Punishment-Death by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 21, 1884

Punishment—Death.

By Editor

THAT this glorious universe of God will eventually be cleansed, and all that would disturb its harmony and beauty, so far as it cannot be transformed and purified, will be cast out like chaff and destroyed, and all sinful creatures that will not or cannot be brought into sweet and loving conformity to his holy will must pass away and give place to those who are worthy of his eternal love and favor, would seem to be the teaching of providence, as well as of revelation. Whether it be by the operation of the law of the survival of the fittest, which obtains throughout the natural world; or of a higher spiritual law, which has made sin transitory and self-destructive in its very nature, and which gives stability and permanence to that only which is good; or by the direct infliction of divine justice upon those who persist in rebellion, the result is the same.

"It is appointed to men once to die, but after death the judgment," and after judgment the second death—the complete and final extinction of all irreclaimable sinners. "The harvest is the end of the world; the reapers are the angels. As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and cast them into a furnace of fire; and there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." "And they shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe, in that day."

Death, in the sense of extinction of being, and not misery eternally prolonged, we believe to be the final penalty of the divine law, because:—

1. This is the plain, literal teaching of the Scriptures. This is not a question of nice philological criticism. It does not turn upon the subtle shade of meaning that may be given to one or two words in the original Hebrew or Greek Scriptures; but rests upon the uniform teaching of the Bible in all its various forms of speech, of doctrine, of threatening and exhortation, of promise and prophecy, and of illustration from beginning to end.

The word "penalty" is not found in our common version, but the idea is expressed in other words, in connection with the law of God, with great frequency; but with this uniform utterance: "The soul that sinneth it shall die"—not be miserable—misery always follows in the train of sin, as a kind of first-fruit—but the final harvest is death. "Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death."

The words punish and punishment occur many times in the Old and New Testaments, as the rendering of a dozen different Hebrew words, and of some half a dozen different Greek words; but in most cases it is in connection with human affairs, or temporal judgments. There are only two or three passages, in which it occurs, that have any important bearing on the question under discussion. They are these:—

"And these shall go away into [Kolasin aionion, punishment eternal] everlasting punishment; but the righteous into [zoen aionion] life eternal." Matt. 25:46. "Who shall [diken tiseisun, undergo the punishment of] be punished with [olethron aionion, destruction eternal] everlasting destruction;" &c. 2 Thess. 1:9. "He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much [cheironos, severer] sorer [timorias, retribution] punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God," &c. Heb. 10:28, 29. "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." 2 Pet. 2:9.

We have no need whatever of going into any critical examination of these several Greek words, for it cannot be claimed with any show of reason that they give any possible support to the idea that the punishment which God inflicts is that of eternal torture. The idea must be first read into them before they can be made to seem to agree with any such doctrine. As to the words kolasin aionion, translated everlasting punishment, in the passage quoted above from Matt. 25:46, there has been a great deal of learned discussion, which we do not propose now to review. It will be sufficient here only to remark that our translators have given, perhaps, some faint support to this idea in our common version, by rendering the word aionion "everlasting" when predicated of the punishment of the wicked, and "eternal" when predicated of the (zoen) life of the righteous. But it will be noticed that it is the same word in both cases, and should have had the same rendering. Nothing definite as to the nature of the punishment can be drawn from the word kolasin. It will bear the rendering of punishment by excision, deprivation, destruction, as well as by torment, for it includes both ideas; and this is just what we hold to be its double meaning in this case—a miserable, ignominious death, capital punishment, an eternal excision from life and all its joys, actual and final, and remediless destruction, as by fire, as unfit any longer to live. Indeed, this is the rendering in the two most ancient Latin translations, and in not a few of the modern. "These shall go away (ad ignum eternum) into eternal fire." When we find the real nature of the punishment specified, and declared to be "EVERLASTING DESTRUCTION," as we do in 2 Thess. 1:9—"Who shall be punished with [olethron aionion] everlasting destruction," we have no right to put any other construction upon it. There can be no question as to this word olethron. No stronger word could be found to denote absolute, complete, entire destruction, extermination, obliteration, than this—a destruction, not merely of the well-being of the individual, but of all being, of the individual himself. This is what is uniformly taught throughout the Scriptures, and no one would ever have thought of giving to these and the other passages of Scripture foretelling the doom of the wicked any other sense, had not his false philosophy concerning the indestructible nature of the soul taught him how to read it into them.

2. This agrees with the penal economy of the Mosaic law. There was no such punishment as imprisonment for life, much less of imprisonment for life with torture, under this law. The penalty for the highest offenses was always death—an ignominious death without mercy. This law was from God himself. It had two applications, the one physical and the other moral. While the administration of this law in its physical aspects was committed to human hands, God reserved to himself its moral administration. But there ought surely to be an agreement in the sanctions of this law in both of its aspects. If the punishment for the highest offense under its temporal administration had been imprisonment for life, or imprisonment for life with perpetual torture, then it might be claimed with some show of plausibility, that it would be the same under the divine administration, and that by eternal punishment might be meant eternal misery in hell. But now we can draw no other conclusion than that it is capital punishment—punishment by death—under the divine as well as under its human administration.

3. This agrees with the system of sacrifices ordained by God. These sacrificial victims were not tortured, nor imprisoned, but simply put to death. By this the offerer acknowledged that he had forfeited, not his liberty, not his well-being, but his life—his being itself. It was not an offering merely, which God required but the offering of the life of an innocent victim in the place of the offerer. It is just here that we see the difference between the offerings of Cain and Abel, and why the "Lord had respect unto" the one and "had not respect unto" the other. Cain brought an offering—a pure offering, so far as anything to the contrary appears, but he did not offer up the life of any victim. "But Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock." Gen. 4:3, 4. In the death of the victim lies the real significance of the offering. Without this it has no merit nor meaning.

These sacrifices all pointed to Christ, "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." If the punishment due to our sins is not death, actual death, but an existence of sin and misery infinitely prolonged, it is impossible to see how Christ made any atonement for us by his death. That "he laid down his life for us" there can be no question. He died an ignominious and painful death; but the agony on the cross was brief, compared with that which many suffer who are put to death in this way. No sensible man, at this day, will try to show, as theologians have tried to do in past ages, that the agonies which he suffered were equal in amount to those which would have been endured by all the redeemed in the aggregate throughout an eternity of suffering in hell. Even in that case nothing whatever would have been gained on the score of mercy by such a preposterous commercial exchange.

If the death to which we are liable is what is called spiritual death merely, that is, alienation from God and an eternal existence in sin and misery, Christ certainly did not suffer such a death for us, nor make any adequate atonement for us, nor redeem us from death by dying for us. But if one will lay all his speculative philosophy aside, and look at this wonderful transaction simply in the light of revelation, he cannot help seeing how this God-man paid the exact and full penalty of the law that was due to us. He died, actually and truly died, just as any other man dies, and as we all must have died, with no hope of any resurrection; and then by the Almighty power of the divine Spirit within him, which could not die—"being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit"—he rose victorious over the power of the grave, and so became "able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him."

From "Life Everlasting," by Prof. J. H. Pettingell.