Does God Murder Or Order and Punish by killing?

The answer in the Old Testament is yes, God is the one who kills and makes alive (1Samual 2:6.) He destroyed all creation, humans and animals, with the flood. Also, many Old Testament prophets killed people on the orders of Jehovah. But God, the Heavenly Father, revealed Himself in the New Testament, not through prophecies or inspiration to prophets, but sent His only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to reveal to the whole world who God is. We read in the Gospel of John, chapter three, verse seventeen, that God, out of His love, sent His Son not to perish, punish, and condemn the world but to save it, “ For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:17.) He also told us that the one who kills and destroys from the beginning is the devil, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, (John 8:44.)

The Christian Church accepts the Old Testament only, complemented and read by the eyes of the New Testament, and through the proclamation of Jesus Christ to the world through the Gospel. Whoever wants to subject the Gospel to the Old Testament is an apostate for the Gospel. But whoever is of Christ bases his relationship with God the Father on the revelation of Jesus Christ and reads the Old Testament with the eyes and through the New Testament.

Christ raised many dead people from the dead and did not kill or order to kill a single man. He said, “I am the resurrection and the life” ( John 11:25) and never said He was the killer but attributed this to the devil, not the Heavenly Father.

He saved sinners and freed them from the shackles of their sins. He never ordered the killing of a sinner or the stoning of a single sinful woman. He healed the leper man and opened the eyes of people who were blind. He did not strike anyone with madness, tumors, blindness, and confusion of the heart(Deuteronomy 28.)

Jesus told His disciples that Moses the prophet was the one who legalized divorce and not the Heavenly Father, “ Moses because of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so” (Mathew 19:8). He was offering humanity a new law that was much higher than the law of Moses “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you (Mathew 5:44.) Everything that was said to the ancients by Moses was elevated to the law of freedom and the Spirit of life for those whom Jesus freed,” Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”( John 8:36.)

Christ presented humanity with a different image than Moses and the prophets and the Old Testament about God the Father gave. God is not vengeful, perishing, and killer, but He is Love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him,” God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1John 4:16.) Christ changed the image of God because He is from God and the only one who has seen God and no one else has seen Him, “ For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.“ (John 1:17-18.). So He alone can tell the truth of the Heavenly Father.

The Christian Church did not lose its wisdom and insight when it accepted the Old Testament, which contradicts everything with the New Testament but only accepted its prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, the Savior. Our study of the Old Testament reveals to us the condition of humanity defeated under the provisions of the law compared to the gift of the new life and the triumph over sin and death given to humanity through  Jesus Christ in the New Testament.