The Golden Rule – do unto others what you would have them do to you (Matt 7:12). No one would want to be tortured if captured by the enemy.

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 20, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf. 

The New Testament says that “every transgression and disobedience [in the Old Testament] received a just penalty” (Heb. 2:2). To the degree that we deviate from God’s law, we deviate from justice. Since the Old Testament nowhere shows torture as a just use of civil force, to use it is to deviate from justice and to buy into pragmatism.

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 20, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf. 

Authorizing torture trusts government with far too much power. Since civil government is made up of depraved individuals (Rom. 3:10-18), unrestrained power in the hands of such would be corrupting.
 - Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 19, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

Even after capital punishment was inflicted, the body of a criminal had to be treated respectfully lest the land be defiled (Deut. 21:23). Certain forms of torture have flagrantly disrespected people’s bodies.
 - Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 19, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

All men are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28; 9:6) and torture degrades that image (Deut. 25:3). Even after a trial and conviction, this image of God in man meant that no one could be given more than forty lashes in a beating because that would make him “degraded” (Deut. 25:3 NASB). It didn’t matter that a horrendous criminal might be thought to “deserve” more than that, this was the limit of degradation that was allowed in the Bible as punishment. Nor were there other forms of physical pain beyond beatings and capital punishment that were allowed for any one crime. Torture appeared to be off the radar of Biblical justice.
 - Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 19, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

The torturer himself is dehumanized and the “cruel man does himself harm” (Prov. 11:17 NASB). As Alexander Solzhenitsyn worded it, “Our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: They are turning into swine; they are departing downward from humanity.”
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 19, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

Torture erodes the character and testimony of a nation (Deut. 4:6-8 versus Lam 4:3; Ezek. 34:4). God wanted the Gentiles to be jealous of the liberties that His law brought to Israel (Deut. 4:6-8), and declared his laws to be the “perfect law of liberty” (James 1:25; 2:12). However, through cruelty, Israel’s reputation was destroyed (Lam. 4:3; Ezek. 34:4). In a similar way, torture has ruined America’s grand testimony.
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 18, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.