What Is A Person
By Ian Galloway, January 2004
Introduction - in whose hands is life and death?:
Not to kill is prescriptive in Scripture. Starkly, it is jealousy and murder that rise up between the first children born (Gen 4). Following the flood, it is clearly established that God’s judgement for taking the life of another is death (Gen 9:6). God’s reasoning is very profound. It is the very nature and being of man as made in the image of God that causes the death sentence.
Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man. (Gen 9.6)
Under Moses, further conditions are clarified whereby death is also the penalty, e.g. adultery, slavery, cursing parents (Ex 21:12-17). But this is God’s just decree, not an arbitrary decision to take another’s life. Not to murder is established in the very core of human obligation under the old covenant ?(Ex 20:13). Unintentionality in murder finds a place of refuge (Ex 21:13). But for premeditated scheming there is no mercy. >>
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What Is A Person
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Ian galloway, 19/06/2009 |
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