Theonomy is far from popular even among people who pretend to seek an understanding of Biblical theology devoid of tradition-based assumptions. It is often misrepresented and dismissed due to emotion-based objections and subjective preferences--in fact, there is nothing else for someone to argue for moral ideas from other than a strictly rationalistic, theonomist system of ethics. The small handful of alternative ideas that one can even entertain while claiming that God both exists and has a moral nature constitutes brazen heresy, not that Christians are generally intelligent or informed enough to realize this.
If moral obligations, including obligations regarding criminal punishments, are not mostly the same for modern Christians as they were for ancient Jews, there are only two possibilities within a theistic worldview other than strict theonomy (if God has a moral nature to begin with): either 1) God's nature changed, and morality changed with it, or 2) God gave unjust laws to the Jews. Both of these alternatives possess grave flaws that render them irreconcilable to any aspects of Christianity. It is not difficult to refute both of them entirely, yet almost everyone who identifies as a Christian mistakenly believes that Christian doctrines teach some form of these two positions.
The first option is entirely refuted from a Biblical standpoint, since morality is grounded in the character of God, and, thus, core moral obligations remain permanently fixed for as long as God's nature does--and Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17 plainly say that God's nature cannot change. Though it is logically possible for a deity to change from one thing into anything else that does not involve a contradiction, the Bible clearly teaches that the Christian God never changes. There are minor aspects of morality that the Bible attaches to particular times in history [1], but the justice of Biblical punishments is neither minor nor subject to fluctuation. These punishments are never revoked or challenged by the New Testament.
The second option is, in a sense, even more asinine and heretical than the first, as it charges God with commanding humans to sin and enforcing unjust legislation. Biblically speaking, God cannot sin (James 1:13) because God is the standard of goodness and because he does not change (again, see James 1:17). This alternative, too, is refuted in full by a basic exegetical examination of the Bible. Unless a non-theonomist Christian embraces the first alternative to simple theonomy, he or she must embrace this error, despite both alternative ideas having intrinsic logical inconsistencies and denials of Biblical facts.
If the moral status of murder, slave trading, adultery, and rape did not change with the coming of Jesus, then the obligatory nature of the corresponding Biblical punishments in Mosaic Law did not change either, since a particular sin with the metaphysical status of a crime (non-theonomists can't even argue from rational or Biblical grounds about what governments should and shouldn't treat as crimes!) must always deserve a particular terrestrial penalty, and nothing else. Because justice is a key component of morality, if the core of morality does not change, justice does not change. A person must embrace heresies and fallacies in order to deny the Biblical fact that the punishments of Mosaic Law remain as obligatory as they always were.
Logic, people. It is very fucking helpful.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-old-covenant.html
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