A Christian approach to the death penalty
How should Christians view capital punishment?
The death penalty, or capital punishment, is something I never fully gathered my thoughts on. That is, until recently with the news being filled with many people calling out Alabama’s use of nitrogen gas to asphyxiate the convict. Then, there is also Richard Glossip, who was falsely convicted of murder in 1998. Oklahoma, the state in which Glossip was convicted, is also under scrutiny for its failure to safely carry out the lethal injection execution process which is used by most states who still have the penalty legalized. With all of this, it should cause us to seriously question whether it is ethical for the government to put criminals to death.
In the case of Glossip, everyone has known the man to be innocent, yet he has been behind bars for over 25 years, waiting to be proven innocent or to die at the hands of a bureaucratic government. While Glossip is only one case, how many others have died at the hands of the death penalty in innocence? Without a doubt, numerous people have been put to death despite being innocent. While under more “casual circumstances” one can be innocently convicted, they still have the chance to live or for further information to turn their case around. Yet, we cannot resurrect a dead person who was later found innocent. There is no undoing the death penalty or going back. Even if a minority of those whom the government executes are innocent, it still raises a lot of doubt concerning how ethical it is.
Then again, only slightly over half of the states in the United States even use the death penalty or have it legalized. My home state, Iowa, has abolished the penalty since 1965 and Minnesota has had the penalty abolished since 1911. Worldwide, the US is one of the 55 countries that still retain the death penalty with 23 of those countries not having used it in the past decade. Among these are countries such as China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which will even execute for minor offenses. In this regard, the US is in bad company and is among the wrong minority. What keeps the government from executing for more minor offenses or weaponizing the penalty for political or religious reasons?
However, as Christians, we should also consider what God's Word would suggest about this issue. While the Old Testament civil law did subject certain individuals to death for committing certain crimes, this served as a reminder that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23 EHV). If the Old Testament civil law had been followed to the letter, David would have been put to death for his adultery with Bathsheba. However, when contemplating the subject, we should observe how Jesus handled the adulteress that the civil law would have condemned to stoning. Rather than encouraging the Pharisees to stone her as the civil law would command, Jesus makes an important point when he says, "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). The reality is that we all deserve death in hell for eternity, but God is gracious. If we truly examine ourselves, we are adulterers, murderers, and thieves, and are deserving of God's just punishment. Rather than holding this against us, God sent His Son as a Savior for everyone.
In a way, when one supports and upholds the death penalty, they are like that of the unforgiving servant that Jesus describes in Matthew 18:21-35. Our sin debt to God is much larger than the ways that others have sinned against us, regardless of what that may be. Even the most heinous of murderers and criminals need God’s forgiveness and we are not to say that God does not love them, and we most certainly cannot behave as if we are the ones to determine another person’s eternal destiny.
God sees all sinners the same and all people are sinful and all need to rely on Jesus Christ, the Savior. For this reason, rather than condemning others to death, we should choose mercy and forgiveness, just as God has forgiven us through Christ.