Matthew 25:46

In the closing paragraph of Matthew 25 the end has come. The Son of Man is King. The disciples who endured to the end are saved. The nations come under judgment. The good and the evil are now fully separated, and the result of the judgment is eternal. Three times the word eternal occurs. The punishment of the wicked and the fire into which they go are eternal; the life into which the righteous pass is eternal. The opposite of life is not the ending of existence, as it would be if life merely meant existence... it is punishment, because eternal life means the whole realm of blessed and eternal realities in which the righteous will move for ever. The point here is not that the life is in them, but that they pass into it.

He separates them one from another. At the great white throne, where the dead stand to be judged, there is no need of separating them there. But here there is a mixed company. Such a mixture is never found in heaven or hell, but only on the earth. So every clause proves that our Lord is speaking of a judgment of the living on the earth... Here the judgment is calm but very solemn. Its results last for ever. It follows the distinction the Lord makes between one person and another.

Who are these brothers of the King? They are the men He will send out before He comes in the glory of the kingdom, sent to announce that He is coming. So the conclusion is obvious. In that day, the ground on which He will deal with the nations will be this — "How did you behave toward My messengers?" Just before He appears in glory, the King's messengers will go out preaching the gospel of the kingdom everywhere. When the King takes His throne, those among the nations who received that message are recognised as "sheep," and those who despised it perish as "goats."... The Lord remembers this, and counts what was done to His messengers as done to Himself.

Notice one thing. In Matthew 25 our Lord uses the same word for "everlasting life" and for "everlasting punishment." It is the word used for the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God (1 Timothy 1:17). Note also that the word translated "punishment" must be translated "torment" in 1 John 4:18: "fear has torment." Happy are those who agree with childlike simplicity to wholesome words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The explanation shows that the thought is not extinction. That idea is only a conclusion drawn from what fire does to weeds. The effect of the fire, like that of the outer darkness, is weeping and gnashing of teeth. So the effect is not a ceasing to exist, as they claim. It is suffering — suffering called everlasting (Matthew 25:46), in contrast with everlasting life.

Both the life and the punishment are eternal. No one seems anxious to prove that eternal life is not eternal. Multitudes labour to explain that eternal punishment is not eternal. Why? It is simply a case of the prisoner in the dock revolting against his sentence!... there is no reason to deny to "eternal" in the first half of the sentence what everyone grants it in the second. Scripturally both parts stand or fall together.

If the destruction in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is not really "everlasting," then the salvation in Hebrews 5:9 is not either. If the fire in Jude 7 is not "eternal," neither is the glory in 2 Timothy 2:10.