No, but then that’s what forgiveness is all about isn’t it? Forgiveness is ALWAYS unequal. But Jesus, who never did anything wrong, took the full punishment for my sins and forgave me and gave me eternal life. So in order to be free I need to forgive others. Equal treatment, eye for an eye vengeance, whatever you want to call it, never brings peace and closure.
Jesus did not take the repentant thief down from the cross he was on. The civil punishment held.
Forgiven does not mean consequences in this life go away. A homosexual with AIDS who repents and is saved will still have AIDS in almost all cases.
Do you understand the difference between a “sin” and a “crime”?
The sins that Jesus died for and for which you have been forgiven are the transgressions that you have committed against God. When you sin you transgress against a Holy God.
So God has forgiven you for your transgressions against him.
Ok, when someone commits a crime, they have transgressed against an individual (such as assault, battery, theft, murder) and against society (which cannot continue to exist if there is no legal means of stopping such behavior.
So a person who commits a theft has transgressed against God, society and the individual. If they repent of their transgression against God, he will show mercy and forgive them. The spiritual punishment will be commuted (but understand that Jesus still had to take the punishment for that sin against God. The punishment was not commuted, it was paid by someone else.
Now in regard to the individual, if the party goes to the individual and repents, then then the individual is under a spiritual obligation to forgive that person, however he is not under any temporal obligation to forgive them and if they don’t repent and ask that person for forgiveness, that person is not even under a spiritual obligation to forgive them. Just as forgiveness by God is contingent upon repentance and asking forgiveness, the obligation of the wronged person to forgive their transgressor is contingent upon the person confessing their wrongdoing and requesting the forgiveness of that person whom they wronged.
Society has an obligation to be less forgiving in that if every criminal who committed a crime was given mercy then society would collapse. It is the duty of a just society to punish criminals. Showing unbridled mercy is a death sentence to a functioning society. Society therefore cannot simply turn the other cheek every time a crime is committed in its midst. Crimes such as theft, assault, battery, murder, robbery must be dealt with in a sometimes brutal manner in order that each member of society understands that they cannot simply go around killing, maiming, robbing and assaulting the members of said society and expect that they will walk away free simply because they claim they are sorry for their crimes.
In Biblical times there were basically three types of civil punishment: restitution, exile and death. You made the person and society whole by paying restitution, you were thrown out of the society or you were killed. No prisons. Those punishments were necessary in order to ensure that those types of behavior was discouraged. All punishments served the dual purpose of making the person or society whole and as a deterrent to those who would otherwise tend to engage in the prohibited behavior.
So when you say that “it’s all about forgiveness” that is valid in a spiritual sense. But it does not apply in a societal sense. The thief on the cross was forgiven of his sins, but Jesus did not yank him down from the cross, nor were the nails in his hands and feet miraculously removed so that he dropped to the ground and walked away a free man. No, he still had to suffer the earthly consequences of his sin. He was sentenced to death and he died.
You then state that the concept of an eye for an eye “never brings peace and closure”. I noticed earlier in the thread that you have just graduated from Law School. I don’t know what field of law you want to practice, but you should have learned somewhere in your studies that the entire field of jurisprudence is built upon the concept of “an eye for an eye”.
All fields of law exist for the purpose of correcting wrongs and making society or the individual whole. Without a method of correcting wrongs, there is no purpose for lawyers and no purpose for judges or juries. Society cannot exist without some method of making people whole without resorting to vigilantism or mob action.
So as I said earlier it is the duty of a just society to meet out PUNISHMENT for civil wrongs.
And as far as using the cross as an argument against the punishment of murder, murder is the one crime for which a perpetrator cannot go to the victim and ask forgiveness. The victim is in no position to forgive.
The biblical concept of surrendering your own life as a punishment for taking someone else’s predates the ten commandments and is one of the first precepts given in the bible. God gives the reason for this harsh punishment right there in Genesis 9:6. God made man in his image.
The only “just” punishment a society can give a murderer is to take his life. Anything less diminishes the value of the person whose life they took.
The only proper restitution for murder is to surrender the thing you took. You took a life, so you must give up yours.
Just as a Christian who steals would be expected to return what he has stolen, a true Christian who has repented of the crime of murder should be more than willing to voluntarily walk the green mile to the gallows. That may not bring what liberals call “closure” but it does satisfy the requirements of a just society.