Capital punishment is justified for society's hardest criminals. The way in which this is still argued you would think this was a new idea. Yet there was no challenging capital punishment in the beginning. You can not debate God. .
In the Old Testament, God himself used capital punishment either directly or indirectly. Take the flood of Noah, where God destroyed all life on Earth, except for the survivors of the .
Ark. He destroyed two cities, Soddon and Gornorrah because of the sins of the people residing there. In the time of Moses, he took the lives of Egyptian's firsts born sons and destroyed the Egyptian army in the Red Sea.
Capital punishment even precedes the Old Testament law code. In Genesis, Capital punishment is based on the belief in the sanctity of life. It says, "Whoever sheds man's blood by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God, He made man.
Some Christians say the Sermon on the Mount Jesus was arguing against capital punishment. What he was actually saying was not to replace the power and responsibility of the government in taking vengeance our selves. Jesus does not deny the authority of government when he tells people to love their enemies and turn the other cheek.
It has also been argued that Jesus was against capital punishment in the book of John when he did not call for the stoning of the woman caught in adultery. Yet, by saying " He who is without sin cast the first stone", he adjoined a conflict between the Roman law, and the Mosaic Law. If he had said to stone her he would have broken the Roman law. If he refused to allow them to stone her he would have broken the Mosaic Law. Because he did not teach that stoning was wrong it is not an abolition of the death penalty.
Opponents of the death penalty argue that it is not a deterrent, due to the fact that in some states where capital punishment is the law, crime rates continue to go up. This does not mean that the death penalty is not a threat.