Thoughts for the Day

[those excluded] will go away to eternal punishment           Matthew 25:46

Speaking to Nicodemus just before the famous John 3:16 passage, Jesus said to him “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”  It tells us we are in tricky territory today, but not unimportant territory.  Whether we want to appreciate what we have been saved from in Jesus or believe Jesus bore our punishment and want to appreciate what that entailed, we must look at the fate of those excluded from eternal life.  And this is what Matthew records Jesus saying as he concludes the ‘Sheep and Goats’ passage we began to consider a few days ago.

For some it is a “Did God really say?” moment they simply cannot accept.  For those prepared to dig deeper, I hope I have been helping to prepare the ground.  We have considered whether God can destroy the soul, whether immortality is a gift of God or part of our nature.  We have considered the wicked rising to be condemned in relation to the demands of God’s justice.  We have touched briefly on the metaphorical versus literal nature of the blazing furnace into which the wicked may be consigned.  We have considered the nuances of the meaning of ‘eternal’.  However briefly, we’ve covered a lot of ground!

So, what should we make of ‘eternal punishment’?  Are we meant to understand it as everlasting punishing in the fire of hell?  Or do both words rather signify permanence, the ultimate, irrevocable and total destruction of the soul?  I suggest two considerations to help us wrestle with this.  First, if our punishment is unending, how do we understand Jesus bearing all of it on the Cross?  Second, and above everything, God is just.  Whatever interpretation I come to must accord with that fundamental requirement of His nature.