The Death Penalty

It was a true crime kind of day. Idaho murderer Bryan Kohberger pled guilty to four counts first-degree murder, receiving four life sentences. A federal court in New York acquitted music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs of trafficking and racketeering but found him guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution. For this he will receive, by most estimates, a few years in jail.

The primary and secondary victims of both these wicked men hoped for more severe sentences. In Diddy’s case, life in prison. In Kohberger’s case, the death penalty.

Kohberger’s primary victims are dead, but the secondary victims—the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends—still ache. Every cell in their bodies cries out for justice. This yearning does not arise out of cruel vindictiveness (although it can become that); it arises out of the need for wrong to be made right. And this is the basic need the biblical teaching on divine punishment addresses.

From what I can see in the Bible, God respects the human heart’s need for this justice. One can’t read it for very long before stumbling upon a passage unashamedly referencing it. For example, God through Isaiah said, “I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity” (13:11). The apostle Paul said God would “render to every man according to his deeds . . tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil (Romans 2:6-9). There are scores more passages where these came from depicting a God who personally, actively applies punishment for sin.

This is why the gospel is such good news. God took that punishment upon Himself on our behalf, offering His clean record to us through repentance and faith.

My husband and I discussed this topic recently with a friend. He acknowledged that some within our circle promoted the idea that God will not punish wickedness but rather step aside, allowing sin and Satan to punish themselves. The friend had spent time as a missionary in war-torn areas of the world. He related how soldiers raped young virgins, who subsequently hung themselves in despair. By the droves. Then this friend spoke of trying to introduce people who’d suffered these unspeakable crimes to an all-powerful, compassionate God. “Where was this God when our daughters were raped?” they’d ask.

The biblical answer to that is that He was seething. Cruelty provokes God’s anger. But He holds the expression of that anger back to give all evildoers a chance to repent. If they resist, they will face that anger in full potency, and it will crush them. My friend said, “Nobody in that part of the world has a problem with God punishing the wicked. That idea only appeals to people in the relatively safe Western world.” We discussed how in particular the idea seems to take hold in the ivory towers of academia where people can afford to philosophize in comfort.

“Try preaching that idea to my friends in the war zone,” he said, “you’ll never win them to the God of the Bible.”

We can debate exactly how divine retribution takes place, but let’s land here: That if God doesn’t personally, actively, right the wrongs in the universe, His claims of love will understandably fall on deaf ears for those who’ve suffered unspeakably at the hands of evil men.

You may be wondering why a therapist and mental health advocate cares about such things. It’s because I care about emotional healing, and I don’t see how emotional healing can take place on a cosmic level without divine justice.

The need for a God of justice can be a legitimate, wholesome need if kept connected to the Cross, where Jesus “chose to bear the wrath of God, which man had incurred through disobedience to the divine law” (COR 38). A God passively detaching Himself from evil may appeal to some, but those staring at the graves of loved ones cry out for a God who can stomach the death penalty if it comes to that.