The Logic of Biblical Death Penalties

In the Covenant of Moses, the entire nation is adopted by God into His personal household.

As you might expect, He holds certain minimal expectations for those living in His household. In theory, if He were to pass from the scene, any successor would be fully authorized to change those expectations to suit himself. The whole point is that God is current Master, and He owns the whole thing personally. It’s not just a role, but far more than that. We are accountable to Him, regardless of any imagined alternative authority, since He owns this particular Creation. It is an expression of His Person. Everyone involved is required to honor that personal bond, without which there is no covenant, no blessings and promises, no protections from harm, etc.

He has unrestricted and unconditional claim on us. We have no claim on Him except what He grants conditionally. What He does grant is always consistent with His own holiness, and He never deceives about such things.

So the assumption behind the Covenant of Moses was a very personal commitment of each individual member of the Covenant Nation. While God is certainly able and eager to deal with each individual member of the Covenant on a personal level, He has commissioned human leaders to handle some of the mundane daily details on His behalf in our fallen world. The structure is feudal because that is how He designed us. No other system of organization is permitted, simply because we cannot be faithful to Him any other way. Outside of ANE feudalism, genuine personal faith is hindered. It’s a measure of grace to demand ANE feudalism.

The image of a personal bond is mandatory; you are the vassal of the Creator. How He chooses to run His household is not open to discussion. Having made us, He knows what is in our best interest. Your frustration with the system is your problem; it is still in your best interest to obey. This is why we say that Biblical Law is its own reward. It’s consistent with your very designed nature. Your wild imagination — or reason — will never come up with anything better, because revelation is based on God’s character woven into the fabric of reality.

He decrees that there shall be a feudal community seeking to glorify Him. It will be enriched by His generous blessings and patient guidance. It is a family household life, and the whole point is that He is glorified by how we are moved daily closer to His ideal. The stuff we might think we accomplish is really not that important, but it’s not evil as long as it drives us to serve His glory. It’s when we seek accomplishment for our own names that it becomes a problem. All our glory must be a reflection of His.

Failing that is what got Lucifer in trouble. And it’s now the character of all temptations, in that Lucifer’s punishment is the ugly task of tempting us to make the same mistake. He gains nothing on his own, but only if he defrauds us of our inheritance. If we care enough only to try obeying, we starve the Devil, as he deserves. God counts our desire to please Him as a success in itself, given we are stuck in a mortal fallen condition. Our performance failures can be overlooked, but not a contrary heart. When you seek a “clear conscience,” you are asking for a pure heart, a heart that is singularly devoted to Him.

So in the Covenant of Moses, some sins are bluntly described as being contrary to the heart He gives us, and a real threat to the shalom that God is building into His family. It’s more than a threat to His sovereign authority; it’s a threat to everyone. He takes the trouble to declare such threats quite openly so there’s no confusion. He even makes it a point to warn how this means giving our Enemy all of our blessings. It’s an open betrayal of His ownership and mastery over His own Creation, simply because, though we might hide it from each other, nothing is hidden from His sight.

No one has any excuse for not understanding how these things threaten shalom. He even offers the opportunity to leave the community and go off and practice your sins anywhere you like. But you cannot do those things in His household. You cannot engage certain sins in the Covenant Community and pretend you don’t know how seriously He takes the threat. It’s not that you aren’t free to do as you damned well please, but that you are not free to do it on His personal turf. It constitutes a direct attack on Him; it’s poking Him the eye, after all He’s done for you.

So if He says something is a capital sin, your death sentence is decreed as soon as it is exposed. Further, the whole community must walk through the ritual of being reminded how serious a threat it is, and then they must themselves execute the sentence on sin that so gravely threatens them. They have to own it. (You can always flee, but you can’t come back.)

God isn’t interested in human theorizing about better, more efficient and effective means of government, nor human evaluations of what is a more just law. Without referring back to His revelation, the declaration of His divine moral character, and how it is woven into the very fabric of reality itself, there’s no point in pontificating about “improving” on Covenant Law. The only thing that changes now is that, without that covenant community relationship in our human government, there is now no divine backing for any law, or any system of government. All of it is sin, fully incapable of doing justice, except perhaps by accident. It is not possible to even claim a good intent without referring back to revelation.

But without a valid Law Covenant, there can be no justice among humans. This means that the character of our faith covenant communities today is bereft of any full authority to carry out a capital sentence on the members. All we can do now is cleanse the community by ostracism. We must declare that person “dead” to the community.

People can repent and seek to come back, but they must then strive to demonstrate the full power of faith in coming clean, and walking in faithful obedience. They cannot continue in their ways and claim a restored full acceptance. They have to go out of their way to demonstrate they are no longer a threat. It takes time to restore that trust. There’s no sense in truculence about it on either side. However, the leverage is with the community that has not yet strayed whether they grant full acceptance of the member restored in humble repentance.

Nor is it something like a piece of property they can claim. It’s not as if, once they have it back, it can’t be taken again if they don’t work through the process of proving themselves just like any other neophyte penitent seeking to join the community. They were dead; now they must show themselves fully alive in the power of penitence. Nobody owes them anything at all.