Romans 13 and Capital Punishment

I have to share the words of William Newell about Romans Chapter 13 on capital punishment. From the book Romans: Verse-by-Verse (1938):


Concerning Capital Punishment
1. God for His own reasons forbade any human hand to execute Cain, the first murderer. Iniquity increased, and God brought the Deluge.

2. After the Deluge, God announced a complete change of earth’s governmental affairs. In the words of Genesis 9:5 and 6, “Surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it; and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man.” God here puts the sword of the magistrate into man’s hand as not before. Furthermore, the “everlasting covenant” with Noah, of which the above quoted words were a part, God said would last “while the earth remaineth” (Gen 8:20-9:7).

3. Under the Law of Moses, 1000 years later, God reaffirmed the governmental duty of punishing murderers with death: “Ye shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer that is guilty of death. For blood, it polluteth the land, and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it” (Num 35:31, 33).

4. Note that in the above quotation, the crime of murder is said by God so to pollute the land, that there can be “no expiation made for a land” for this crime, save by the execution of the murderer.

5. It is said that upwards of 200,000 known man-killers are alive in America. “To realize,” said Judge Kavanagh of Chicago, “the prevalency of this invisible class (murderers at large in the United States), it is only necessary to consider that they are more than we have of clergymen of all denominations, or male teachers in our schools; or all lawyers, judges, and magistrates, put together; and three times the number of our editors, reporters, and writers; and 52,000 more unconfined killers than we have policemen.” Only by the stern carrying out of the command of God regarding the murderer, can this crime be checked.
(In England, where more than 90% of murderers are executed after a fair but speedy trial, even the police do not carry revolvers except by special license!)

6. To claim that it is “not Christian” to execute murderers, is to deny directly Paul’s plain word here in Romans Thirteen, that the magistrate “beareth not the sword in vain,” being “a minister of wrath to him that doeth evil,” and one of whom evil-doers are commanded to be afraid.

7. It is therefore an appalling disservice to home, state, and nation, to call that murder which God has commanded to be done—the execution of shedders of human blood. It is a libel on Christianity to claim that the current anti-capital-punishment cry is Christian. It is not Christian, but rebellion against God. “We suffer,” said the penitent thief to his impenitent companion on the cross, “the due reward of our deeds!” That penitent thief said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me”; and our Lord’s answer, “Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise,” shows anew the great truth that government in this world, and salvation in the next, are two absolutely distinct things. Only the ignorant confound them.