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DID JESUS ABOLISH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT? Anytime a man preaches on the need for more capital punishment, as I did yesterday, he can always count on some bleeding heart Laodicean to weigh in with the whiney responses of "Jesus spoke against stoning the adulterous woman" and "God forgave David for his adultery and murder." It doesn't matter how much scripture and scriptural reasoning one uses in presenting his case for the death penalty, some demented clown always misses the point and then regurgitates these lame, lukewarm, worn-out excuses. Yesterday's message on public stoning explained with scripture why the death penalty IS for today, yet the clown didn't say a word about the scripture given. In typical Laodicean fashion, he ignored the clear word of God given and then applied his own private regurgitations instead, without having a clue about the context or the purpose of either case that he mentioned. It was a classic case of anemic, Laodicean, bumper sticker theology.Jesus did NOT abolish capital punishment, as Acts 25:11 and Romans 13:4 make crystal clear. The reason that Jesus didn't agree with the scribes and Pharisees about stoning the woman in John 8 was their hasty, hypocritical motive for wanting to stone her. Why, the blind fools failed to even bring the adulterous man, which might mean that he was one of them! There was no way that the Lord Jesus was going to agree to such hypocrisy, so he cut to the real issue, as he always did, by saying, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." He didn't say that to any legal, governing body. He said it to religious hypocrites who had no business finding fault with anyone. Yet, even then he didn't condemn capital punishment. He plainly said, ". . . let him first cast a stone at her." That is, capital punishment is in order as long as it's executed by qualified authorities, not by religious hypocrites whose father is the devil (vs. 44). There's a huge difference between executing someone because you HAVE to and executing someone because you WANT to, and Jesus knew this better than anyone. Capital punishment is something that we HAVE to do as a society, but hopefully never something that we WANT to do. As for God not killing David for adultery and murder, this was plainly a rare exception for a very special reason. The Davidic covenant emphasized God’s mercy (Isa. 55:3), and it wouldn’t make much sense to speak of the sure mercies of David and the mercy of God on David’s children (Psa. 89:28-33), if God had not been merciful to David. One day the Jews would kill God’s Son, yet find forgiveness afterwards (Jer. 31:34; Luke 23:34), so there had to be an Old Testament Jewish representative that received a super helping of God’s mercy. David was that man, and the mercy of God bestowed upon him is a type of the mercy later received by Israel, a nation that just happens to be guilty of adultery (Jer. 3:8-9; Ezk. 16:32-33) and murder (Acts 5:30; Rev. 1:7)—just like David. After all, the name "David" means “beloved,” and Paul writes in Romans 9:25, “. . . I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.” This has NOTHING to do with God's policy of capital punishment for society at large, and anyone who can't see that needs to sit down and shut up. As pointed out in yesterday's message, God first instituted capital punishment under the dispensation of human GOVERNMENT. It is the responsibility of governments to keep society safe by executing those worthy of death. If God wants to make an exception on occasion for some special reason, then that's his business, but a few exceptions do not overthrow God's longstanding rule. Decent people know this. Only fools ignore it.