"You shall not murder.
Exodus 20:13
The sixth commandment is rendered in the RV 'Thou shalt do no murder'. A useful distinction is thus indicated between killing and murder. The point that is being made is that of the sanctity of human life as belonging to God, given by Him, and to be taken only by Him. It is thought by some that this must necessarily exclude any possibility of capital punishment being in accordance with biblical ethics, but this is not so. It is clear from both OT and NT teaching that judicial powers are vested in magistrates to exact the supreme penalty. Underlying this issue is the question whether punishment is to be thought of as corrective, remedial and reformative only, or whether the idea of retribution has a lawful place in it. If the former, then obviously capital punishment is unthinkable, for the death penalty ipso facto excludes the possibility of future reformation. But is there no such thing as retribution? Of course there is; it is an objective reality, at the heart and foundation of the universe. In a letter to T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis once wrote, 'The modern view (of punishment) by excluding the retributive element and concentrating solely on deterrence and cure, is hideously immoral. It is vile tyranny to submit a man to compulsory "cure" or sacrifice him to the deterrence of others, unless he deserves it.' Put thus, the validity of the idea of retribution becomes obvious and inevitable. It is the measure of the confusion and sentimentality of modern thought that it should regard retributive punishment as barbarous and ethically questionable.