And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Matthew 25:46

Unpacking this text will allow us to see the misinterpretations and faulty assumptions that are behind the assertion that it supports the doctrine of eternal torment. I hope to accomplish this in the discussion of four points:

First, the punishment is not for unbelief, but for a lack of empathy. What people think is going on here doesn’t seem to be.  Christ sees our empathy and help toward those in need as treating Him with those same benefits and our refusal to do as much is seen as denying Him. Our reward for caring about those in need would seem to be unobstructed access to our inheritance. The denying of care for the disadvantaged, it would seem, may earn us fiery torment prepared for the devil and his angels.

So, does an unbeliever earn entrance into the kingdom by virtue of his benevolence or does a believer who has neglected the needy earn everlasting torment? Where is faith and the cross of Christ in all this? We do not gain salvation through works, but through faith. A literal interpretation of this passage leaves us with salvation by works. Something else seems to be going on here?

Next, are we looking at the final judgement of the wicked? Jesus said that all nations will be gathered before Him. That is Hebrew-speak for the Gentiles. Throughout the scriptures, when speaking of the Gentiles, they are referred to as the nations. So, where are the Jews? The resurrection of the dead is not mentioned either. Are the dead still in the grave? If they are, this cannot be the final judgement. Some scholars have seen the judgement of Matthew 25:46 as being the judgement of Gentile nations according to how they have treated the Jews, “the least of these, my brethren”. If that is the case, we’re talking about something else entirely.

My third point, the earliest usage of the word, aion, in classical Greek is of an “age” or “age-lasting”, not of something having an infinite nature as has been rendered here with “everlasting”. See the post Everlasting vs Age-Lasting on this site for a more in depth look at this subject.

Finally, the Greek word kolasis, translated “punishment” is closer to our word, “chastisement”, as reformation is implied in its meaning. It comes from the root kolazo, which means to curtail, prune, dock: then to check, restrain, punish.¹ It is used in Acts 4:21, where the chief priests and Pharisees, “finding nothing how they might punish” the Apostles, had to let them go. The power of any authoritative body to punish is always given with the intent to reform as the objective. It would seem that measures that are corrective in nature are what the writer had in view.

And these shall go away into the correction of the age to come: but the righteous into the life of the age to come. Matthew 25:46 (Paraphrased)

There are well over a hundred New Testament passages in which aion or one of its derivatives has been translated “forever”, “everlasting”, or “eternal”. A very interesting fact is that not one of those passages comes up short in its contextual support of a rendering of the word in question as “age”, “age-lasting”, or “age-during” and Young’s Literal Translation of the Bible does just that. However, adhering to the earliest treatment of the word in classical Greek, a rendering of “age” or one of its derivatives satisfies numerous peculiarities and contradictions caused by the translator’s use of words that carry a sense of eternity.

Such treatment, however, demands a reevaluation of any doctrine that advances the notion of everlasting punishment because the new word rendering turns “everlasting” on its head. It advances a doctrine of God’s corrective punishment rather than punitive torment.

¹Vine, W.E., Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, ©1997, p. 902