Question

Provide 3 biblical scripts that is against the captial punishment/death penalty and 3 that is for capital punishment/death penalty and explain why please and thank you.

Answer 1

Bible neither supports capital punishment nor condemns it. Rather it leaves this issue to the worldly governments to decide and asks God's children to abide by the words of Scriptures that they could be saved from the wages of sin.

Capital punishment was a key feature of Mosaic law in the Old Testament. Capital punishment was given to those who purposely harmed other, as murder and rape. As man was made in the image of God, hence, nobody had right to take life of another human being and if a man took a man's life purposely, then, he had to repay with his life. The Biblical scriptures of Old Testament that supported death penalty are:

• Genesis 9:6 -" Whoever shed man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God he made man."(NKJV)
• Deuteronomy 19:21- " Your eye shall not pity but life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot". (NKJV)
• Deuteronomy 21:22 - " If a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree," (NKJV)

Bible in the New Testament depicts the love of God. The loving father who has given his only son as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, thus, he redeems everyone on earth of their sins, hence, a death penalty is not a necessity to punish. The New Testament also speaks how Jesus pardoned the adulteress woman, for during those days they paid with their life for adultery. Old Testament also prohibits death penalty as it seeks to defile the land in which God abides among his people. The Biblical scriptures that is against the capital punishment are:

• Numbers 35: 33- 34- " So you shall not pollute the land where you are; for blood defiles the land and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it except by the blood of him who shed it. Therefore do not defile the land which you inhabit, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord among the children of Israel".
• John 3:16- " For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life". (NKJV)
• John 8:7- " So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, 'he who is without sin among you let him throw a stone at her first'." (NKJV)