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What Makes Punishment For a Crime - Right?

 

What Makes the Punishment For a Crime – Right?

 

A local church recently dedicated a Sunday worship service to a presentation by 3 elders explaining the Biblical rationale of their Church’s policy regarding homosexual acts. This may have been partly to position themselves for expected future legal challenges. It may have been partly because Christians are increasingly uncertain that homosexual acts even qualify as sins anymore. The Starbucks Boycott story confirms that Christians may not be very clear on the appropriate public response to such a moral issue. (See the Snopes article, and note this ratio of response noted on the Wikipedia entry for Starbucks.

 

 

In January 2012, a Starbucks executive stated it supports the legalization of same-sex marriage. This resulted in a boycott by the National Organization for Marriage, a political organization that opposes same-sex marriage, who received 22,000 signatures in favor of their boycott(over 71,000 as of this writing). In response, CEO Howard Schultz had this to say: "If you feel, respectfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38 percent you got last year, it’s a free country. You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in another company. Thank you very much". In addition, 640,000 people also signed a petition thanking Starbucks for its support.

 

 

When I addressed church leadership to clarify if they thought there was any directive in the Bible concerning civil punishment for homosexual acts, I received the reply reviewed below. This article is not so much about punishment for a man convicted of lying “with a male as those who lie with a woman”, as it is about the basic question for any crime:

 

Where does the ethical authority to define crime and punishment come from, and who are the living humans responsible to carry out those defined punishments?

 

 

I’m afraid Christians have uncritically accepted a contra-Biblical notion of ‘natural law’ (see the two views contrasted here). There is no such a thing as (absolute) religious freedom. There is only the possibility of one dominant religion whose civil law extends limited tolerance to subservient religions. But in today’s Church, I think most pastors would express a similar view as the one I quote in this article.

 

I am asking questions and appealing for a return to that historic Christian position of centuries ago. That older view – that fruit of the Protestant Reformation – which restored God’s written Word as the revealed law of our Lord Jesus Christ (Who is the ethical sovereign over both king and pope) seems to stand up under logical and reasonable questions much better than our fuzzy infatuation with democratic-sounding philosophies popular through most of American history.

 

Should we expect the Lord Jesus Christ to judge as violation – modern men who apply civil punishments listed in Exodus and Deuteronomy not specifically altered in the New Testament?

 

Here is how one pastor responded to the proposition:

 

I certainly don't have all the answers on this, but here's what I see in the Bible presently:

 

-I don't agree with your assumption that God's civil law for Israel is the ideal for all nations. The law is part of the covenant that God only made with Israel. He judges other nations by the natural law that is written in their hearts, not by Israel's covenant with God.

 

-I don't believe the OT law is our direct authority. Once the new covenant is instituted, the old covenant is obsolete (Heb 8:13 is very clear about this.)

 

-We are not under the OT law but the law of Christ (1 Cor 9:20-21).

 

-Therefore, I do not believe a person should be put to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath day, or that we even have to follow the Sabbath day command, which was a sign of the first covenant (Col 2:16-17).

 

-Therefore, I also don't believe that legislators today will be judged according to the OT law for Israel.

 

-I believe you are making a false dichotomy in saying we either have to follow the OT covenant (which is obsolete) or we are at the mercy of dictators, etc.

 

-I do believe that the OT civil law should be studied by us and that we can learn from it. But I don't think it applies straight across, nor do I see anywhere in scripture that says it applies straight across to all cultures and nations.

 

I am eager for an open dialog to receiving instruction where I am ignorant and correction where I am wrong. Let’s take these ideas, sentence by sentence, and review some Biblical applications and logical alternatives.

 

 

-I don't agree with your assumption that God's civil law for Israel is the ideal for all nations.

 

 

How do we know what standard Jesus will use when He judges? Surely we have to know for ourselves and to obey the Great Commission to disciple all nations in everything Jesus teaches? If we don’t get it from what Jesus said in Mt. 5:17-19 or somewhere else in the Bible – we, at least, want to make sure we are not deciding for ourselves what is “good and evil”.

 

Acts 10:42 And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead.

 

Acts 17:30 Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

 

2 Cor. 5:9 Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

 

Why would Christ’s law not be the ideal law, the most righteous law?

 

Who else but God can define “righteousness”, “good”, and “evil”?

 

Why would He judge men by a law that He had not communicated to men?

 

Is He the kind of God that would surprise people by requiring a standard they had no way of discovering?

 

If a man steals, one religion says to amputate a limb. Another religion says capital punishment. And another says to take away property from men who have nothing to do with the theft so that the thief can be housed, fed, and given a graduate-education on better ways to steal and not get caught. Oh, and another religion says the thief, after a trial with 2 or 3 witnesses, needs to pay double-restitution to his victim or be executed for thumbing his nose at the court of appeals. Which one do you think will determine whether the civil magistrate will be called least or great in the Kingdom of Heaven?

 

Mt 5:17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

 

“Law and Prophets”, “the Law”, “covenant that God only made with Israel”, and “these commandments” appear to be referring to the prior phrase: “law for Israel”.

 

Isn’t Christ specifying that during this kingdom-of-heaven-time we are now in, that how well we carry out, even, the civil punishments specified in the Law and Prophets will help determine our reward during Christ’s current reign?

 

 

-The law is part of the covenant that God only made with Israel. He judges other nations by the natural law that is written in their hearts, not by Israel's covenant with God.

 

 

Why should the Church move away from that standard of righteousness in law which God promises has been the envy of all nations?

Dt. 4:5 “See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it.So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the Lord our God whenever we call on Him?Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today?

There are two potential perspectives about natural law. The Bible-centered definition would be that – since “nature” is our word for “what is”, God’s “supernatural” law is the natural law as revealed to us in the Bible, but that Man (in his current, fallen state) is un-natural, so his imperfect knowledge and corrupt heart misses and strives against God’s natural law, even though Man already knows (Romans 1, 2) the divine person and eternal power and character of God which is written on his heart.

 

The Man-centered definition would be that natural law is that general, undefined, variable, innate sense of “fairness” exhibited by each thinking man. Anyone can easily be confident of the tenets of that law by looking in the heart of Man. God’s verbal revelation in the Bible is not necessary, and, as we know by the phrase “suppressed the truth in unrighteousness” -- not particularly desired. Freemasonry claims that the particulars of natural laws are easily and automatically known to all people, in all religions, in every nation of the world and in every time-period. Which, of course, explains why their particular version of Natural Law is codified—in writing – within the creeds of their Lodge, and it must be the final arbiter between any potential disagreements coming from any other religions.

 

So which definition of natural law does God write on the hearts of men? Don’t we have to say it must be God’s law for Israel? Or is it the undefined, ambiguous Law of the Freemasons? You should notice in Romans 1 that this law written on the hearts of imperfect, fallen, sinful men – even though it “knows God” -- gets suppressed by unrighteousness, gets lost in the irrationality that develops after idolatry, and ends up approving, in others, the very violations that they “know” are capital crimes. Far from approving men’s decisions about what law should be:

 

 

Rom 1:18  “...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,”

 

32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

 

Why would it be safe to prefer this supposed, undefined body of law over God’s law for Israel-- that we are being judged by, now, in this “kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:17-19)?

 

We saw above that Christ will judge “in righteousness”, differentiating between “good and bad”. Will He think it “good” for Israel to execute the adulterer, homosexual, and contumacious – but “bad” for the nations to do so? If the Nations did it, would that be murder? Are you saying that the civil magistrate, now, would be judged as a capital criminal (murderer) because he executed a man for one of Israel’s capital crimes other than first-degree murder?

 

Government means -- some men will kill other men, take away their freedom, take away their property, beat them, or damage parts of their body. All these punitive actions taken by soldier and policeman will be judged by Jesus Christ.

 

Is it not important that magistrates perform these functions righteously, under full approval of Jesus, the Final Judge of men in time and eternity? If God’s law for Israel is not the standard to identify the innocent from the guilty, as Jesus explained, to what other law-code would you entrust these potentially-criminal assaults against a man? To what other case-law are you going to trust, to say that this penalty defined in God’s Word would be murder, theft, assault, or kidnapping against a man? Are you saying civil government becomes the thief if it requires double restitution from the private thief? How are you sure the civil government doesn’t become a thief and kidnapper when it punishes private thieves by imprisoning them in jail for a couple years?

 

Are you saying that the law God gave Israel was too harsh against the criminals, or not gracious enough on behalf of the victims? Note how often the Psalm-writer voices the ideas that God’s written law is the best possible justice in a fallen world, that it applies to all possible matters, and for all periods of time:

 

 

Ps 119:97 O how I love Your law!
It is my meditation all the day.
98 Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies,
For they are ever mine.
99 I have more insight than all my teachers,
For Your testimonies are my meditation.
100 I understand more than the aged,
Because I have observed Your precepts.
101 I have restrained my feet from every evil way,
That I may keep Your word.

104 From Your precepts I get understanding;
Therefore I hate every false way.

128 Therefore I esteem right all Your precepts concerning everything,
I hate
every false way.

137 Righteous are You, O Lord,
And upright are Your judgments.
138 You have commanded Your testimonies in righteousness
And exceeding faithfulness.

144 Your testimonies are righteous forever;
Give me understanding that I may live.

150 Those who follow after wickedness draw near;
They are far from Your law.
151 You are near, O Lord,
And all Your commandments are truth.
152 Of old I have known from Your testimonies
That You have founded them forever.

160 The sum of Your word is truth,
And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.

 

I don’t know about you, but I am ashamed not to be living up to this writer’s appreciation of the revealed principles. May this be my prayer, and the desire of all who read this:

 

169 Let my cry come before You, O Lord;
Give me understanding
according to Your word.
172 Let my tongue sing of Your word,
For all Your commandments are righteousness.
174 I long for Your salvation, O Lord,
And
Your law is my delight.


-We are not under the OT law but the law of Christ (1 Cor 9:20-21).

 

Christ will judge living and dead – both during their lifetimes and at the end of time – by the law He references in the Sermon on the Mount, compatible with the Ten Commandments and the case-laws which showed how they should be applied.

 

In 1 Cor 9, we might roughly say, that Paul is referring to non-Jews by the phrase “those who are without law”, and by not emphasizing the parts of his worldview that contrasts with theirs -- he is hoping to sneak past their prejudicial barriers to help them understand the Gospel message, before they write him off as being too different from them to warrant trusting his message.

 

He does say of himself, “though not being myself under the law” is still under God's and Christ's law. He can’t help equating law of God and law of Christ. I think it is entirely likely (and necessary) for us to take the idea of “law” Paul is referring to in the phrase “not being myself under the law” as meaning either the legalistic perversions of the law by the self-righteous religious people of the first century [less likely], or the sections of the law regarding ceremonial (temple / levitical priesthood / sacrifices / food/diet) aspects which were done away after their fulfillment [more likely, per Hebrews].

 

How are we going to know what the law of God and Christ is without reference to the Bible? Freemasons say, “No problem! It’s easy! Everybody/Majority knows it. (But we will tell you when you are wrong)”.

 

When Paul says “those who are without law” does he mean that Christ will never judge those men in time or eternity by any standard at all? I don’t think that God would mock us by hiding it from us or have us wait until the Freemasons could reveal some perfect standard at the Founding of America. It seems like Christ would use His law instead of some real-time corrupted version on any sinful human’s heart.

 

We have no disagreement about being under the “law of Christ”. The NT is very clear. The question remains, how does the law of Christ differ from the law God the Son inspired Moses to write down, and the Psalmist to praise as being universal in application (Ps. 119)? What are the details of the “Law of Christ” that comprise the “whatsoever I have commanded you” that we are obligated to teach nations “to observe whatsoever I have commanded you” (Mt. 28)?

 

What has Christ commanded regarding crime and punishment?

 

Since God the Son was king and judge of all nations during the time the Psalms were written (see Ps 94-100, Is. 33:22), why would He use a different law to rule now that He shares His rule with us from His ascended throne?

 

Have there been substantial changes in the Noahic covenant/law from Noah to Moses, Moses to David, David to Christ, Christ and Christ to now? Didn’t the law communicated to Moses just work out the details of Gen. 9:5,6 to the other components of man’s physical life: the use of his body and property?

 

 

-I don't believe the OT law is our direct authority. Once the new covenant is instituted, the old covenant is obsolete (Heb 8:13 is very clear about this).

 

If all parts of the OT Law are abolished, what punishments dare we insist on now, lest they be murder, theft, kidnapping or assault? I’m sure none of us have any complaint about the Triune God, in the Person of God the Son, both in real time and in eternity – directly bringing Divine Law to recompense the personal actions of each human. Now, how do we take another person’s life and their use of their bodies and property as the appropriate punishment for a crime?

 

Hebrews 1:1-3 is clear: Christ reigns righteously from His throne now, having sat down after finishing all His priestly, and prophetic work. Is it going to be a surprise, now, the standards He will use to judge the Believer and unbeliever – for their work in civil law as voter, judge, policeman, soldier, and bureaucrat – or has He revealed it somewhere? If humans condemn a man -- guilty of a capital crime -- to death, will they be cursed for murdering an innocent, or will they be blessed for his applying true justice? If they refuse to apply the death penalty, will they be blessed for being merciful, or cursed for miscarriage of justice?

 

How would we know the punishments the New Covenant Law of Christ specifies now, for Oregon, in 2013? If we want to be consistent, we should be honest about how we are answering these questions. If we are not deriving answers from the Biblical text, we can’t help getting them from some contrary world-view or religion.

 

Are only baptized, members of local Christian Churches under the law of Christ, or every man?

Why would Christ judge a man differently based on the country or time-period of his life, or his church association?

 

How would we know the tax limit and the punishment if a citizen fails to pay?

 

--Tax-collectors have to know, lest they steal

--Tax-payers have to know, lest they steal from government or fellow citizens.

 

Does the Bible hold any man living or dead, – who wasn’t part of the covenanted nation of Israel from Moses to Jesus – responsible to punish any particular crime with any particular type of consequence?

 

How do we function “democratically” if our notion of “natural law” is opposite to what is written on our neighbor’s heart? What do we do if “our law” is opposite to what is written on most of our neighbors’ hearts? Do we force it anyway, or defer to our neighbor? How would the majority know what the ideal should be? How can you be sure you even know what the majority thinks?

 

Is it possible for any man, responsible for justice, to avoid risk of perjury? God says the false accuser should suffer the penalty he is trying to stick on the accused. If a witness brands a man as a capital criminal (but he really wasn’t) – that witness should be punished like a murderer. But if he acquits a man who was a capital criminal – his life would be forfeit.

 

 

-Therefore, I do not believe a person should be put to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath day, or that we even have to follow the Sabbath day command, which was a sign of the first covenant (Col 2:16-17).

 

Since the Sabbath law to rest, giving in the Ex 20 Ten Commandment section, is based on Creation, does that imply it is a creation ordinance that might be in effect from creation to Sinai and since the Cross? Greg Bahnsen saw in the Colossians passage more likely feast-day rituals what would and should have ceased after the cross, but not that creation ordinance of special honoring of the Lord’s day every 7 days. He could not find any positive restatement in the New Testament of the death penalty, but neither could he detect any definite de-criminalization either. Most stuff I have read implies it is lots more important than our generation has been making it. It certainly was treated more seriously in centuries past. I tend to think that if we improve our applications of all the other principles we are sure about, we will learn more wisdom about how to please God re: the Sabbath. Nevertheless, uncertainty here is not a reason to stop applying other Biblically-defined punishments we are confident about.

 

 

-Therefore, I also don't believe that legislators today will be judged according to the OT law for Israel.

 

Since Christians will become legislators and voters have to evaluate legislators according to the kind of laws they are likely to ratify – it is really important to know how Christ will judge them? Where is the faithful pastor going to get educated about this, and the father, and the teacher – so that those under their teaching will be equipped for every good work?

 

It is easy to say OT law will not apply to lawmakers, but Christians cannot escape the necessity of functioning with some law-standard in mind as they tolerate-, vote for-, function as-, or pay for- legislators and enforcers of the civil law. To what standard would you direct them to? Why not use the one Christ will use? If not in the older Testament, where has He revealed it?

 

 

-I believe you are making a false dichotomy in saying we either have to follow the OT covenant (which is obsolete) or we are at the mercy of dictators, etc.

 

Are there other options than these?

 

One Man: me, you, current Dictator, or Jesus Christ i.e. Triune God of the Bible.

Minority of Men: subset of any population, Congress, Council, Parliament, registered voters.

Majority of Men: larger subset of any population.

 

If we are not looking to any of those possibilities and we are not looking to the OT case law, what is our source for defining crime and punishment? I think we will actually agree that we need to study and learn from OT civil law. In fact, I doubt if any intellectually honest men dare defend any other.

 

In the above list we recognize that a few men would go with Jesus and the Bible. Pretty hard to argue that the Minority should dictate law for the Majority (even though this is what always happens, operationally). Actually, it doesn't matter if you have a Stalin/Hitler, or a parliament, you always have a relatively small group of businessmen who support and influence the king, the men who count the votes, or the men behind the guns. An imaginary Athenian perfect 100% voting democracy, if such a thing were possible and practical, cannot be accepted by men, philosophically, as the ethical standard of the right thing to vote for. Even if men could vote in perfect unison, who or what philosophical/religious creed is going to train them up to understand and to stand for the right way to vote?

 

Besides this, one day or generation of men might vote one way, and if they had the ethical authority to determine what laws should be, why should that have more ethical authority than what yesterday's voters, or tomorrow's voters think the laws should be? If the principle were true, the law could never be changed!

 

-I do believe that the OT civil law should be studied by us and that we can learn from it. But I don't think it applies straight across, nor do I see anywhere in scripture that says it applies straight across to all cultures and nations.

 

 

For my part, I am eager to study the OT civil law, learn from it and from others who have studied and thought about it. It appears far too little of this has been done since Patrick Henry and Stonewall Jackson. Please, all of you direct me to material better than what I can lay out for you. Send me corrections of what I have misunderstood about Bible and its logical applications to history and current events.

 

If we should study the OT law code and learn from it, how do we know what parts of it are specifying punishments that are too severe (lest we murder and steal by following it), or too lenient (and God now holds us responsible to be more severe today)? Is there another sure standard outside the Bible that can be our guide?

 

I would be happy to link anyone to sources that have given me confidence that this historical tradition of the Church of Jesus Christ is superior to what the last few American generations were taught.

 

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