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There is a big difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Many people try to say that God changed, but He did not change. You have to look at the Bible as a whole. In the Old Testament (which was before Christ) God showed humanity how futile our struggle is. He gave laws to be followed and He demanded physical death for violations. It is obvious that we as humans cannot come up to God's standards and that was the whole point. In the New Testament God (having already shown us that we can't do it ourselves) gives us His perfect plan of salvation. Since we can't be holy on our own, and since He demands death for our sins, there was only one way out. That was for God Himself to pay our debt. He did just that through Jesus' death. God no longer demands physical death of those who sin, although sometimes our actions will cause that. He does not even require our spiritual death for our sins if we will only accept His free plan of salvation. So my point is that in the OT God used people as instruments of His judgement but we live under grace now. However, don't think God has changed, He still demands death for our sins, we just have a choice whether it will be our deaths or Christ's death for us. It is up to you
Objection, your honour: even the limits of what amounts to "legal" killing and what doesn't are perfectly subjective. One culture's "murder" is another's honorary killing, vendetta, or heroic deed.
So what? No one is claiming the laws defining murder are universal. If an act is murder in my country but not yours then that's how it has to be regarded. I's all in the context. The context being, whose laws are you talking about. So it's not subjective at all. Merely context dependent.
And the context is based on the subjective norms of a specific society. "Subjective" is hardly the same as "arbitrary" - you'll find that most human beings can roughly agree on what they consider "murder", but it's not an objective assessment. Language is never objective, by virtue of its very nature.
You misunderstand. The context I speak of is not the factors that determine the nature of murder in a particular jurisdiction, but the jurisdiction itself. However, I do understand and appreciate what you're getting at.
