When it comes to premeditated murder, compensation is not available. As much of human history attests and as the biblical witness affirms, it is the one crime that carries a mandatory death sentence. To suggest or argue that the ultimate human crime should not be met with the ultimate punishment is a moral travesty because it fails to comprehend the nature and meaning of the imago Dei, and thereby undermines the common good.
However deeply entrenched the natural law’s neglect or opposition is among today’s Protestants, it cannot be attributed to the magisterial Reformers of the sixteenth century. Although it is decidedly true that they championed a particular understanding of grace and faith that took issue with their Roman Catholic counterparts, this was not to the exclusion of other vehicles of divine agency. Rather, they assumed the natural law as a part of the fabric of the created order and therein maintained continuity with those across the Reformation divide.
Abraham Kuyper’s teachings help us to rightly value the created order. They also help us understand the ways in which the “common grace” of God preserves the social order through the state, the family, and the dignity of individual work.