it and say, yes, we agree that there are imperfect people running an imperfect system, and therefore we are going to get imperfect justice. But they say, God is the one who established the death penalty, and when he established it back in Genesis 9, the world was imperfect as well. This is a debate that we are not going to solve

in 10 minutes. In fact, we wouldn't solve it if we had a lot more time than that. It's a really complicated debate that includes Bible, but it also includes looking at the world we live in and trying to apply the Bible the best we can to our broken fallen world. I think one thing that we can all agree on is that justice is elusive. We are never certain in this world. And even when justice is executed as close as it can be in a fallen world, it doesn't repair the damage that was done. a murderer being put to death will not bring back to life the innocent person that they killed.

Justice is elusive. So when God said in Romans 12 that vengeance is mine, I will repay, what we have to do is administer justice in this world the best we can, but entrust real justice, lasting justice, true justice to God. That is something we can all put our confidence and hope in. All of us will stand before God. he will perfectly administer justice at that time. Hey, before you forget, make sure you sign up for the new 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. Just hit the link in the show notes.