Stating the Thesis
The matter of the death penalty in this country is highly debated. This was not always the case. Roman Catholicism opposes the death penalty, and with the increase of Roman Catholic immigration to the United States, capital punishment for capital crimes is no longer simply assumed. Roman Catholic opposition to the death penalty was not always the case. After all, Rome used to execute people for teaching or writing heresy. Such false doctrine was believed to be a plague on society as a whole; therefore, a Christian society was thought to have a vested interest in the death of false teachers. But this is no longer the case, as Rome has moved toward a more pacifistic position.1
The opposition to the death penalty, however, under any and all circumstances, has brought great damage to the civil life and order of this country. The state has been portrayed as an institution of mercy and compassion. We now have departments of corrections rather than penal colonies. The idea is that the state is to reform people, not punish them. Again, the state has taken on a friendly face—one of compassion, mercy, and service for the good of criminals. And with this emphasis on mercy has come a significant decrease in the use of the death penalty. But when the state seeks to do what God did not design it to do, it necessarily brings about negative effects on society.
The question is this: What is the God-given mandate of the state? This is a highly controverted matter. The current tensions within the Reformed church over matters of Christian nationalism and political theology are a case in point. So I would offer a thesis I believe we can all support: The God-given mandate of the state is simply to carry out justice. And when the state deviates from that narrow mandate, chaos inevitably ensues both for society at large and for the church in particular. But what is the God-given mandate of the state?
Defending the Thesis
The origins of civil government reach back to Genesis 4:8–16, and the context in which civil authority arises—after the fall of man—is significant. In Genesis 3, Adam brought sin into the world, and with his sin came the curse of God. Along with the guilt of Adam’s transgression came also the corruption of sin, particularly the corruption of the human heart. Scripture teaches that it is from the heart that our actions flow. Since the fall, every intention of man’s heart is evil continually (Gen 6:5), and the heart itself is deceitful above all things and desperately sick (Jer 17:9).
That evil heart is on full display in Genesis 4. Here we begin to see the breakdown of societal order. At this point in human history, we do not know how many children or generations of children of Adam there were. But the inspired account narrows its focus on two: Cain and Abel. Here the corruption of the heart manifests itself in violent action. Abel’s sacrifice is accepted by God, but Cain’s is rejected. Cain becomes angry, and in that anger, he murders his brother.
As a result, Cain is exiled to become a fugitive and wanderer on the earth. Yet Cain fears this punishment. He knows what the world out there is like. Genesis 4:26 indicates that there already is a division within humanity itself. There are those who call on the name of the Lord, and there are those who do not. Cain and Abel belonged to that primitive church, for they worshiped God through sacrifice. Yet among the children of Adam there were also those who were not regenerate. They did not call on the Lord. Out there, in the common realm of society—the realm into which Cain is banished—there is already a breakdown of social order.
Cain himself understands this reality. He protests the Lord’s judgment because he fears for his own life in the common realm. “Whoever finds me will kill me” (Gen 4:14). But the Lord’s response to Cain’s fear is immediate: “Not so!” (v. 15). “If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” The Lord then sets a mark on Cain lest anyone should kill him. The mark should not necessarily be understood as some visible sign placed on Cain’s body. Rather, it refers to God’s oath of promise and protection—that Cain would not be attacked as he feared.2
This is God’s way of maintaining order within the common realm. Here we find the first establishment of the lex talionis principle, the “eye for an eye.” It is the principle of divine vengeance against evildoers. This principle becomes the original mandate for state power. Please note: The state and its power are established by divine fiat with the purpose of executing justice according to lex talionis.
This same principle is reaffirmed after the flood in Genesis 9:5–6:
From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.
Once again we encounter the “eye for an eye” principle. If a man sheds another man’s blood, then by man shall his blood be shed. The phrase “by man” indicates the existence of some kind of human social order. The vengeance God promises will not ordinarily be carried out directly by God himself. Rather, man, acting as God’s servant, will carry out this justice.
Furthermore, this ordinance is clearly one of common grace. God institutes government for the sake of civil order. The state functions as a deterrent. Its purpose is to restrain civil chaos and mankind’s natural inclination toward violence and disorder. Civil government exists for the maintenance of the common civil realm.
And as such, it is itself a blessing of common grace, like the rain and the sun that descend on both the just and the unjust. The state, therefore, governs both believers and unbelievers alike. It protects Cain from the bloodthirsty inhabitants of the land of Nod, and at the same time it protects the inhabitants of Nod from bloodthirsty Cain.
By the time we come to the New Testament, we can see that the purpose and mandate of the state remain fundamentally the same as in Genesis 9. Romans 13 teaches us that the state bears the power of the sword. Paul teaches that every person is to be subject to the governing authorities. He then immediately explains why such submission is required: because all authority ultimately comes from God. God is the king of heaven and earth. He is Lord over all creation. He made all things and sustains them by his word. He governs all his creatures and all their actions. There is no authority above God himself. God is not given authority; rather, he simply is authority. All human authority is therefore derivative and dependent on him.
Consequently, every authority that exists has “been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1). The “therefore” of verse 2 draws out the logical conclusion. If anyone resists these authorities, he resists what God has appointed. In resisting lawful authority, one resists God. And the consequences are serious, for those who resist “will incur judgment.” Paul is not speaking here of God’s final judgment on the last day but of civil judgment—the judgment administered by the magistrate. This makes perfect sense in light of Genesis 4 and 9. According to these passages, the role of the state is to maintain order and peace within society. To resist the lawful order of the state, to disturb the peace, or to bring about violence and chaos is to invite the punishment of the civil authority.
Paul next turns to the duty of civil authorities in verses 3–5. The task of the magistrate is to be “a terror” to bad conduct. Civil authority exists to deter citizens from disrupting the social order through harmful actions against others. Such a function is especially necessary in a fallen world. Civil government cannot cure sin—only the grace of God can do that. The state cannot eradicate murder from the heart. But it can deter murder in the streets. It restrains the outward manifestations of human corruption, especially acts of violence and social disorder.
At this point it is worth noting that the English Standard Version (ESV) differs slightly from older translations. The ESV speaks of “bad” conduct, whereas older versions often use the word “evil.” The contrast is between good actions and evil or harmful actions. But we should observe that Paul is using these terms in a broad and civil sense, not in the comprehensive sense of God’s moral law. Paul is writing to Christians living in Rome under Nero, a pagan emperor. Nero did not know God’s law in the covenantal or redemptive sense. He did, however, know “the works of the law”—those moral realities God has embedded within human nature. Paul, therefore, is not saying that the evil Nero is charged to punish sins such as Sabbath breaking.
The word “evil” in Scripture does not always refer specifically to moral evil. At times it refers to calamity, disaster, or undesirable conditions. Isaiah 45:7 famously says, “I form light, and create darkness: I make well-being, and create calamity.” Likewise, Scripture often speaks of God bringing evil on a city or nation, meaning disaster or judgment. In the same way, “good” can refer not merely to moral goodness but to that which is beneficial, desirable, or conducive to flourishing. God is often said to do good to his people in the sense that he builds them up and blesses them.
In context, then, the magistrate is charged with restraining whatever brings calamity to society. Christians are therefore exhorted to do whatever contributes to the good of the city—to do what builds up rather than tears down. Believers are to be a blessing both to the magistrate and to their fellow citizens. Those who contribute positively to society often receive public approval. We see this in the honoring of firefighters for acts of heroism, police officers for bravery, or citizens who serve society in beneficial ways.
Again, the good in view here is not moral good in the ultimate theological sense. Unbelievers cannot perform truly morally good works before God apart from faith. Nevertheless, they can perform acts of civil good—outward acts that genuinely contribute to the preservation and well-being of society.
In Romans 13:4 Paul says that the magistrate “is God’s servant.” This language harkens back to Genesis 9 and the principle that “by man shall his blood be shed.” Before the final judgment, God restrains evil in the world through the “eye for an eye” principle administered by the state. On the last day, God himself will execute judgment directly. But in the present age, temporal justice is ordinarily mediated through civil government.
The magistrate is therefore God’s servant for our good. This includes the good of society at large—both believers and unbelievers alike—but especially the good of the church. God’s common grace serves his purposes of special grace. Even pagan rulers such as Nero are God’s servants, whether they acknowledge it or not. By maintaining a relative degree of civil peace and order, they create conditions in which Christians may live quiet and peaceable lives and worship God freely in the church.
Nero himself was hardly friendly toward Christians. Men appointed to positions of civil authority are still sinners; therefore, states themselves will sin. Yet even when the state persecutes the church, God’s purposes are not thwarted. Persecution itself falls within the sovereign plan of God. Even then, God uses the state as his servant to accomplish his holy purposes.
Nevertheless, Paul’s focus here is on the general purpose of the state. In general, civil government exists by divine appointment to maintain order within the common realm shared by believers and unbelievers alike. It is a common grace institution intended for the preservation of society. Civil order is beneficial to all people, and especially to the church. Chaos is harmful for everyone, but particularly for the people of God.
This is why God has given the state the sword. The state possesses coercive power, and it exercises that power rightly when it coerces peace and order. There are many ways in which the state may do this, but the principal symbol of its authority is the sword—and swords are instruments of death. “By man shall his blood be shed.” Capital punishment for capital crimes is therefore part of God’s design for civil order.
This also explains why Christians are forbidden to avenge themselves personally. God himself is the avenger, and one of the means by which he executes temporal vengeance is the state. Therefore, believers are free to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. Christian forgiveness and civil punishment are not opposed to one another. In fact, they harmonize beautifully. A Christian may both pray forgivingly for an offender and at the same time pursue civil justice through lawful means.
And if the state fails to execute justice properly, the believer is comforted by the knowledge that God himself will have the final word on the day of judgment.
NOTES
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church 2267 was amended by addition according to the new teaching of Pope Francis: “The Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.’” Previously, the Catechism called the death penalty “extreme,” but the amendment has the effect of overturning the older position.
- On this idea of the origin of the state and of the “mark of Cain,” see Meredith G. Kline, “The Oracular Origins of the State,” in The Essential Writings of Meredith G. Kline (Hendrickson, 2017).
©Jim Cassidy. All Rights Reserved.
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Jim Cassidy
Jim is the pastor of South Austin Presbyterian Church (OPC). He previously served in OPC pastorates in Pennsylvania (Johnstown) and New Jersey (Ringoes). In his ministry he has been and continues to be committed to proclaiming Christ and Him crucified from all the Scriptures. Jim earned an MDiv at Westminster Theological Seminary as well as a PhD in Historical and Theological Studies, concentrating in systematic theology and writing on the theology of Karl Barth.
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Thank you for this article. you’ve left some big issues unexplored, but I assume that’s why this is a “part 1”.
You wrote: “We now have departments of corrections rather than penal colonies.” This is a crucial idea to think through if we want to understand our modern notions of punishment. I highly recommend to anyone who has not read it C.S. Lewis’s essay “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” (1949) which can be found via search-engine. Lewis could not even get his essay published in his own country, so he had to publish it in Australia. Here is a snippet from that essay:
“The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question “Is it deserved?” is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly
ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a “just deterrent” or a “just cure”. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a “case”.
Our society is even more obsessed with therapy in 2026 than Lewis’s was in 1949. Rehabilitation and deterrence are not the right questions to ask about the death penalty, and to conflate them with questions of justice is all too common.
Thank you for this careful attempt to ground civil authority in Scripture. I do wonder, though, whether the argument handles both Genesis 9 and Romans 13 a bit too atomistically. It seems difficult to lift Genesis 9:6 out of its primeval context and have it do direct work for a modern doctrine of the magistrate without tracing how capital crimes and penalties are actually incorporated into Israel’s law, and then how that legal-theocratic framework is transformed as we move into the Roman world of the New Testament. In the same way, “bearing the sword” in Romans 13:4 need not be read as a straightforward mandate for execution; the machaira was the shorter sword that functioned as a symbol of magisterial authority and coercive power in general, rather than a specific instruction about capital punishment. From my perspective, a redemptive-historical reading needs to follow the whole canonical development rather than move directly from Genesis 9 to Romans 13 on the strength of a shared sword/vengeance motif.
Martin,
Noah is not Moses. The reason that the Noahic injunctions have abiding validity is precisely because they are not part of the intentionally temporary, Mosaic, old covenant. That covenant was “inferior” and “fading” (2 Cor 3; Heb 7–10). The Noah narrative is best read as a sort of re-creation (post-diluvian) narrative with the natural order re-instituted. The natural order/law under Noah and following requires the civil magistrate to shed blood for blood.
The natural law did not disappear under Moses but was encumbered, if you will, with 613 (as the rabbis counted them) temporary commandments (religious and judicial), which expired with Christ but the natural, general equity doesn’t expire. The Israelite theocracy doesn’t invalidate natural law.
This is why Paul says that the magistrate does not bear the sword in vain, because he understood the abiding validity of the natural law articulated under Noah.
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Dr Clark, thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my comment, and for the clarity with which you set out your reasoning. I’m grateful for the opportunity to think these things through under your guidance.
I’m happy to acknowledge the important distinction you’re making between Noah and Moses, and I can see the force of the argument that the Noahic covenant has a creational, “natural law” character that is not bound up with the intentionally temporary aspects of the Mosaic economy. At the same time, from within a Reformed covenantal and redemptive-historical framework, I’m hesitant to treat the Noahic covenant as if it stood on an entirely separate track from the covenant of grace and the later covenants.
Genesis 3:15 already announces the covenant of grace in seed form, and the Noahic covenant seems, to me, to function in service of that promise, preserving and stabilising the creation “stage” on which the history of redemption will unfold. In that sense it feels analogous to the way the original creation “covenant” (and passages like Jeremiah 33:20-26, with its appeal to day and night) undergird God’s later covenantal dealings in genesis 2 (the covenant works), rather than being hermetically sealed off from them. So I’m cautious about speaking of the Noahic administration as if it were simply a freestanding natural-law covenant, without at least also emphasising its ordered relation to the unfolding covenant of grace.
Related to that, I’m also a little uneasy about drawing what feels like a fairly straight line from the Noahic “blood for blood” principle to the modern magistrate, without passing more carefully through Sinai and through Christ. Romans 1-2 indicates that the essence of the moral law, summarised in the Ten Commandments, is written on the hearts of Gentiles and then codified at Sinai. On the Reformed understanding, that same moral law continues to bind all people, including rulers, while the specifically Israelite civil and ceremonial laws, with their particular sanctions, expire except for the “general equity.” That structure makes me think we have to ask not only what Genesis 9 requires in the abstract, but also how that requirement is received, qualified, and applied across the whole sweep of redemptive history and in the light of Christ’s fulfillment.
Behind my questions is a Christological concern as well. Psalm 2 and Matthew 28 (compare Genesis 1:1 with Matt 28:18) present Christ as the one to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given, and before whom the kings of the earth are summoned to bow. From my own mediatorial kingship perspective, that seems to mean that modern rulers are accountable not merely to a single natural-law precept drawn from Genesis 9, but to the whole moral will of God as it now comes to us in and through the risen Christ. That doesn’t settle all the detailed questions about penology, of course, but it does make me want to be very careful about moving quickly from Noah to Romans 13 to contemporary practice.
I realise some of this may simply reflect different hermeneutical instincts about the relation of the covenants and the way Christ’s dominion bears on the nations. I am trying to think these things through self-consciously within a Reformed Presbyterian, mediatorial-dominion framework, and I’m very open to correction where I’ve misunderstood either Scripture or my own tradition. If you’re willing, I would be genuinely interested to know whether you would describe your own approach here as broadly two-kingdoms, or whether you would locate it somewhat differently.
Thank you again for your work, and for the patience with which you’ve engaged these questions.
There’s no concrete evidence proving that the death penalty deters violent crimes, so it can’t be shown to bring about societal order. Moreover, your article doesn’t even mention potential wrongful convictions. I firmly believe that God doesn’t condone killing other humans, even with the state’s authority. Life should always be valued above everything else.
Mark,
Murderers who are dead can no longer murder. That’s an indisputable fact. Proving a negative, that the death penalty deters crime, is near impossible outside of divine omniscience. Who knows how many times a the strict enforcement of extreme penalties has deterred someone from doing something? Is there anecdotal evidence? Yes. California is installing speed cameras on the freeways. The cameras will see license plates of cars exceeding the speed limit by 10 MPH or more and issue fines. This fact slowed me down yesterday. Is that statistically meaningful? No but we’ll see if Californians slow down after they begin receiving tickets. I guess they will. I don’t often see people driving in the carpool lanes illegally. Why not? The fine is nearly $500. The same is true of handicapped parking spaces. From the lesser to the greater: if minor penalties deter crime and modify behavior, how much more do severe penalties deter behavior?
The death penalty, however, doesn’t ultimately rest on deterrence. It rests on justice. Murder is theft of a life. Natural justice requires an equivalent payment.
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