Clough Genesis Lesson 31

Justification of capital punishment in the New Testament

…before we get started this morning, this particular man, and I realize that it’s strong language and could be liable, I make that with all that full knowledge. Mr. {?}’s literature not too many years back petitioned the Christian community for funds; funds that were supposed to be going to a ministry in Jerusalem, Israel, which was supposedly documented in his literature. At the time Arnold Fruchtenbaum was obtaining his masters degree at Hebrew University, living in Israel, having lived there for two or three years; very, very familiar with the Christian community in the city of Jerusalem. I sent a copy of Mr. {?}’s literature to Arnold while he was in Jerusalem, asking for comment and confirmation. The program that Mr. {?} was supposedly asking donations for was sending correspondence courses throughout the land of Israel, out from the Jerusalem post office. A quick check with the Jerusalem post office proved that no piece of literature ever went through the post office, in spite of the fact that the literature claimed that thousands went through. Moreover, one of the pictures which was supposedly showing people coming forward in a crusade was identified by the elders of the churches in the city of Jerusalem as members of his own staff who visited the city. And so therefore we find evidence of outright fraud, and this ought to be voiced abroad.

Secondly, in his own publication, which is a magazine that I used to get, Deeper Life, one of the many charismatic things that people find helpful to donate to me, the following paragraph was given where he indicated a heavenly vision and like Paul, was brought up (quote) “into the third heaven,” and just a phenomenal sentence; it struck me. He sees a vision of God in heaven, and then he writes this: “I felt a divine compassion to put…” incidentally, underneath the throne of God in this vision he saw two great footprints in the clouds, “I felt a divine compassion to put my feet into the indentations that were made by the presence of God, and to my utter amazement, my feet fit perfectly into those footprints.” So needless to say it gives you some idea of the mental processes of this particular individual.

Now we’ve had a number of questions over the past Genesis series and two of these questions are questions which indicate some secondary issues. Genesis 8:21 which we discussed last time dealing with the evidence of depravity among the human race prior to the writing of Paul, so we won’t have to say that the doctrine of total depravity that was something that was just originated by Paul. And in this question, it says: Are my children born innocent of evil thought, or are they developed by age and time and also by parents who do not spank their children and allow their children’s (quote) “free spirit” (end quote) to rule? And obviously the answer in Romans 8:21 is that the children are born with a disposition to sin and they’re already oriented in a rebellious direction but the direction, the particular kinds of things that a child does are a result of upbringing and the home and so on. And then this individual, with great Christian creativity has evolved the meaning behind the acrostic BRAT as Born Rebellious And Terrible.

A second question: Regarding hunting, is hunting for sport, without the intention of eating the kill, wrong? I think at least, unless it’s for balancing certain population problems in the animal kingdom which sometimes hunting is for, incidentally, that you’d have a hard time justifying it on the basis of the Noahic Covenant. The Noahic Covenant ascribes great dignity to the death of animals for the process of eating and elsewhere animals are sometimes killed, and it can be done in sport, when they have to be because the balance would get out of hand. That is one possible justification; I myself haven’t thought much about it. Some of you who are great hunters might read over the Scriptures and just respond and give some thoughts on it.

But the major question this morning that I think is major enough to stop our forward advance through the book of Genesis, at least for this Sunday, raises the question that is always raised when we meet Genesis 9:5-6. Last Sunday morning we got that far into the Noahic Covenant. We had developed verse by verse the exegesis of the passage up until the point of capital punishment, and I made the point that capital punishment is the core of the fourth divine institution, that every divine institution under God has a basic mechanism in it. The first divine institution has volition and responsibility is the essence of all the divine institutions. In the second divine institution, which is marriage, there you have sex and love being the core of that institution. Divine institution three, which is the family; there you have parental authority that’s one of the central features.

So each institution has, what we’ll call, a core mechanism. Now the institution of the state, the fourth divine institution, which is the first one after the fall, has as its core, according to this passage, capital punishment, the right to judicially take life. I also gave some certain New Testament supports for this and I pointed out that this covenant is not addressed only to Israel; it is addressed to the whole human race. This is a mistake oftentimes that is made, and it’s a very bad mistake, but just because the New Testament comes along and, so to speak, changes parts of the Mosaic Law, therefore the New Testament also changes part of the Noahic Covenant and so we have to show some Scripture that the Noahic Covenant is still… still in force with all men, Christian, non-Christian, Jew, non-Jew, all men remain under the Noahic Covenant.

Now there are three features of the Noahic Covenant that are repeated in the New Testament again and again and again. And these surely show that the Noahic Covenant remains in force. One of these features is the eating of meat; in 1 Timothy 4:3-4 Paul goes so far as to say that if someone comes up to you and tells you that you are more spiritual because you don’t eat meat, or that vegetarianism is the model spiritual diet for this age, they are teaching you a doctrine of Satan. That’s very strong language but 1 Timothy 4:3-4 makes that point. Meat eating is authorized. Now for health reasons you may want to go easy on some of the fatty meats, the Mosaic Law gives some health wisdom there, because of cholesterol and so on, but as far as a blanket denial of all meat eating, that’s out of line.

The next feature of the Noahic Covenant repeated in the New Testament to show it still remains in force is in Acts 15:19-20, in the middle of the church council, the argument and the point was made that when you eat meat it is to be bloodless, that is, the meat is to be drained. And generally speaking in the butcheries it is done. But the point there is that the draining of the blood from the meat is directly derived from Genesis 9:4 here in the Genesis text. So as late as Acts 15 you find the Church under apostolic conditions insisting that that still holds.

A third feature of the Noahic Covenant and one that is repeated, as I said last week, in Romans 13, is capital punishment. Now we allowed last week that there would be cases of mercy. Just because we articulate capital punishment doesn’t mean capital punishment is always right in every crime of murder. For example, David was given a merciful pardon. All we’re saying is that as a general norm and standard capital punishment remains.

Now the question that someone raised: the question is, and it’s a good question, don’t interpret what I say as I’m chewing somebody out for asking the question, this is a good question and I’m glad the person raised it because this is always raised every single time I have ever taught capital punishment to any audience, and that is: In your discussion of the reasons for capital punishment, would you please explain what you do with Matthew 5:38-39, which is the Sermon on the Mount, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not take vengeance and so on. What we’ve got to do now is defend that capital punishment is not rendered null and void by later revelation in the New Testament. So this morning we’re going to stop our forward advance through the text to answer this issue. I know some of you don’t have a problem with this; you’re well enough taught in the Bible so that this doesn’t strike you as discordant at all with the teachings of the New Testament. However, you would best pay attention because some day this is going to come up in a discussion by someone else who does have the problem and you’re going to be sitting there open-mouthed unless you have the proper materials to answer.

So this morning is a justification of capital punishment in the New Testament, why does the New Testament still permit it. I remind you once again that many, many clergymen differ violently from me at this point. The National Council of Churches, which is a federation of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations, 34 of them, you have them issuing the central statement that capital punishment (quote) “frustrates the Christian commitment to seek the redemption and reconciliation of the wrongdoer,” (end quote). That’s their phrase, they say… and this represents a powerful, awesome, wealthy, and intelligent segment of (quote) “Christendom.” It’s the National Council and their denominational lobbies that are responsible for much of the legislation that goes on today in the name of peace and justice.

I again read the list of denominations who have officially gone on record as denying the thesis I am putting forward here this morning; the thesis being the New Testament authorizes capital punishment. The following denominations disagree emphatically and completely in their official literature which has gone out under the name of the entire denomination. So there may be individuals in those denominations that differ but their paid representatives to the American public have said other wise: The Episcopalian Church; The United Methodist Church; The American Baptist Convention; The United Presbyterian Church; The Presbyterian Church of the U. S. – Southern; The Christian Church; The United Church of Christ; The Lutheran Church in America; and The Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. So all of these, a vast array, representing a formidable membership, argue against this and are putting tremendous pressure upon civil authorities. These have been the main people who have gotten rid of capital punishment in our society.

We want to go back and look at some basics of capital punishment for a moment before turning to the New Testament. The first thing about capital punishment is that it’s part and parcel of the Noahic Covenant and the Noahic Covenant has two sections, one that deals with the rule of man and the other that deals with the rule of nature. Both man and nature are to be ruled for God by God from the time of the flood until the time of the end. And this Noahic Covenant remains in force.

Now since we’re working this morning with mostly the Noahic Covenant as it pertains to man it’s good to start off in a neutral area where we’re a little bit less emotionally involved and just ask how does the Noahic Covenant work with nature? What is the characteristic of God’s promises to the planet earth, to the geophysical systems of climate, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the geosphere and so on? And the answer is one word: stability, unchanging stability. God’s will for the geophysical system of the planet earth from now until the time of the end of history is for stability. That’s the whole promise of the Noahic Covenant, that I promise that as long as day and night go on, cold and heat, summer and winter, seed time and harvest, shall not cease, so stability, routine, cyclic repetition.

Now if God is doing this in the area of nature you would expect similar things to be done in the area of man and indeed that’s what we find. The Noahic Covenant is the stabilizing device for civilization. Nature is to be kept amenable to man’s existence so that people can receive Christ. Man is to so order his society that the Word of God can go forth in peace, without being stopped. As I have said long ago, try to have some spiritual work in the middle of a mob. No way! So stability is the order for the postdiluvian civilization.

Now let’s take capital punishment, having looked at this broad context, let’s take capital punishment and look at some of its concepts; some of the judicial concepts. Now these concepts are going to challenge some of you here today have legal training and you’ve studied the positivist law problem and you’ve studied natural law and you’ve studied the social good theory of law and you’ve studied some of the basic concepts behind modern criminal law. Let me just say at this point that the Bible, very simply stated, has one idea behind all law: restitution. That is the basic foundation of all criminal proceedings in the Scriptures. The Bible insists that all justice is restitutionary in nature.

What do we mean “restitutionary?” It means if you rip me off the main object isn’t to punish you as such; the main object is you give me back my stuff that you ripped off. That’s restitution; it’s pay back for damage done, whether it’s medical damage, paying the bills for the medical damage in cases of assault, or whether it’s physical property that has been taken, for example a car has been taken for a month and say it’s been wrecked; under biblical principles the person who stole the car would be required to pay back a car of equal value and in addition and over that pay back also the amount of cost that you, for the last 30 days have been out because you didn’t have a car and had to take a bus system or whatever to go places. So you had to have all of these things reimbursed. Restitution is reimbursement; pay back.

Now God’s character, for God has a character, God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is loving, He’s omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal, different attributes of God, and one of these is that God is just. Now it is that aspect of God’s character that colors, for a Christian, that colors and affects and controls how He views jurisprudence, because God’s justice is restitutionary. If you don’t believe that let’s look at the central feature of all of history and here on the cross of Jesus Christ we have absolute restitution. By absolute restitution we mean this, that when we sin against God we create an infinite debt. There’s our sin; our sin against God’s character creates an infinite moral and legal debt. Since it’s an infinite debt you can’t pay it off, I can’t pay it off, and if Christ were just man He couldn’t pay it off. So therefore what has to happen is that Jesus Christ, as both God and man together in one person, He dies on the cross and pays off the debt. Jesus Christ’s life was given as a ransom for many. So right in the very heart of the cross of Christ you have the concept of restitution; something is being restored that was previously damaged, and you can’t deny it, this is the core of God’s justice.

Now restitution is easy to see in the cross this way, but what about human society because in human society we can’t make total restitution, so therefore we develop another word. Here we call it absolute restitution; only God can give absolute restitution. Absolute restitution only follows through the cross of Jesus Christ, but God has so designed divine institution four that it is supposed to produce relative restitution, that is it can’t perfectly reimburse you. Mental agony, created for example by assault and battery, there’s no way you can be compensated. The courts try it in civil cases to compensate with various damage claims but really, quite frankly there is no way to make restitution for mental injuries and this sort of thing. So obviously our framework of justice in society can only be relative, it can only point in the direction, it can’t be total. But yet it can point in the right direction and so under the Mosaic economy a fantastic system of relative righteousness was developed to handle crimes, for example, of theft, to handle crimes of assault. These systems, all you can read for yourself in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Those are the books where you can find it, the latter part of Exodus, Numbers in sections, Leviticus in sections and the latter part of the book of Deuteronomy, from chapter 12 on. So therefore these are sections you’d like to get a grasp of restitutionary justice.

Now you can pray as Christians, and you’ve seen it in our bulletin inserts. In our own city of Lubbock there are some Christians, one or two sprinkled here and there, that are trying at the very hour, very valiantly, true, a small effort, but they are trying to get restitution to become a dominant theme at least at the municipal level here in Lubbock. They are also trying and praying in the future that this can be done on the county level. But Christians are trying; Christians who have studied the Word of God who are in public office in our own city who have been informed of this and are giving it full complete support. You might pray for them because there’s a long road to hoe because of the entrenched position against restitutionary justice.

The point that restitutionary justice gives in any government system is this, there’s certain spin-offs, certain things that God causes to happen in any social order with restitution. One of the things is that it teaches all men the concept of justice. With a restitutionary criminal system functioning then the non-Christian is brought face to face with the concept of real justice. When the kid breaks into your house and walks off with your color TV because he wants some money for pot, he learns that he has got to go back and earn money and pay back you for your color TV and then something, so he learns that it would be a far easier thing to do to earn the money first, before he busted into your home, and took away your color TV set. So therefore we have an educational process and God wants that educational process to occur so then here’s a non-Christian over here, negative volition, and then somebody comes up with the gospel and says “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” and they say why, because Jesus Christ died for your sins, oh, I understand that because if I do something wrong I have to make restitution, and if I do something wrong against God I have to make restitution but I can’t because it’s infinite restitution, therefore an infinite Savior, I see that. In other words, what’s happened is that you have programmed the community in the proper mental attitude of justice by the functioning criminal system.

This is how God views all these systems, as not disjointed from evangelism and the gospel. Christians always say oh, well, that has nothing to do with the gospel. It has everything to do with the gospel because people are being ingrained with one false idea of justice or a true idea of justice. And then when you come along in the name of Christ and you try to preach the gospel they’re going to either get it all twisted up because their idea of justice is wrong or they’re going to receive it and understand. So part of this has to do with evangelism. It teaches justice.

Another thing that it does is that it restrains evil; it restrains evil because it puts the person under the force of having to replace what was taken. In the case of capital punishment it surely restrains evil because the person isn’t going to kill somebody else again. So restraint of evil takes place.

Another empirical result has been found in the city of Columbus, Ohio; found in Pima County, Tucson, Arizona, and has been found in parts of Georgia and Minnesota where these experiments have been done, and that is it also has an increased citizen participation because now at long last the citizen, if he sees somebody suspiciously cruising through the neighborhood, or he picks up a piece of merchandise in the store and it just looks like it’s been fenced and he begins to see that the citizen gets involved because he knows that he’s going to get his lost property back. It’s not just going through the ugly proceedings of the court and so you fine the guy $10,000 or something, so what, that isn’t giving you your property back. But if you create a system of justice that brings a person’s property back, then they say yeah, I’m interested in this, yeah I’ll stand up in the trial and be a witness, I’ll get personally involved. So it restrains evil by bringing in the godly aspects of the community.

Another thing that it does is that it truly rehabilitates. Turn to Ephesians 4; here you see how restitution rehabilitates. Now the liberal and the social gospel have tried again and again to say their programs of rehabilitation work. The tragic fact today is that all the millions of dollars that have been put into prison reformation and rehabilitation schemes simply don’t work. They simply don’t work. I have talked, for example, to some who have been Christian prisoners; I distinctly remember a conversation I had with one, a person that was in there for a particular crime and this particular individual, after spending most of his sentence in jail, was still not programmed to see what was wrong in the beginning. This particular individual was still worried about the fact that they would get involved with their peers in crime when they got out rather than realizing, since this particular person happened to be married that you have a responsibility in divine institution three; ever think of that, never mind what the boys are doing down at the bar on Thursday night, you worry about what your wife and child have to do, and even in his perception of the crime it still, after two or three years of serving time in prison, wasn’t anywhere clear to seeing what was wrong with the action; still in his own mind was he got caught, that was what was wrong, not what he did was wrong but that he got caught and that was wrong. Well, what rehabilitation can you get if you haven’t erased that thought pattern. You’ve got somebody there that’s programmed and he’s going to go right out and repeat, and so here we go, all around it again, send the police car out, spend three weeks of the cop’s time chasing him down, pull him back into court, fine him again if he gets fined and run him through the ringer again—big deal, that really helps!

But under the concept of restitution in Ephesians 4:28, which was, incidentally, the system the early church used, they got effort, they solved the problem, they got positive results with a minimum expenditure of funds. “Let him that stole steal no more but, rather, let him labor,” there’s restitution, let him work, “working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needs.” The principle there is that you not only eliminate a –R behavior pattern, but you actively replace it with a [can’t understand word] of why he got in trouble in the first place; he had a screwed up idea of property and so therefore Paul argues that this man ought to be made to work and to labor, not just to repay the victim but to work until he has a surplus and enough to give because in the original position of theft what’s the problem? I don’t have but I want! Well, then what’s the reverse of that if you look at Scripture? I have and I will give to him who does not have. And so you find verse 28 almost a mirror image, an exact reverse image, of the criminal pattern of theft. So there’s the rehabilitation aspect of restitutionary justice.

Finally, a fourth spin-off from restitutionary justice, which no one ever thinks of is that it restores godly order. You see, we’re so upset about the criminal’s rights and do we respect the First and Second Amendments, and the Fifth Amendment and all the rest, or lately it’s been the victim’s rights, what about the victim’s rights? Wait a minute, what about society’s rights? Just the structure of the system, have we restored the system after this rupture, and the answer is that restitution does do this; it restores godly order.

Observe the results so far. In the city of Columbus, Ohio, where for misdemeanor crimes contracts of restitution are now being carried out. The average processing in just court costs alone dropped from $100 a case to $20 a case. In Pima County Arizona, court costs dropped from $400 a case to $100 a case. Now that’s just processing cost, we’ve cut them 75%, just the processing costs.

Next observe, here’s a person who stole, say $40,000 worth of property, he fenced it and it’s all over the United States and Mexico so he can’t recover it, so the community has lost, we’ll put a minus sign, the community, because of this crime has lost $40,000 worth of goods. And you say oh, it’s covered by insurance. Aha, the insurance companies aren’t going broke, where are they getting it from? You, because you’re paying insurance, so we still defend the fact that $40,000 has gone out of the community and it’s gone out, either through your pocket in paying insurance or when you go into the Sears store and they have to charge 10% higher prices for their goods because they have to pay the security guard, they have to cover all the rip-off, you’re paying it, so it’s going out of the community, don’t think just the crook and the victim have got involved here, everybody’s got involved. So we’ve lost $40,000 out of the community because of this criminal act. Now we go through a court trial, this is a cheap one, $5,000, and then let’s add to the fact that we put this person in jail for 3 years and say it cost a minimum of $5,000 a year, that’s $15,000, and so now adding up what we’ve got here is $60,000 that are permanently destroyed and we still haven’t rehabilitated anybody. Now isn’t this a brilliant system we operate under. Not only that, but for the cost of $15,000 we’ve given this young 17 year old boy an excellent course on how to do it better next time because he’s been with the pros in jail, so we’ve educated him for a $15,000 tuition fee, in how to be a better criminal next time around. A brilliant system! Tremendous, all done in the name of not being cruel.

Now, what does restitution argue? Restitution argues that wait a minute, never mind all this stuff, the guy took $40,000, he’s going to be responsible for paying $40,000 back, if he has to have installments, fine, but he’s going to pay $40,000 back. So you have is a restoration of wealth. Now the economic aspects of restitution, you’d think, would make any non-Christian just leap for joy, on just a sheer pragmatic basis. But it’ll take 50 years before this idea permeates the brains of some people. Unfortunately in the meantime it’s being produced in many parts of the United States and the new idea of social justice. Unfortunately for those people it was as old as Moses.

Now let’s go back to the original question that brought us to this point. I have pointed out the restitutionary nature of capital punishment, I have shown its benefits, I’ve shown the fact that it’s solidly based on Scripture, and now we want to say, since capital punishment is also restitutionary, does capital punishment survive later revelation in the New Testament. So let’s turn to the Sermon on the Mount, the exact passage raised by this person; Matthew 5. They’re arguing, and it’s a classic argument, that this Sermon on the Mount renders null and void all of what I just told you, that the criminal system of justice that I have just outlined has been rendered null and void by the (quote) “higher ethics” of the Sermon on the Mount, and in particular they cite Matthew 5:39-39. Verse 38 is the concept of restitution, “You have heard that it has been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; [39] But I say unto you,” and surely it looks here like Jesus is denying the principle of restitution, “I say unto you that you resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [40] And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. [41] And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him two. [42] Give to him that asks thee, and from that would borrow of thee turn thou not away.”

Surely, they argue, when He starts out this section where He quotes the principle of restitution, doesn’t the Lord deny the whole system? One has to interpret the Sermon on the Mount according to the principles of wisdom literature. Remember, this is wisdom literature and when we say literal interpretation of the Bible we mean you interpret the Bible the way you would any other piece of literature. Do you go in to a poem, for example, and interpret it the same way you interpret a passage of Paul’s? No! You have your own rules for interpreting depending on the kind of literature.

Question: What kind of literature is the Sermon on the Mount? It is a wisdom sermon. And in a wisdom sermon we have what we will call, for the sake of discussion this morning, aspect exaggeration, that is, for the sake of getting a point across aspects will be exaggerated, that is aphorism, that means it’s a wisdom saying, it kills two birds with one stone. If I say that you don’t go out and say he said kill two birds with one stone, let’s see, have we got a stone around here? You know you don’t take wisdom literature that way. But do you get the point? It means efficiency. All right, it’s the same thing with this kind of wisdom literature. You don’t walk in here and take it like it’s worded.

To show you this, look at verse 22; I want you to see some of the aspect exaggerations in the context of this and then I want to show you that Jesus Christ did not live up to them. “I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment; and whosever 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.” Whoever shall say fool shall be in danger of hellfire. Verse 25, “Agree with thine adversary,” this is a lawsuit situation, the adversary is one who has brought you to court, he’s suing you. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, while you are in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.” Verse 30, talking about lusting, “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Verse 40, again, “If any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.”

Now every one of those is an aspect exaggeration; it’s like that saying we use, “kill two birds with one stone.” Nobody in our culture, when we say “kill two birds with one stone” goes out and kills two birds with one stone; that’s a neat trick, incidentally, if you can do it. But nobody does that, that’s not the response you get from listening to that particular phrase.

Let’s look in the New Testament, the same New Testament, the same book, Matthew, and watch how the Lord behaves, and if we find Him behaving contrary to these then we know we misinterpreting them if we’re reading the Sermon on the Mount this way. Look at Matthew 23:17; here Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. Now here we have an application of the Sermon on the Mount because Jesus said if you say “fool” to somebody, then you are in danger of hell fire. But in verse 17 who’s saying “fool” to the Pharisees but Jesus. “Fools and blind; for which is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold?” Verse 19, “Fools and blind; for what is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift?” Well then by the very definition Jesus is in danger of hell fire. Jesus has sinned by His own standard because it was Jesus that originally articulated the standard don’t call anybody a fool and here He is.

All right, in this situation, then, obviously Jesus by His own actions, since He is sinless, is giving us the interpretation, the common sense interpretation of the fact that He’s talking in the Sermon on the Mount, exaggerating the aspect to get the point across. That is, He’s dealing with an extreme hypersensitivity we all have to ourselves because of our sin nature, and when somebody crosses us it’s the natural thing to do to retaliate, and what He’s saying is that that is not righteous in and of itself; He’s not saying don’t always make it a case, He’s not saying don’t go to court in some cases, but don’t get this hypersensitivity, that’s His point.

Now another obvious illustration, we need not even go to a verse on this one; Jesus said if anyone lusts pluck out his eye and cut off his hand. Have you noticed anybody advocating a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount going around with only one hand? Do they have both eyes or have they plucked out one of their eyes? Well obviously they haven’t. Well then obviously in that area they’re not taking the Sermon on the Mount (quote) “to its logical conclusion. Well, why if in the area of lust they don’t do it, why then do they insist in this area of law and jurisprudence do they do it? Isn’t that inconsistent? Of course. In other words, the Sermon on the Mount uses aspect exaggeration to get across points of doctrine.

Let’s look at Matthew 18:15, here we have an interesting case. Matthew 18:15 gives an ecclesiastical trial or a church trial. In Matthew 18:15-17 we have the procedures developed, laid down by Jesus Himself, for cases of serious disagreement within the church. Incidentally, verses 15-17 are not to be done every time some body disagrees with you; they are procedures when there are serious disagreements. “Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee,” agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way, or if he wants your coat give him your coat, don’t fight him, lie down, be a doormat. Is that what you find in verse 15? Not at all! “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, then you have gained a brother. [16] But if he will not hear thee, take with you one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established. [17] And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it to the church,” that’s the church leadership, “but if he neglect to hear the church, then let him become as an unbeliever.”

Now anywhere in verses 15-17 do you find any one of those passages on the Sermon on the Mount naively applied? Not at all; you find an issue here and it is produced and it is pursued all the way through to an ecclesiastical trial if it’s necessary to get this thing straightened out. You don’t let it go, you don’t say well, I’m not going to do anything about it and walk off. Jesus says get the problem straightened out if that’s what it takes. So we have here obviously you’re not agreeing quickly with your adversary.

Let’s turn to Matthew 12:1; Jesus is again talking to the Pharisees. In Matthew 12 Jesus has an argument with the Pharisees and a serious one. “Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the grain fields; and His disciples were hungry and they began to pluck the ears of the grain, and to eat. [2] And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto Him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day.” And Jesus agreed with His adversaries quickly. No, He argued with them for the next four verses. Why is this? Because that was His right to do; in other words, “agree with thy adversary” in the Sermon on the Mount means something else.

Now let’s talk about this other one; the Sermon on the Mount says if somebody sues you let him get away with it, so to speak. Let’s see if that’s what Jesus did. Turn to John 18:19, here is Jesus in the middle of His trial. “The high priest then asked Jesus if His disciples, and of His doctrine.” This is the interrogation. [20] “And Jesus answered him, I spoke openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, where the Jews always resort; and in secret I have never said anything. [21] Why do you ask Me? Ask them who heard Me, what I have said unto them; behold, they know what I said. [22] And when He had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of His hand, saying, Are you going to answer the high priest like that? [23] Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, you bear witness of the evil; but if well, then why are you striking Me?” Is Jesus lying down passively? Or is He aggressively challenging that breached court’s proceeding. He challenges the breached proceeding; He doesn’t let it pass.

Let’s go to the trials of the apostles, Acts 16:37, see how they did, see if they applied (quote) “the Sermon on the Mount.” This is the passage, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” and so on, the Philippian jailor, notice what he says in verse 37. “But Paul said unto them, They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast unto prison; and now they’re going to put us out privately? Nay,” not on your life, you “let them come to themselves and fetch us out.” In other words, something was wrong in the way Paul was treated in prison and the prison officials were going to gloss it over and he says no dice baby, you broke your own rules and if you broke your own rules I am staying in jail. This is a protest; Paul says I refuse to be released from jail until I am refused rightly and I get an apology from the prison officials. Oh, that’s not very Christian to act that way… Paul’s acting that way. Paul must not be a Christian.

Acts 22:25, here Paul is being beaten by the Roman soldiers and in verse 25, after he is bound Paul said to the officer, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?” What is he doing? He’s appealing to his citizenship rights over against a wrong that is being done to him; there’s no hesitation. In Acts 23:3, he even gets a little feisty with the high priest. “Then said Paul to him, God smite you, you white wall; for you sit thou to judge me after the law, and you command me to be smitten contrary to the law?” Violation of the rules of the court and Paul did not let these violations pass unchallenged.

And finally a key, key verse, Acts 25:11, very central to this whole discussion. Paul again involved in a courtroom situation and what does he say? “For if I be an offender, or have committed anything worthy of death,” that is a capital offense, “I do not refuse to die; but if there be none of these things” then let me go. That’s the point. Now in there you don’t find any protest in verse 11 against the rightfulness of capital punishment; he fully accepts that capital punishment is legitimate, he is willing himself to subject himself to capital punishment if in fact he’s guilty of a capital crime.

Therefore, where do these 34 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations get this business that capital punishment is against the spirit of the Christian New Testament? I suspect they get it because they’re not reading the Christian New Testament. Now you can say well, but, you know, that’s just Paul’s practice, what about Paul’s teaching. All right, we go to Romans 12 and here we can tie both the Sermon on the Mount and capital punishment together in a totally unified way. People say oh no you can’t. Stick around!

In this section of the epistle to the Romans Paul is discussing what is righteous, what is the application of Bible doctrine in experience, what does it look like. And so in Romans 12:3-8, if you look at those verses quickly, let your eye scan up and down and you read those quickly you’ll see what they are all talking about. Notice, you can classify them. What part of life do those verses apply to? Church life. So verses 3-8 occur inside the church. Verses 9-13 occur between the church and the world; and verses 14-21 deal with the world system. So as you read down through chapter 12 what’s happening to the horizon? It’s expanding. First he deals with things that ought to be done in the church; then he deals with things that ought to be done in the boundary between the church and the world; now he’s dealing, from verse 14 forward, with how the Christians react to the world system around him. So from verses 14-21 he’s not talking about what goes on inside the church; he’s talking about what goes on outside the church. Now observe what he says.

We’re going to look at this because here is where you’re going to see Jesus’ teaching on the Sermon on the Mount does have a legitimate application but now we’re going to plug that very carefully together with capital punishment and after we get all done you’re going to see that you can’t follow the Sermon on the Mount if the government doesn’t have capital punishment. It’s a very big surprise in the end of this whole thing but let’s follow it verse by verse.

Romans 12:14, “Bless them who persecute you; bless, and curse not.” Now blessing and cursing in the Bible have very particular meaning. “Bless” has to do with God’s plan of grace. And during the period between the flood and the end of history, history is gracious. In other words, here’s somebody that’s giving you a hard time because you’re a Christian. By the way, the context of all of this is Christian persecution; because your halo is there somebody is attacking you, not because you’re an idiot but because somebody’s attacking you for reasonable reasons. So here’s the Christian coming under attack and here’s this clod over here, unregenerate type, and the Christian naturally is going to look over there and say now why does God allow you to exist when you’re gumming up the works all the time? Well, the answer is that God allows this non-Christian to exist because in this time in history what is God’s major point but to save individuals. So He permits history, just like He permits nature, to go on in an orderly way with sin in the system, in order that some men might be saved out of the system. So it’s a gracious period of history, it’s the corollary to grace. If God is going to be a gracious God then we have to buy the cost; grace means postponed judgment; postponed judgment means that people get away with evil. So the corollary of God being gracious is that evil triumphs for a while. Now I don’t see how you can have one without the other. If God is going to be gracious then evil must be allowed to triumph for a while and temporarily. So, “Bless them which persecute you” means to recognize their place in the gracious plan of God, bless them. “Curse” would mean to call down God’s judgment upon them and God isn’t ready to judge yet so you’re just wasting your time.

Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with them that do rejoice; and weep with them that weep.” You are all members of the human race and it doesn’t mean get overly emotionally involved but it does mean you can’t be stoic; stoicism is not Christian ethics. [16] “Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.” In other words, be involved with people who are in the (quote) “low class,” who are in trouble, don’t just cut them off.

And then it comes to verse 17, a very practical verse. “Recompense to no man evil for evil,” now isn’t that exactly what the Sermon on the Mount said. So do you notice now, beginning at verse 17 we’re right smack in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s the same thing that’s being taught here that was taught back there. “Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.” Now I used to read the end of verse 17, “Provide things honest in the sight of all men,” I would think of a financial statement, for example if you’re running a Christian organization you ought to have a financial statement that’s clear. But it means more than that. The word “provide” means root your mind, it’s active, not passive, occupy your mind with good things in front of men. And here’s the picture of what it’s talking about. Here you go cruising into a situation and in this situation you get flack. This is flack directed toward you because you are a Christian, again, not because you’re an idiot, because you’re a Christian. So you pick up heat, and your natural tendency is to spin out and retaliate, that is, if you’re an aggressive type person; if you’re a passive person you kind of go off here in a self-pity spiral. But depending on whether you’re active or passive you have a response that’s preprogrammed into you. You walk into your house and something happens and immediately you respond. Why? You weren’t born that way, you learned that response, with practice, over and over and over and over again. So you can respond without even thinking, you just put it in cruise and go automatic; no problem.

But the thing is that when the Bible says don’t do it, now we’re in trouble because now we have to deprogram our behavior pattern and that is tough. So the only way we can deprogram is to think ahead of time. So here’s a situation coming up, but now we’re over here, this is ahead of the situation, maybe days, maybe weeks. But you think okay, now look, last time here’s what happened. I went into the situation, this is what happened, this is what I did and I screwed up. Now let me run this through at my leisure, outside of the real situation and I can preplan. Now if that thing happens again here’s the godly Scriptural thing to do. And so I begin t think through concretely, even if it involves something in the home or it involves something in your business, actually going into your office sometime when everybody is out of the office and walking through and sitting down in the exact chair where this may happen; standing before the exact desk where this may happen, actually physically act it out, and when you do this you’re setting in +R learned behavior patterns into your nervous system and so now you’re beginning to respond, and sure enough, you get into the situation and because you’ve done it at least once or twice, and in your head you’ve at least anticipated this thing, you’ll find yourself responding differently. Now what’s all wrapped up in that verb, “Provide things” there, it doesn’t mean provide things, it means to set your mind on the things, and it comes in the quote from a Hebrew word to mean skillful, and skill can only come by practice. So again we go back to practice learned behavior patterns.

So much for the practical details, we want to get on to solve this argument. Romans 12:19, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves but, give place unto wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine; and I will repay, saith the Lord.’ [20] Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. [21] Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Now some of that looks right and some of it looks wrong. For example, in verse 19, isn’t that exactly what Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Mount? “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves,” that’s exactly the whole spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, “avenge not yourselves, give place unto wrath,” that is judgment, but now notice a strange thing which maybe you didn’t notice about verse 19-20 before. It is not saying give up the hope of wrath; it is not saying that wrongs will not one day be righted. What it is saying is the method of how the wrong will be righted. The method, in other words, isn’t going to involve you on the scene; the method is going to involve a faith rest right at this point. “Give place unto wrath,” it doesn’t say forget wrath, it doesn’t say that it’s never going to happen, but you give place for it. “Vengeance is Mine,” God says, and “I’m going to repay.”

Now what do we do? Just sit there passively? No, says verse 20. In the case of persecution, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.” This feed and drink are antonyms in Scripture meaning the necessities of life. Just as God during the Noahic Covenant is giving the necessities of life to the just and the unjust, follow Him, “for in so doing,” for in so doing what it says? “For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.” Now isn’t that a curious twist. Up to now you’d say oh, that’s nice, sweet little sentimentalism will never work. But then you see this rather vicious end to verse 20. It says go ahead and do it because you’re damning him while you’re doing it that way. You say how does that work? Well, one of our boys that just graduated from seminary finished his master thesis in dealing with the argument in Isaiah 6 and he found a very interesting thing that that vision, in fact we sang Holy, Holy, Holy, he discovered something interesting. That’s the vision where God says to Isaiah, go and make their eyes so they can’t see any longer; make their ears so they can’t hear any more. Well, has it ever occurred to you, how does Isaiah blind people? Well this man as he worked through the thesis discovered, because in the book of Isaiah it tells us how to blind people, and do you know how Isaiah blinded the people of his day? He taught them the Word of God.

In other words, if you take negative volition that is in rebellion against God’s grace, the worst thing you can do is be gracious to them, because since they were originally on negative volition against grace, what’s going to happen when you pour more grace their way? They’re going to go on deeper negative volition. And so you’re hardening your heart by providing them with more and more opportunity; a strange feature of human psychology but that’s what the Scriptures say. So what’s going to happen eventually is that they are going to just harden and harden and harden and harden until one or both of the following things will happen: the minus volition will break out and receive judgment from two sources; one will be, of course, eternal judgment if they never received Christ, but the other will be a temporal judgment under divine institution four.

Now notice Romans 13:1-4 follows verse 21; you see, our eyes see that and because we see the chapter break we make chapter 13 like it’s something totally different from chapter 12. Not so! Romans 12:14-21 depicts the individual using the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount against the background of capital punishment. In other words, by operating according to these ethics you so harden the heart of a person that they get more and more and more rebellious until finally they do something and they just get cut off. You drive them to commit worse crime; that’s “heaping coals of fire upon their head,” and the point is that it is done through an authorized institution.

Now does it make sense when you read Romans 13:1-4, it says, notice in verse 1, see, in verse 19 previously who does the vengeance thing? God does. All right, now in verse 1 of the next chapter, “there is no authority but of God;” that’s the first time “God” is used; “the powers that be are ordained of God,” the second time “God” is used. [2] “Whosoever, therefore, resists the power, resists the ordinance of God,” the third time it’s used, and “they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” Who are those who are resisting that receive damnation? The ones who are having their heart progressively hardened. [3] For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Will you, not then be afraid of the power? Do that which is good and you will have the praise of the saints.” Verse 4, “For he is a minister of God,” the fourth time that’s repeated, “But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God,” the fifth time it occurs in the context.

Now why do we have this five times repeated in the text? To get the point across. God is in charge of divine institution four and whenever we take a situation like this, in this case persecution, and we relax and rely on divine institution four, divine institution four will operate. Now this doesn’t men don’t initiate court proceedings, you saw Paul in the book of Acts initiating court proceedings. It is simply saying that when judgment occurs don’t you do it as an individual; do it through divine institution four, that’s the point, and that’s how the Sermon on the Mount and capital punishment play together. Those two aren’t different; not different in the least because it follows that if there weren’t a divine institution four that was strong and powerful, how could you ever follow the mandate of Romans 12? Wouldn’t we have anarchy? Wouldn’t we have total social upheaval if the sword wasn’t there to stop and cut out evil? Of course!

So now what is the conclusion of the matter? The conclusion is this: the Sermon on the Mount can only work when there is a government behind it. The ethic of the Sermon on the Mount worked only because government stands behind it to exercise wrath. If the government doesn’t stand behind it the Sermon on the Mount will be all out suicide. So it’s precisely the opposite, whoever asked the question; the Sermon on the Mount is not antagonistic, the Sermon on the Mount depends upon capital punishment and a functioning fourth divine institution.

We’re going to close by singing….