Jesus and the Death Penalty
The recent renewal of federal executions has prompted (in my circles, at least), a theological conversation about the death penalty. I’ve long been on the record (circa 2000) in opposition to the death penalty, based on my understanding of Jesus. The following is a slightly edited version of a piece I wrote for Christian Ethics Today in 2007 on that topic.
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Nothing could have prepared me for the day the sister and niece of one of my church members were murdered in cold blood.
The day was difficult. There were multiple family relationships to engage, law enforcement to encourage and pray with, and many town people to comfort. But the days following the husband's arrest proved to be quite difficult as well, for the district attorney questioned the family on whether or not he should pursue the death penalty. Consequently, the church member whose sister and niece had been murdered ended up in my office asking my opinion on the subject.
When Christians discuss the topic of capital punishment, the debate inevitably centers on reading and interpreting two chapters in the New Testament: Romans 12 and 13. Paul first encourages believers, "As far as it is possible, live at peace with those around you" (12:18). He also commends them to live without revenge, trusting God to hand out punishment in the end: "Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay'"(12:19). In short, Paul invokes Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount [vi] so that he might remind believers how to live peaceably.
Just as Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies and to bless those who persecute us, Paul reminds believers to leave vengeance to God. Based upon Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-6) and Paul's words at the conclusion of Romans 12, the New Testament ethic seems quite clearly to reflect a position of nonviolence, particularly with a punishment that might be construed as revenge.
But the very next section from Paul seems to contradict this position. Following his treatise on peace, Paul then writes that believers are to submit to the government, "for there is no authority except that which God has established. . . . Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed" (13:1-2). Paul concludes with a statement that has become a key text for those supporting capital punishment: "But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer" (13:4).
Thus on the one hand, Paul urges believers to exercise restraint from vengeance in Chapter 12, but on the other hand the apostle seems to validate capital punishment in Chapter 13, insisting that God has established the government to carry out divine vengeance. This creates a conundrum for those believers who interpret Jesus' commands in the Sermon on the Mount and Paul's words in Romans 12 as instruction against the death penalty on grounds of vengeance. Some might be tempted to say that Paul's words in Romans 13, particularly verse 1—"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities for there is no authority except that which God has established"—mean that the government has the final say in matters such as crime and punishment. Verse one, coupled with verse 4—"But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer"—seem to give a biblical mandate for the death penalty. Given this passage, how could a believer disagree with capital punishment? Hasn't Paul given a carte blanche approval to the practice in the name of God and divine justice?
But upon further review, it seems doubtful that few would concede that all governments across time have been good, much less God-centered. From Hitler to Hussein,[vii] dictators have exercised authority that may not necessarily reflect God's vision for governing. And if there have been governments that have, from time to time, not been God-honoring, it stands to reason that there have been governmental practices that also have not been God-honoring. To be certain, Christians in the United States make regular practice out of decrying policies supported and enforced by the government that are perceived to be contrary to the teachings of the Scripture. Capital punishment, then, may need to be further examined to determine its validity in light of biblical teaching.
Reading and interpreting Romans 12-13 becomes central to this discussion for at least three reasons. First, the passage is the only place in the New Testament that explicitly gives believers instruction on how to interact with the government aside from Jesus' injunction to, "Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's." Second, Old Testament passages dealing with capital punishment are often relegated to a midrash type status, given the multiple issues handled by the Hebrew Bible (dietary restrictions, death for dishonoring one's parents) that are no longer considered applicable for today's Christians. Third, this passage, at least on one level, seems to contradict the teachings of Jesus presented in the Sermon on the Mount regarding peacekeeping, nonviolence, and non-retaliation.
I argue that Romans 13 must be read and obeyed, but explicitly in light of Paul's comments in the previous chapter. It may prove helpful at this juncture to recall Paul's context. As Paul wrote to the Romans there were no—or at least exceedingly few—Christians in positions of power across the empire, particularly in the justice system (you will recall that even the politically savvy Sanhedrin had to ask permission from Pilate to kill Jesus). In fact, there are virtually no recorded accounts of believers being in positions of legal authority until after the conversion of Constantine. At the time of Paul's writing, and through the first three hundred years of Christianity, believers withdrew from political life, primarily because they refused to swear allegiance to the state.[viii] In Paul's day, Christians simply obeyed the government for they had no other options; resistance or revolution meant a swift punishment, most likely death. The Roman government was good in one sense: it provided an orderly and organized society in which Christians could practice and flourish. But the totalitarian power of the Caesar could also mean torture and ridicule, as believers discovered under Nero. Rather than cause problems, believers embodied Paul's instructions, intending to live in peace, and avoiding the political arena.
This is significant, for Paul could not have imagined our contemporary American political context in which almost every person running for office claims some sort of allegiance to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As a result, Paul could easily state that believers should leave punishment to the government. There were no believers in the government, and given the lowly position of believers at the time of Paul's writing, there was little hope that the church could reform the government. This is not to say that the church did not exercise civil disobedience; they certainly did. But the church had no voice in radically reforming governmental practices of the Roman Empire, particularly regarding capital punishment.
The contemporary American context in the early twenty-first century, however, is wildly different. Currently a professing evangelical Christian holds the most powerful position in the free world [George W. Bush was President at the time of publication]. He has appointed, with senatorial confirmation, a new member to the most powerful court in the land. Many conservative pundits have argued if our president appoints a judge that refuses to oppose Roe v. Wade then the Bush presidency has been a failure. And they state this for a singular reason: they believe the church, in a free state, should work to reform the state to better reflect the biblical ethic. The implications are simple; many Christians believe that one must take their faith with them into the workplace, even if that workplace happens to be the government. Those same Christians believe that if one happens to be the president-or another person of great influence-one should allow one's faith to shape policy. Today's American Christians, if they aspire to politics, can reasonably hope to influence policy based on their faith in a way believers in the first century Roman Empire would never have imagined. This contextual difference is important as we read Romans 13 through a contemporary American lens.
So the question regarding capital punishment becomes one of mercy and grace regarding death for those Christians who find themselves in positions of power. Professing Christians can now be found within almost every facet of the government on every level in most every community across the nation. Should these who profess to follow the teachings of the New Testament support capital punishment, even thought it appears to violate Jesus' teachings regarding vengeance?[ix] Can the group of people Paul exhorts to live peaceably as far as it is possible, be the same people that request the death penalty, argue for it in a court of law, rule in its favor from the jury box, condone it from the judge's bench, and administer it by injection in front of the watching victim's family?
I am certain that some believers would reply in the affirmative. They would argue that God has established the government to administer judgment and justice, and that Christians are allowed to do this. They would suggest that Jesus' ethic regarding violence and revenge are intended for personal, not social, issues. They would argue that a government without a sword is useless and emasculated.
But Jesus, it seems to me, created the church to be a peaceable force in a violent world. He intends it to transform the culture rather than condone it unilaterally, particularly in cases of exercising violence. Christians in government carry their Jesus ethic with them into office. And the rule of law cannot trump that grace-laden lifestyle. Some of my friends who support the death penalty cite God’s directive to Noah in support of their position: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image" (Genesis 9:6). This, of course, ignores the command of Jesus who later called his followers to a higher ethic and moved beyond eye-for-eye thinking in Matthew 5:38-39. (“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”)
Paul's words in Romans regarding vengeance are haunting for Christians serving in a land that exercises the death penalty with alarming regularity. If those who follow Christ are to leave vengeance to God, certainly we must allow space for grace within the punishment of those most serious crimes. Jesus has ordered us to love our enemies; it is difficult to kill those whom we are supposed to love. Therefore, those who take seriously a belief in the afterlife must ponder long and hard the consequences of ending the life of one they deem guilty. To put it more directly: is our desire to terminate a criminal's life done in order to fulfill God's justice or is it done, perhaps unwittingly, in order to speed someone's path toward an eternity apart from God?
The Bible tells of God's redemption of murderers named Moses and David. Moses killed an Egyptian beating a Hebrew; David ordered Uriah to the front lines in order to hide his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. Both were killers. But both became great forces for the furthering of God's mission in the world, despite their crimes. God often redeems the most unlikely of characters, and the Christian gospel is based on hope in such redemption.
From a Christian perspective, the hope of conversion and redemption may be the single greatest reason to stand against execution as a viable form of punishment; we hope that a person might encounter God and be saved.
I counseled my church member to refrain from encouraging the district attorney to pursue the death penalty. I did not do so based on the popular arguments against the death penalty—because it has a racial bias, because of the number of innocents put to death, or because of its failure as a deterrent of violent crime. Each of these points are true, by the way, and they certainly played into my reasoning. The death penalty does, ultimately, affect people of color disproportionately. The death penalty does execute a number of innocent people each year—about 4% of those executed are innocent. (Jesus himself was a victim of an innocent man being wrongly killed at the hand of capital punishment.) The death penalty is essentially useless in deterring violent crime. Capital punishment has plenty of problems, apart from the biblical reasoning against it.
In the end, however, I counseled them against pursuing the death penalty because Jesus and his apostle Paul instructed us to leave vengeance in God's hands, both in the Sermon on the Mount and in Paul's letter to the Romans—even if that directive runs counter to the prevailing wisdom of my government or my friends.
One day everything will be set right. The sins that were not punished on the cross of Christ will be avenged by the returning Christ. Until then, we trust the seemingly backwards way of Jesus and his grace.
[vi] Biblical scholars and theologians have noted the parallelisms here. See, for example, Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1996) and James McClendon, Systematic Theology, Volume One: Ethics (Nashville, Abingdon: 1988). McClendon's reading of Romans 12-13 is also immensely helpful.
[vii] Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and hanged in a now infamously videoed manner on December 30, 2006 while I was working on this article. The manner in which the execution was carried out is currently a source of debate and unrest in Iraq.
[viii] Cf. Joe E. Trull, Walking in the Way: An Introduction to Christian Ethics (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1997), 271.
[ix] Jean Lasserre, War and the Gospel, trans. Oliver Coburn (Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 1962) 162, 171, makes the point quite well by noting the that Sixth Commandment's injunction against killing was not only endorsed by Jesus, but make more serious by the directive that believers ought not speak against or harbor hate against another individual. It seems impossible, from a Christian perspective, to execute one whom we love. This love, particularly coupled with any sort of responsibility toward conversion, or at least hope of conversion, makes capital punishment absurd for those who believe Christ has come to redeem.