Exodus 20:13

The sixth commandment guards human life, and God is the Source of that life. Man cannot give life, and he has no right to take it away, except when he does so as ordained by God.

The murderer does more than wrong a man and injure him to the last degree. He also defaces God's image by killing a man, and God sentences him to die. Murder is an unwarrantable seizing of what belongs to God.

The sixth commandment, "You shall not murder," must be considered from the viewpoint God intends. Israel had already killed many enemies that God had told them to kill. In the land of Canaan God would require them to kill the inhabitants too. God commanded this because the inhabitants were given up to idol worship. In the same way, when justice demands the death of a criminal, it is not murder for the authorities to put him to death. But no individual is free to kill another as he sees fit. Scripture makes a distinction between murder and manslaughter.

The word of God gives no support to the modern humanitarian movement to abolish the death penalty. It puts human ideas in the place of God's original law. In fact, it lifts man above God.

The sixth law, "You shall not kill," finds an echo in everyone's conscience. A man knows this is wrong without being told. Cain, though he had no law, knew he was doing evil in killing his brother, because he lied about it afterward.

The executive law in Israel could go no further than this. It could not deal with the state of the heart, but only with the outward act. Yet the law as expressed on the tablets of stone applied to more than the outward act.

Murder was the first terrible fruit after the fall, springing as it did from envy in the heart. The penalty of murder is the judgment. This, then, is the letter of the law. It dealt with the outward deed, but it did not touch the heart itself. Now He speaks: "I say to you that everyone who is lightly angry with his brother shall be subject to the judgment." The word "lightly" belongs here: it means not outward anger only, but even the faintest feeling of displeasure. … But the words lay the heart bare and show that man cannot stand before God, who judges the heart, in a righteousness of his own.

It is not merely someone who does not love, but the active work of hating. … He is a murderer in principle. … God deals with the heart, and not only with outward things.

The debt of love is the only debt that is legitimate and honourable, good among men and acceptable to the Lord — the debt we should always be paying and can never pay off. Grace alone gives the power, but by it law is fulfilled, and indeed only so. Law kept claiming love but never found it.