It is true that the law extended the death sentence to many other crimes besides murder. Israel was to implement it for idolatry, adultery, kidnap, violence towards parents, cursing of parents, bestiality, homosexuality, defiling the sabbath, and blaspheming the name of God. All these extensions showed God’s hatred of these sins, and certainly the Day of Judgment will reveal that his hatred towards them has not diminished. But even Israel could not carry out the death sentence for these things without hypocrisy when it repeatedly turned away from God’s law as the standard of life. When the national covenant came to an end in AD 70, and the New Testament was now in force, God did not require that the unbelieving nations and their governments continue to recognise all these extensions of the law. The rule for the government of the nations reverted back to what it had been before the time of Moses: death for murder alone.
The reason given in this passage for carrying out the death sentence is that life is of such great value. But how is it that if we value life, we should be prepared to put anyone to death, even a murderer? Surely if we value life, no one should ever die deliberately. Those who argue against the death sentence, argue that life has such value that it is an act of barbarism ever to take it away. But this view fails to analyse the situation properly. In this case, we measure the value of life not by the life of the perpetrator but by the life of the victim. It is because what has been taken is of such incalculable value that justice demands that something equally great should be taken in exchange. Justice is a fitting exchange – a punishment for a crime. To fail to take something of sufficiently high value in exchange for the life of the victim is to devalue the life that has been taken. Only another life is of sufficiently high value to recognise the immensity of the crime. Certainly only God can give permission for the taking of life, but that is exactly what he does here in his word.