ty before God. Men have no authority to slay
except where guilt is apparent and crime is proven. Hence courts have
been established and a definite method of proceeding instituted for
the purpose of investigating and proving the crime before the sentence
of death is passed.

36. Heed, then, this passage. It establishes civil authority as God's
institution, with power, not only of life and death, but jurisdiction
in matters where life is not involved. Magistrates are to punish the
disobedience of children, theft, adultery, perjury--all sins which are
forbidden in the second table. He who grants jurisdiction over the
life of man, at the same time grants judgment over lesser matters.

37. The importance of this text and its claim to attention consists in
the fact that it records the establishment of civil authority by God
with the sword as insignia of power, for the purpose that license may
be curbed and anger and other sins inhibited from growing beyond all
bounds. Had God not granted this power to man, what kind of lives, I
ask you, would we lead? He foresaw that wickedness would ever
flourish, and established this external remedy to prevent the
indefinite spread of license. By this safeguard God protects life and
property as by a fence and a wall.

38. We find here no less a proof of God's great love toward man than
his promise that the flood shall never again rage, and his promise
that flesh may be eaten for the sustenance of human life.

V. 6b. _For in the image of God made he man._

39. This is the powerful reason why God does not wish men to be killed
by private arbitrament. Man is a noble creature, who, unlike other
living beings, has been fashioned according to the image of God. While
it is true that he has lost this image through sin, as we have seen
above, it is capable of being restored through the Word and the Holy
Spirit. This image God desires us to revere in each other; he forbids
us to shed blood by the exercise of sheer force. But he who refuses to
respect the image of God in man, and gives way to anger and
provocation, those worst counselors of all, as some one has called
them, his life is surrendered to civil authority in forfeit, by God,
in that God commands that also his blood shall be shed.

40. Thus the subject under consideration teaches the establishment of
civil authority in the world, which did not exist before the flood.
Cain and Lamech--and this is a case in point--were not slain, though