Jesus said: “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46)
This is the verse most frequently used to support the view of the eternal consciousness of the sinner in the lake of fire. When we approach a passage, we must receive it alongside (not standing against) the whole revelation of God’s Word. Let us consider now the former/surrounding revelation of Scripture, before seeking to understand this passage and its immediate context.
Will the unforgiven sinner live forever?
The first question we would expect to ask when considering the meaning of the ‘eternal punishment’ is; ‘Will the unforgiven sinner live forever?’. In other words, do we have any biblical warrant to think (even for a moment) that Jesus could be teaching that sinners will survive ‘eternal’ torments in the judgment? OF COURSE NOT. Humans are mortal — The Bible never teaches that we are inherently immortal or possess indestructible souls. Biblically, man is ‘dust’ (Genesis 3:19) with ‘the breath of life’ (Genesis 2:7). If God takes the breath of life in us, we ‘return to the dust’ (Job 34:14–15) and the ‘spirit returns to God who gave it’ (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Thus, we are mortal. Only the believer ‘puts on immortality’ (1 Corinthians 15:54) and ‘cannot die’ (Luke 20:36) following the resurrection. The unsaved sinner will not (according to God’s Word) live forever.
Why is the punishment ‘eternal’?
Next, we could ask this; ‘Why is the punishment ‘eternal’?’ This requires an understanding of the punishment for sin presented throughout Scripture. What is that? ‘Death’ (Romans 6:23). From the very first punishment in the garden to the flood to Sodom & Gomorrah, all the way to Jesus who died in our place, the punishment is undoubtedly death. Is death eternal? Yes, we read of the ‘everlasting desolation’ (Jeremiah 25:9) and ‘eternal destruction’ (2 Thessalonians 1:9) of the ungodly. The final ‘desolation’ and ‘destruction’ of sinners will last forever (without resurrection), not the conscious existence of the sinner. For this reason, the biblical destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah is referred to as a ‘punishment of eternal fire’ (in Jude 1:7); that punishment of fire being eternal in its effect.
The 2 main Old Testament verses used to claim that the unbeliever will eternally survive the flames of judgment are Isaiah 66:24 and Daniel 12:2. Interestingly, both use the same Hebrew word to refer to the punishment of the sinner — and even more interestingly, this word is found nowhere else in Scripture! We read in Isaiah that the sinner will be an ‘abhorrence’ to all flesh, and in Daniel that their ultimate and eternal judgment will be everlasting ‘contempt’. The word, whichever way you translate it, refers to their dishonourable reputation to the living. Their own conscious experience is not the eternal punishment, but rather their remembrance to those who remain. This is why the subject of Isaiah’s passage is ‘dead bodies’ or ‘corpses’ at the time of ‘the new heavens and the new earth’. Once again, it becomes clear that the eternality of the punishment (death) does not suggest the eternality of consciousness in the light of the whole revelation of Scripture.
Could the ‘punishment’ be perpetual suffering?:
Taking a final look at the verse before us, we can ask; ‘Could the ‘punishment’ be perpetual suffering?’ If the just and biblical ‘punishment’ for sin were suffering, it would make sense to conclude that Jesus meant ‘eternal suffering’ by these words. However, we only have a biblical warrant to conclude that He here speaks of the eternality of the ‘second death’ (Revelation 20:14) — for that (following a just degree of suffering) is the biblical ‘punishment’.
A major problem with the Church (at large) today is that we interpret words to suit our presuppositions. Belief in the immortal soul has led many to hear ‘life’ as ‘eternal bliss’, and ‘death’ as ‘eternal burning’. We no longer hear God’s Word, but an interpretation based on a doctrine we so strongly believe to be Scriptural (due to the power of tradition). God gave us His Word in our own human languages, and while there are some metaphors (such as Jesus being ‘the Vine’), these are clearly distinguishable from statements of truth. These statements of truth are to be heard and understood (without interpretation) through the learned definitions of each word. For instance, we see that Jesus contrasted this ‘eternal punishment’ with ‘eternal life’. When we read of ‘life’, we understand this refers to the ‘state of being alive’, and to be ‘alive’ simply refers to something that is ‘living, not dead’ (by Oxford Dictionary definition) — I’m sure that took many leading professors to figure out. Well, by contrasting this ‘punishment’ with ‘life’, Jesus made clear that the sinner will ‘not see life’ (John 3:36) and would therefore ‘die’ or ‘perish’ (Luke 13:3, John 3:16).
This conclusion, however, is one that we need not study hard to discover. We would not interpret ‘eternal punishment’ as ‘the sufferings of our immortal souls’ without first believing that humans are or possess immortal souls for such an idea to be possible. It is both Scripturally and historically evident that belief in the ‘immortal soul’ doctrine is not one founded in Genesis, or Exodus or any book of Scripture; but rather one carried by tradition (through Roman Catholicism) from early influences of the Greco-Roman world on the Church. Looking at this passage in light of God’s Word — which presents immortality as a gift for the believer alone (as seen in Romans 2:7 and 2 Timothy 1:10) — this passage needs no struggle to hear and understand.
It is important to note (as a final thought) that Jesus surely would be as explicit as possible in warning sinners of the judgment. If the judgment is, literally, ‘death’ — the expected warning would be the fearsome & inescapable nature of death (fire) and their ultimate end (the finality or eternality of death without resurrection). If, however, the judgment were an eternal conscious experience of the flame, we would expect the warning to make clear the unbeliever’s eternal conscious existence and unending torments. Yet, Jesus did not ever speak of the continual conscious existence or ceaseless experience of the unbeliever in the lake of fire. And just at the final moments of Revelation, having read of the devil being ‘tormented day and night forever and ever’ (Revelation 20:10), we finally approach the “moment of truth” where God can be explicitly clear about the judgment of the being to whom Scripture was given. So, what do we see just 4 verses later? ‘This is the second death, the lake of fire.’ (Revelation 20:14)
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