WHAT IS “ETERNAL PUNISHMENT”?
It is not a difficult question to answer. Direct reference to the Word will find simple, clear, and direct reply. It is more difficult to get around the Scripture and endeavor to make it mean something it does not. Says a writer in a Pacific Coast Christian paper:— The following is the text (R. V.) of Matt. 25:46: “And these shall go away into eternal punishment; but the righteous into eternal life.” Now if the term “punishment” means “pain, suffering,” as Webster defines it, and the term aionios—eternal—means “unlimited duration,” as Greenfield, et. al., define it, the Master says to us in this passage that the wicked shall endure conscious pain and suffering, time without end! Now all this is true if, if—but what does the Bible say? Let Rom. 6:23 (not Webster) tell us what this punishment is: “For the wages of sin is death [not life in misery], but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Let 2 Thess. 1:9, R. V., speak: “Who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might.” Now what is everlasting punishment?—It is not everlasting punishing; it is death; it is “eternal destruction.” But this is the way the writer above referred to labors to get around the latter text:— 1. Paul has saved us the trouble of going to Webster in this case by telling us that this punishment, whatever it is, is a punishment of suffering. 2. The word here rendered “destruction” is olethros, and means, as before shown, “perdition,” “destruction,” “ruin,” “misery.” 3. The only way to make this passage teach the annihilation of conscious being is to assume such a meaning for the Greek word olethros—a meaning which it does not possess. But may not “destruction,” “perdition,” “ruin,” mean eternal loss of being? “Misery” is a derived meaning. Liddell and Scott define olethros to mean “ruin, destruction, death;” and no other definition contrary to the above is given. The word defined “punishment” in Matt. 25:46 is kolasis from kolazō, meaning “to curtail, dock, prune.” “And these [the wicked] shall go away into everlasting cutting off;” they are the fruitless branches cut off and burned in the fire. See John 15:6. The above is sufficient to show that a just God takes no pleasure in the torment of the incorrigibly impenitent. He sets before them life and death; they choose death, and are given their choice.