Some people think that capital punishment is as old as mankind, but it is not. However, murder is as old as mankind.
The Bible declares the first murder in the world (Gen. 4): Adam and Eve’s firstborn son Cain murdered his younger righteous brother Abel. There is a lot to learn from this story but for our topic here there are two things important to note.
God punished Cain, but He did NOT order capital punishment for Cain. In fact, God put a “mark” on Cain so that no one would kill him.
As a result of this, you might say God then allowed an extended time in world history to demonstrate how bad total civilization will become when there is no capital punishment for murderers in the world.
Here’s what happened (Gen. 6:5-13):
“The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and He saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry He had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke His heart. And the Lord said, ‘I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth.’ But Noah found favor with the Lord.
“This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God. Noah was the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
“Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt. So God said to Noah, ‘I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out!’”
So with a great universal flood God destroyed every person on the earth, except for Noah and his family because he was “blameless… and walked in close fellowship with God.”
Just a side note about the great universal flood:
The biblical account of a great, universal flood has been recorded in every ancient civilization and culture on earth. Even people living far from the sea—the Hopi Indians in the American Southwest, the Incas high in the Peruvian Andes—have legends of a great flood that once happened.
I grew up in Colorado Spring and more than once went to the top of beautiful Pikes Peak, which is over 14,000 feet high above the ocean. Do you know what’s easy to find all over the ground on the very top of Pikes Peak – seashell fossils! They’re everywhere.
There was indeed a great universal world flood destroying all the wicked on the earth. And this was indeed the world’s first truly just capital punishment, executed by God Himself.
After the universal flood God started all over again repopulating His earth. However, unlike Adam and Eve and the world before the universal judgment/flood, this time God mandated humans to carry out His judicial civil judgments. To Noah and his sons, God mandated this ONE new command (Gen. 9:1-7):
“Then God blessed Noah and his sons and told them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth… And now I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person’s life. If a wild animal kills a person, it must die. And anyone who murders a fellow human must die. If anyone takes a human life, that person’s life must be taken by humans. For God made human beings in His own image. Now be fruitful and multiply, and repopulate the earth.’”
When God started the world all over again, at this time He instituted the world’s first one and only civil law – capital punishment for all murderers.
* Capital punishment being the first and only civil law God ordained makes capital punishment of supreme importance to help protect civilization.
* To defy capital punishment is to defy life itself. A murderer is a life killer. Therefore, if you respect life, you want to eradicate all life killers.
* Termites multiply and if not eradicated destroy whole houses; even so murderers will multiply if not eradicated, and destroy whole nations.
* People that are anti-capital punishment devalue life, and especially innocent victims lives. The reason for this is only one, they despise God – “Who made human beings in His own image.” The root heart cause of all murderers and many who do not support capital punishment is their disdain or hatred of their Creator God and His image, people. Jesus said (Luke 18:2): “He who does not respect God does not care about people.”
After God established capital punishment for all the world, generations later He filled out all the rest of His Law from Mount Sinai (His Ten Commandments, Statutes, & Judgments) to another man who also “walked in close fellowship with God” - Moses. God’s Law is the only law for a nation, and He gave it to Israel to model for all nations to follow. And this full Law of God reaffirmed again God’s justice in mandating capital punishment.
To support and promote God’s ordained civil Law for capital punishment is good. However, with everything that is good from God, Satan will always counterfeit it, twist it, and abuse it. Wicked rulers have abused capital punishment for their own wicked purposes. But this is not a reason to reject capital punishment but to promote even more, God’s true ordained - capital punishment.
We do not have room here to address all the wicked historical abuses of capital punishment, nor all the convoluted pro or con studies on capital punishment. But if it’s carried out according to the God of the Bible and He says it’s good, only those who believe they came from monkeys will think they’re smarter than the Bible, their Creator, and even Jesus, who you will soon see also endorses capital punishment.
But I would like to address one area that renders capital punishment counterproductive. In the U.S. most men sit on death row for many years before they receive their just penalty. And delayed justice only causes more men’s hearts to be set on doing evil! Eccl. 8:11:
“When a crime is not executed quickly the hearts of men fully set to do evil.”
The New Testament also supports capital punishment, no less so than the Old Testament. Both the Lord Jesus and the apostle Paul reaffirmed capital punishment. It’s recorded twice in the gospels where Jesus reaffirmed capital punishment (Mat. 15:4 & Mark 7:10). And the apostle Paul reaffirmed capital punishment at least twice (Rom. 1:32 & 13:4).
To close, remember this, what God says:
* Prov. 21:15 - “Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies those who do evil.”
* Prov. 17:15 - “One who justifies the wicked and one who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord.”
* Prov. 29:27 - “He who is righteous is an abomination to the wicked. And the unjust are an abomination to the righteous.”
(There are 16 very wise capital punishment crimes for our protection in God’s Law. We’ll see these in future Christian History.)
