Romans 13

Romans 13:1-5

CRIME AND CAPITAL Romans 13:1-5. AMERICA has seldom been treated to such an uproar as has preceded the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolmeo Vanzetti, who have just paid the penalty of an atrocious crime. There is a possibility that one of these men was innocent, as his dying protest affirmed; but it is difficult for any keen observer upon the protest movement to escape the conviction that the revolt against this execution was rather in the interest of anarchy than of justice, an interest in which Christianity can little sympathize. Concerning each the teachings of its great Text-Book are comparatively clear. Six thousand years ago Cain killed Abel, and the question of what to do with a murderer has been a prominent one since the blood of that innocent brother cried from the very ground for some adequate judgment.In approaching this theme this morning I have no disposition to rely upon personal wisdom. More than thirty-five years ago, when a student at college, I won the debate against my opponents by opposing capital punishment. The books studied then and the arguments, framed and delivered, sufficed to prejudice my thinking. To that prejudice my natural disposition added acquiescence; but the more recent and careful study of the Word has convinced me of the error of those and similar arguments in favor of the abolition of capital punishment.We fall back this morning upon the one Book 183, which I believe to be the guide of life in all affairs, and I am going to contend that capital punishment, for certain crimes, is the plain teaching of God’s Word. To the text, three suggestions: 1. Capital punishment is a divinely appointed penalty for certain crimes. 2. The purpose of capital punishment is for the restraint of certain evils. 3. The executioner of the law is a minister of righteousness.CAPITAL IS A PENALTY FOR CERTAIN CRIMES It was first enacted in the days of Noah. When Cain killed Abel, no such law; existed and no such penalty was executed. Cain did not have to answer to law for his conduct, but to the God of love who set upon him a brand and let him live. That custom of dealing with the most criminal of men God continued until the result of mercy made society to reek with sin and crime, and necessitated universal judgment, for“God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, “And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. “And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth” (Genesis 6:5-7). In other words, the Scriptures are our authority for the statement that unpunished crimes saved the lives of the criminals at the expense of all society.Noah, having found grace in the sight of the Lord, and having been made the head of a new race, was promised against possible repetition of that putrid state of society necessitating the flood, capital punishment for murder. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed”, and the reason was assigned, for “in the image of God made He man”.When God changes any custom of His, there is occasion. Had the moral management of the world been possible without the death penalty for the murderer, God would have forever delayed that judgment.The death penalty was repeated in the Mosaic law. It is a significant thing that while we have in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, the decalog, the Sixth Commandment of which is, “Thou shalt not kill”, we have in the twenty-first chapter the very next, the Law of the Lord for him who breaks the Sixth Commandment, and murders his fellow,“But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from Mine altar, that he may die. “And he that smiteth his father or his mother, shall be surely put to death” (Exodus 21:14-15). This is not a single announcement, found only in one chapter of the great library, that makes up God’s Book; but it is a law repeated as often as occasion demanded.In Leviticus 24:17 we read: “And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death”, while in Deuteronomy 21:22-23; “If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled”.There are many men who will tell us this was the Law, and we are not now under the Law, but under Grace. Certainly! But murderers are not under Grace! They have spurned the Grace of God and have made the Law their master instead. The New Testament, however, knows no repeal of this Old Testament Law.In the Christian Scriptures, the death penalty is approved. Christ not only did not speak against it, but quoting the Scriptures that involved it, presented no objections.

When He seemed to reverse the Law, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”, He was inveighing against individual revenge and not against just judgment of murder. On the contrary, concerning that very Law He went beyond Moses’ teaching,“Ye have heard it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:21-22). Again, Jesus Christ gave the Book of Revelation to John, and in that it is written, “He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword”. Paul speaks of certain sins as worthy of death, and confesses that if he is guilty of one of them, he is ready to meet the law’s demands; and in the text before us today, a man who executes the death penalty when justly deserved, is “a minister of God to thee for good.”The State of Iowa some years since dispensed with capital punishment. Crimes increased and the State was compelled to reverse itself and renew the severer judgment to save its society. The first sheriff called upon to execute the new law was a minister of the Gospel. Newspapers of the country were universally amazed that a minister could bring himself to spring the trap that sent a murderer before God to answer for the deeds done in the body. It must have been both an encouragement and a consolation to that unhappy minister-sheriff to read from the Apostle Paul the language of our text, “He is the minister of God to thee for good.

But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil”.There isn’t a man who is truly human, and certainly not one who has any touch of the Divine Spirit, who doesn’t revolt from the death penalty. However there is one thing from which our souls still more revolt, and that is the crime which necessitates it.

I saw one man publicly executed. I grew sick as I looked, and regretted my presence, and have never again sought the place of such penal judgment, nor shall I ever. There is one thing, however, upon which my soul would look with infinitely greater loathing, and that is the murderer’s work—the innocent, bleeding, dying or dead victim of some heart of fire or hand of hell that smites and takes away that which only God can give the most precious thing in the universe—Life!It is because that deed is of such enormity that this terrible penalty was ever invoked, and now remains a necessity. When one studies society and finds that that crime increases, he is compelled to justify God and His Word regarding limitations upon conduct, even to the point of telling them that a life thus taken will necessitate the loss of the murderer’s own life. Unjust? No!

The gross injustice, the grossest injustice was in the murder, not in the penal judgment. Inhuman?

No! The inhumanity was the act that necessitated this social judgment; and our text tells us the further meaning of the penalty itself.THE PURPOSE OF THE PENALTY IS OF EVIL “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of Cod; the powers that be are ordained of God. “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil” (Romans 13:1-3). The teaching is plain!The death penalty seeks the good of the tempted one. The difficulty with the young man of the present Minnesota is that when tempted to enter the profession of highwayman and take his chances against being killed and killing some one in order to acquire a livelihood without industry, he may reason, “Well, the most that can happen to me is the penitentiary, with a good prospect of either breaking jail and getting away, or a reprieve by the Board of Pardons.”The mental vision of a gallows only a few weeks distant would naturally have a deterrent effect, and God, who knows what is in man, best understood how to save him from himself.Four attempts were made on the life of Queen Victoria during the first year of her reign. The English Parliament met and passed a law, prescribing the death-penalty for an attempt upon the life of its sovereign. From the day of that decision, though her reign was a long and notable one, no man had the hardihood to risk his own life in an endeavor to take hers away. Only a few months since, in our own city, Edward Helms, an honest grocer, was shot down and left dying in his own store, because, being slightly deaf, he put his hand to his ear when the command, “Hands up” was given in order to catch the meaning of the words, instead of lifting both hands over his head. I confess very frankly that my deepest sympathy goes out to the parents of such boys and my heart breaks with sorrow over the thought they have to face such consequences and innocently suffer for such a deed, but I have little doubt that those same parents had exhausted all mental and moral resources to keep those very lads from coming to this end, and when the Board of Pardons dismisses them, as it doubtless will, judging by precedent, the Helms family will still be without a head, and the hearts of that home will go their way to their graves in grief.

Tell me that a few months in prison suffice for such a total disregard of human life? I answer, Not in the judgment of God and His great Word.

It might have been the salvation of those very boys, had the state law retained its death penalty, rather than the effeminate and softened sentence with which that penalty was displaced.Our text further emphasizes the justice of severe judgment. According to God’s laws, judgment is measured by the degree of the crime committed. Man’s laws are not always after this manner. There used to be 160 or more sins punishable by death in England—the man who let fish out of the hatchery; the man who owed a debt and did not meet it promptly, etc. God’s Word never approved the death penalty for minor offenses, but it reckoned murder chief among the crimes, and grave judgment against it both righteous and godly.Think of the men at Herrin, ILL., who shot down thirty or forty of their fellows, because, forsooth, they had dared to take the places these same men had repudiated. Think of the anarchistic foreigners at Gary, Ind., who derailed a train and sent scores of innocent men, women and children to a tangled and mangled heap of dead and dying, and tell me that the death penalty is unjust or inhuman! Think of that colored brute (no worse because of his color) who literally tore to pieces a baby girl of three years in our own fair city only a few months since, and tell me whether a precarious life sentence that may be escaped by killing his jailor and walking out; that may be escaped by connivance with other criminals to saw their way through, under cover of darkness; that may be escaped by an over compassionate Board of Pardons, and tell me whether such a man is not so great a menace to society that his speedy removal is not only desirable but divinely approved.Only recently in a state where no capital punishment was possible, a white brute dared to pick up a beautiful little girl of eleven years, carry her to the heart of a forest and keep her for two days and nights, only releasing his hold when she had slipped his hand and escaped him under cover of the darkness, to carry an enfeebled mind and a shattered body the rest of her days. Do you wonder that the citizens of that state were only restrained with the greatest difficulty and the most careful maneuvering, from mob law? There was a universal feeling that such a fiend was unfit to longer cumber society with his criminal presence.Expunge from your state law the death penalty for some iniquities and the people will reinstate it without the formality of State legislatures. No matter what imprecations are uttered against mob law, such moral outrages will make men lawless in their very indignation against lack of more exacting law.Capital punishment looks also to the conservation of society. It is a bit difficult to determine how effective it is as a restraining measure. Either men have gone to different sources for their information, or they have carried into their articles such prejudices as made their statements irresponsible.

I have read from a number of pens that declare that crime decreased in the states where the death penalty was abrogated. On the other hand, the most startling figures are stated to prove that when the ban of death is lifted from murderous deeds, a veritable holocaust of crime ensues.

Here is a table compiled by the Civic Alliance Bulletin a few years since. The state of Maine abolished capital punishment in 1887 and Rhode Island in 1852. There were 77 per cent more murders in Maine than in Massachusetts, 92 per cent more murders in Maine than in Vermont, 109 per cent more murders in Maine than in Connecticut, 360 per cent more murders in Maine than in New Hampshire. Combining Maine and Rhode Island, 173 per cent more murders in the two than in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire. Italy, 1888, abolished capital punishment forever, but the Camorrist crimes and the 3800 homicides in a single year, among one-third as many people as there were in the United States, not to take into account the great number of murders there were in America by Italian immigrants, put Italy at the head of the murderous countries of the world, and doubtless accounts for the restriction of immigration from that land. The conservation of society is, after all, the greatest objective of corrective laws; and it was that thought that led Governor Burnquist to urge that the State of Minnesota make a careful study of the subject of capital punishment in the deterring of crime.

Of that plea, the Journal editorially said: “Such a study would no doubt be well, in view of the tension, license and abnormality that have followed in the wake of war.” And continued, “It is evident that mild punishment has utterly failed to stem the tide. Murder is all too often followed by easy escape and comparative safety.

The very frequency of homicidal crimes furnish strong ground for restoring the death penalty in this State. The present regime of soft punishment and easy pardons has proved entirely inadequate to deter men from crimes of the most serious nature. And there exists the stern necessity of protecting society. Switzerland, which abolished capital punishment in 1874, has restored it, owing to the increase of murders under the easier system. There are only ten states in America clinging to life imprisonment as the extreme penalty for murder. Thirty and more other States have tried the milder forms of punishment and abandoned them for the death penalty.”That editorial of the Journal leads me to remark that in almost every State where they have turned to man-made laws instead of the laws of God, bitter experience has led them to turn back to God’s Law.THE OF LAW IS THE OF Laws are a necessity to the life of any land.

The regard shown for them measures the advance of civilization. Five years ago Russia was looked upon as a half civilized folk.

Today they are not even held in that high regard for the simple reason that the laws of the land have been largely set aside and the Government is dominated by the law of individuals rather than by that social consensus of opinion which men call law. France, one hundred and fifty years ago, passed through a kindred experience; the laws of restraint were flung to the winds, and the French Revolution, with its baptism of blood, and its holocaust of crimes quickly followed. Truly, law in itself “is just and good”. It is capable of abuse, to be sure. Bad laws may even be enacted, and foully executed, but no social state ever exceeds in iniquity a state of lawlessness. “Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil”. “If thou do that which is evil be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil”.Regard for the law is a Christ-like sentiment also. When, some months ago, in taking you through the Old Testament Scriptures, I became thoroughly convinced that capital punishment was the teaching of the Book, I did not at all know the common position of the great Bible expositors of America.

I have learned since that most of my brethren who are with me in the Fundamentals Association hold a kindred faith on that subject. The “Sunday School Times” is a magazine in which the orthodox of the world may well delight, the teachings of which may be trusted.

Recently there was put into that paper the question: “Does Genesis 9:6 command capital punishment for murder? If so, is the abolishment of the death penalty in our States the abolishment of God’s plans and the substitution of man’s?” And the answer is, “Yes; God did command capital punishment for murder in Genesis 9:6, and that command has never been repealed. We hear our Lord specifying to the rich young ruler as one of the commandments which he should keep, ‘Thou shalt do no murder’.”The “Times” then recites the instance of Cain’s murder and that of Lamech’s, and shows that neither of them having been punished by the death penalty, murder became common. The whole world was under its curse. Quoting from Dr. C.

I. Scofield, these words, “The highest function of government is the judicial taking of life.

All other governmental powers are implied in that. Satan no doubt thought he had entrapped God in one of His own laws when he saw the death penalty unjustly inflicted upon the Son of God Himself; but He must have been appalled when, on that glorious third day, he discovered that God had ‘loosed the pains of death; because it was not possible that He should be holden of it’.” In his “Christian Workers’ Commentary” Dr. James M. Gray quotes from Pratt’s “Genesis” as follows: “The death penalty has been abused in almost all the countries of the world, but this does not justify its abolition in cases of premeditated homicide; and unwillingness to apply to the criminal the pain of death ordained by God himself, the Author of life, always tends to the increase of crime and gives loose rein to personal vengeance. The inviolability of human life means that the life of a human being is a thing so sacred that he who takes it without just cause must pay for it with his own in amends to outraged justice, both human and Divine.” The article concludes, “When therefore, law-makers abolish the death penalty for capital crimes, they strike a blow at the very source and center of real God-ordained government, and transgress an unrepealed law of God for the good of the race.”Finally, The end of the Law is the answer of a good conscience. Strange to say, this remark applies here as elsewhere.

If a man for murder must meet death, he is in all probability the one murderer who is most likely to see God in peace. The very severity of his punishment will suffice, if anything under heaven can accomplish it, for his conviction of sin, his contrition for his deed, and his possible pardon through the Grace of God.

A man who has to count his days and hours upon earth, facing, while he reckons them, the gallows, the building of which is sounding in his ears, is not likely to put in his time planning how to escape jail, even though he have to murder the keeper to make that possible, nor concocting schemes of new iniquity when once the Board of Pardon shall be moved to tenderness in his behalf; or by the aid of other culprits make good his escape. On the contrary, he commonly spends those hours in planning to meet God, or pleading for pardon, and that gives hope, for he reasons, and I think logically, that while atonement is in Christ, and Christ alone, so far as human restitution is possible, by surrendering up that which he took from another, he is making atonement. Young Richeson, producing the poison that effected the death of the girl who trusted him with her all, when convicted of the crime, and sentenced to die, accepted the sentence as just, and said that the only reason he desired to live beyond the day of the death penalty was, that by continued anguish, he might in some measure atone for his own iniquities; but hoped that when his own life was laid down on the gallows, accompanied, as his going to that gallows was, by deep contrition over his terrible crime, God, in His infinite mercy, might forgive.Some hope is justified by the Scriptures themselves. “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men”. The thief at God’s right hand was doubtless a murderer; and yet, in deep penitence he made his plea, and the Son of God heard and said, “To day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise”. There are people who seem to think there is an utter inharmony between the death penalty and a possible repentance of the man involved; that, in fact, the gallows or chair of execution cuts off his opportunity to weep his way into the Divine heart again. On the contrary, I believe it accentuates it and sends a man in penitent prayer before God as no other experience that ever looms in life could possibly accomplish. I am not hopeless of the final salvation of a penitent murderer, but I am convinced that the laws of God, and the interests of Society demand the restoration of the death penalty for the perpetration of that crime of all crimes—the premeditated or malicious taking of human life.