I did notice that Jesus has set a standard here, not for "Who can be executed?" but for "Who can do the executing?"
At #114 I question whether an abortion-state can be trusted with life-or-death powers. It's a legitimate question.
The governing authorities also have the obligation to secure society from aggressors. If this security can be obtained by life imprisonment, then the state must do this and carry out its responsibility by making it stick.
By no means do I think this is a simple matter. There's a man in my church who, at age 7, exactly 30 years ago, witnessed his father brutally murder his mother and older sister. Beat and strangled them to death. And every 5 years for the past 30 years, Chuck has had to go and testify against his father at the parole hearings.
Why the #@%$#$ are there parole hearings? Why was there any consideration of parole at all for this despicable man? Why does Chuck have to be re-traumatized (and believe me, he is re-traumatized) over and over again for thirty years?
And in another 5 years, his father will max out. This is so wrong, so blasted wrong. If there is not going to be true life imprisonment without possibility of parole, I could see bringing back the guillotine.
Jesus knows that God has ordained government as a necessary step to keep the peace and administer justice. If government could never execute anyone, why didn’t Jesus tell Pontius he had no authority to execute Him or anyone else? Why did not Jesus preach as part of the Good News that human governments because they were made up of flawed people, saved or not, could no longer execute people because they’d be under God’s grace?
He did not do this.
I never said you said the death penalty is the same as murder. I don’t know where you misread that.
There needs to be a death penalty. Life is a gift. When one robs another of it (murder), they have lost their claim to their own gift of life. The state needs to stand up for life and have such a penalty; for some people it’s the only thing that they fear that keeps them from murdering anyone and everyone they have problems with. It also is a measure of a society in terms of how much value they put on their citizens’ lives. They value life so much that if you murder someone, you’ve forfeited your own right to live. It’s the only thing that stops many people from doing this. They don’t want to get caught and die themselves.