Death To Adulterers (September 28, 2003)

Should adulterers be executed?

You may have heard the news story about Amina Lawal, a 31-year-old Nigerian woman who, several months ago, was sentenced to death by a Muslim court that seeks to enforce sharia, or law based on the Koran. Had the sentence been carried out, she would have been pelted with rocks till dead. But last Thursday her conviction was overturned.

News commentators and human rights groups assailed the original decision to execute her, and everyone seems to be breathing a big sigh of relief now that she has been acquitted. I have yet to hear anyone, Christian, Muslim, or other, saying, “Too bad about that reversal. They really should have killed her.” We who are civilized know that stoning adulterers is barbaric and primitive, and we who are Christians know that we are supposed to be merciful and not judge anybody.

But wait a minute - there is a problem. God commanded the Israelites to kill adulterers. It’s as clear as can be: Leviticus 20:10: “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife - with the wife of his neighbor - both the adulterer and adulteress must be put to death.” Deuteronomy 22:22: “If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.”

If it is always evil to execute adulterers, then the Bible is false and we hold our faith in vain.

But didn’t Jesus overturn the death penalty for adulterers in that story about the woman caught in the act (John 7:53-8:11)? I don’t think so. There are several asterisks attached to that story. Look it up in any good study Bible, and you will see it bracketed or italicized because even the most conservative scholars agree that the earliest Greek manuscripts do not include it. (No Greek church father commented on the passage until the 12th century!) That does not mean the incident did not occur - I believe the story is true even though it was not originally part of John’s gospel - but we should be cautious about assuming that it has Scriptural authority.

Even assuming, however, that Jesus really did let an adulteress go free, note that he didn’t say it was because the purpose of the law concerning adulterer-execution had been fulfilled, or that men had misinterpreted it, or that he as Lawgiver was now superseding it. You can make that case (and in fact I do) about the way Jesus dealt with Sabbath law, ceremonial washings and dietary restrictions. But it does not work with adultery. Adultery is condemned in the New Testament as well as the Old.

The reason Jesus let the woman go free (with a warning not to sin again) was because her accusers were just as guilty as she. “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone,” he said. None of the men qualified. The justice system had broken down. When righteous men enforce the law, that is pleasing to God. When adulterers stone adulterers, that is perverted farce.

In a perfect world, no one would commit adultery. In a slightly less perfect world, all adulterers would be executed quickly. I believe that would be a wonderful world to live in. The deterrent force of a death penalty administered with absolute consistency would mean that soon there would be few adulterers to execute. There would be no AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. Few children would be raised in broken homes. No one would have to endure the grief of a partner who cheated and got away with it. Within a few generations the perverse chromosomes of philanderers and rapists would be weeded out of the gene pool, and the human race would become more humane.

But we don’t live in that world. That is why the Nigerian court made the right decision in freeing Ms. Lawal, and why we ought not to seek the revival of Old Testament punishments - even though, strictly speaking, God commanded them. We’re not saying that adulterers don’t deserve to die. They do. There is nothing wrong with the law. But there is something so wrong with us and our culture that we are not good enough to enforce this punishment fairly and consistently. Don’t think for a moment that we have progressed to a point of some great moral enlightenment because we now know that it is wrong to kill adulterers. The truth is the opposite. We have rather descended to such a low moral state that we cannot righteously carry out the just punishments that God ordained.