What did Jesus say about the death penalty?

At a Glance

What I said: I never spoke of the death penalty as a law to keep or repeal. But I was executed under one, I forgave the men who carried it out, and one of the last people I spoke to before I died was a condemned criminal (Luke 23:34, 43).

What the rest of the Bible says: The law of Moses named many crimes worthy of death, and required at least two witnesses for any of them (Deuteronomy 17:6). After the first murder, God put a mark on Cain so that anyone finding him would not strike him (Genesis 4:15).

When today’s view appeared: Christians have argued about it from the beginning. Since 2018 the Catholic Church has taught that the death penalty is inadmissible. Most white evangelical Protestants in the United States support it.

The short answer: The state that killed me was sure it was right. That is the oldest argument against the death penalty I know.

I was a condemned man.

I was arrested at night. I was tried before the high priest’s council and then before the Roman governor. False witnesses were brought, and their stories did not agree (Mark 14:56). The governor said he found no crime in me, and sentenced me anyway, because the crowd demanded it and he was afraid of trouble.

Pilate said to me, Don’t you know that I have power to release you and have power to crucify you? I answered, You would have no power at all against me, unless it were given to you from above (John 19:10–11).

Then I was killed by the method Rome used for slaves, rebels and the lowest of criminals, in public, so that others would learn.

Every Christian who has ever argued for the death penalty has done it as the follower of an executed man.

What I did, and what I said

The gospels do not record me teaching about the law of capital punishment. They record what I did when I met it.

Two other men were crucified with me. One mocked me. The other said, we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said, Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom. I said to him, Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:41–43).

He did not deny his crime. He did not say the sentence was unjust. And I did not call it unjust either. I did something else: I treated him as a man who could still be saved, in the last hour of his life.

On the cross I prayed for the men who were killing me: Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).

And I had taught the same thing before. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy (Matthew 5:7). For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged (Matthew 7:2). I told the story of a servant forgiven a huge debt who then had a fellow servant thrown into prison over a small one, and of the master who asked him, Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, even as I had mercy on you? (Matthew 18:33).

The woman they brought to me

There is a story in the Gospel of John about a woman caught in adultery, a crime the law of Moses punished with death. The teachers brought her to me and asked whether she should be stoned. I said, He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her (John 8:7). One by one they left. I said to her, Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more (John 8:11).

You should know that this story is not in the oldest copies of John’s gospel. It was added later, though many scholars think it is an old and true memory of me.¹ I tell you that so you can weigh it yourself.

But notice what it shows, true or not. The men who wanted to stone her were not breaking the law. They were keeping it. And the one who stopped them did not argue with the law. He asked them who among them was fit to carry it out.

What the rest of your Bible says

The law of Moses did put people to death: for murder, and also for many other things, including adultery, idolatry, cursing a parent, and breaking the Sabbath.²

So the commandment was never Thou shalt not kill. It is You shall not murder (Exodus 20:13), and the same law that gave it also ordered executions. The commandment does not settle this question. What I said and did does: I forgave the men killing me, promised paradise to a condemned man, and stopped the stones.

But the same law made it hard. At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death. At the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death (Deuteronomy 17:6). It set apart cities of refuge where a person who had killed by accident could flee from revenge (Numbers 35:11).

After the flood, God said, Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image (Genesis 9:6). That is the verse most often quoted for the death penalty. But notice the reason it gives. A human life is precious because it bears God’s image. The murderer bears it too.

And before that verse, in the first murder story in your Bible, God did not kill Cain. The LORD appointed a sign for Cain, so that anyone finding him would not strike him (Genesis 4:15).

The prophet Ezekiel heard God say: I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live (Ezekiel 33:11).

My own people’s teachers, in the generations after me, kept the law of death on their books but surrounded it with so many protections that it could almost never be carried out. The Mishnah, written down about the year 200, says that a court that put someone to death once in seven years was called destructive. One rabbi said, once in seventy years. Two others, Tarfon and Akiva, said that if they had sat on the court, no one would ever have been executed. Another, Shimon ben Gamliel, answered that they would only multiply murderers.³

What my followers did with it

The early church was uneasy. Lactantius, a teacher of the emperor Constantine’s own son, wrote around 310 that a righteous man may not kill, and that it makes no difference whether he does it with a sword or by bringing a capital charge against someone.⁴

Augustine, a century later, did not deny that the state may execute. But when the officials of North Africa had caught men who had murdered one Catholic priest and maimed another, Augustine wrote to them and begged them not to put the killers to death.⁵

By the Middle Ages, the church had made peace with the gallows. Thomas Aquinas wrote that just as a doctor cuts off a diseased limb to save the body, the ruler may kill a dangerous criminal to protect the common good.⁶ And the church itself handed over heretics to be burned. That is a long way from a prayer of forgiveness on a cross.

Where the churches stand now

In 2018 Pope Francis changed the Catechism of the Catholic Church to say that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, and that the church works for its abolition worldwide.⁷ Many mainline Protestant churches oppose it too.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant body in the United States, passed a resolution in 2000 supporting capital punishment for murder and for treason that results in death, while asking that it be applied fairly and only when there is clear and overwhelming evidence of guilt.⁸ In a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 75 percent of white evangelical Protestants favored the death penalty for murder, compared with 60 percent of all American adults.⁹

In the United States, 47 people were executed in 2025, the most since 2009. Since 1973, at least 203 people sentenced to death have later been exonerated and freed.¹⁰

Two hundred and three times, a court of law was certain, and it was wrong. I know what that is like.

What You’ll Hear Back

“Genesis 9:6 commands it, before the law of Moses, for all people.”

It says whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man. Many readers take that as a command. Others take it as a warning of what violence leads to, the way I said all those who take the sword will die by the sword (Matthew 26:52). Either way, the reason it gives is that every person bears God’s image. A punishment that ends that image in a person, when there is another way to keep everyone safe, has to answer that reason.

“Romans 13 says the government bears the sword.”

It does: the ruler doesn’t bear the sword in vain (Romans 13:4). Paul was writing to Christians living under Nero, telling them not to take revenge themselves: Don’t seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God’s wrath (Romans 12:19). He was not writing a law for courts. And the government he described is the same one that killed me, and, by the oldest tradition, killed him.

“Jesus didn’t tell the thief his sentence was unjust.”

No, I didn’t. I didn’t lecture the man about the law at all. I promised him paradise. If you want to read that scene as a defense of execution, you have to explain why the only thing I did in it was save the condemned man.

“Some crimes are so terrible that nothing less is justice.”

I understand that. I have watched what people do to each other. And I will not tell the mother of a murdered child how to feel.

But you asked me what I said. I said love your enemies. I said forgive. I said the merciful will receive mercy. I did not say that justice is a body for a body. And while I hung on the cross, I asked my Father to forgive the men who were killing me.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Luke 23:32–43.

You will find: three condemned men, and what I said to the one who asked to be remembered.

Then read Genesis 4:8–15 and Ezekiel 33:11, and ask what God did with the first murderer.

The Short Version

• I was tried, sentenced and executed by a lawful government.
• On the cross I forgave my executioners and promised paradise to a condemned man.
• The law of Moses had the death penalty, but required two witnesses, and God put a protecting mark on Cain.
• The rabbis after me made execution almost impossible. The early church was uneasy with it.
• The Catholic Church now calls it inadmissible. Most white evangelicals in America support it.
• Since 1973, at least 203 people sentenced to death in the United States have been exonerated.
• The commandment says You shall not murder, not Thou shalt not kill, and the same law ordered executions. What settles it is what I did: I forgave my executioners and stopped the stones.