Humility is proved by obedience, and obedience depends on subjection to the Word of God. The same act in different circumstances is a duty or a crime; the only unerring test for the believer is God's Word. It was a sin for the Jews not to destroy all the Canaanites; God commanded them to do so—the only One competent to judge and entitled to command of His sovereign will.
For a Christian now to do the same thing would be to mistake His mind. The world is bound to deal with murderers as stringently now as ever; God has not revoked in any wise the word He uttered as to the sanctity of human life. That is what God had set up long before the law of Moses, or any distinction between Jews and Gentiles. It is annulled neither by the law given to Israel nor by the gospel that now flows out in grace to the world.
Government among men stands upon its own foundation and was involved in the commission given to Noah, but the Christian is outside and above it all. He is called unto a new calling, and this we have here: "Now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." Eph. 2:1313But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13). Our task is not the preservation of the world's order or the punishment of its disorder; but a new building grows up on the blessed, holy, divine ground of the blood of Christ by which we are brought nigh to God. Nor is it only what we shall be later, but what we are now. We "are made nigh by the blood of Christ."