e decision to take a life? Moreover, the sacrificial aspect of taking a life was fulfilled "once and for all" by the sacrifice of Christ. Christ's death on the cross, itself an application of capital punishment, wiped away the Old Testament ceremonial and moral basis for the death penalty (e.g. Hebrews 10). No more blood needs to be shed to testify to the sacredness of life. Christ died that others may live. By trading places with the guilty and the enemy, by dying in the place of the murderer Barabbas, Christ closed off the Old Testament reason for the death penalty. Christ did not simply eliminate the rationale for the death penalty. He constantly reiterated our responsibility to see Christ in our needy neighbor, even in our enemies. We are told to love and forgive those who harm us, and to do so repeatedly. When Christ himself was executed, he gave a model response to his enemies in his dying words: "Father, forgive them." Jesus teaches that we are to love those who harm us and he sees no way to love a person without caring for their lives. If we love God, Jesus says we are obligated to show that love in our actions toward others. Christ moves us from the Old Testament perspective of limited retaliation to nonretaliation and active love (e.g. Romans 12, I John 4, Luke 6:27-36). In Jesus' teaching, life belongs to God. It is not ours to take. We also have to repudiate capital punishment because it is incompatible with the basic focus of the Gospel -- reconciliation and redemption. The question is clear: Do we believe in the possibility of repentance, conversion and human redemption? Can we ever take away that possibility? And if it has occurred, what a shame to take the life! Christ's concern is redemptive, and he provided us a model by giving himself for his enemies. We must give the opportunity for redemption to every sinner, without exception -- even for a murderer who did not do that for his or her victim. Jesus did not die for so...
