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Mateo 25:41: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
1. The term “eternal fire” is used only two other times in Scripture (Matthew 18:8-9; Jude 7).
- In Matt. 18:8-9, it is used in parallel with “gehenna of fire,” meaning that “eternal fire” and “gehenna of fire” refer to one and the same fate. Gehenna is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew term “gehinnom”—that is, the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. In Jeremiah 7:31-33, we read that this valley was to be renamed the “Valley of Slaughter” because it would be full of dead bodies. By the term “gehenna of fire,” then, Jesus was evoking in the minds of his Jewish listeners a gruesome image of death, not of eternal torment. It follows that the same is true of the term “eternal fire.”
- In Jude 7, the term refers to the fire that rained from the Lord and reduced Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes (See 2 Pedro 2:6, a more explicit parallel passage). Evidently, to speak of Sodom and Gomorrah undergoing eternal fire isn’t to speak of them burning for eternity, but to speak of them being eradicated. Eternal fire is eternal in that its effect (or consequence) is eternal; unlike the righteous who die at the hands of the wicked, the slain inhabitants of these cities are never to expect a reversal of fortune.
2. In Matthew 25:46, just five verses after 25:41, the final fates of the unrighteous and the righteous are contrasted, and it is only the righteous who will enter eternal life. If the eternal punishment does not include eternal life, what must the final fate of the unrighteous be? Death (cf. Rom. 6:23). So, what does eternal fire do? It kills those who are thrown into it.
3. In Isaiah 33:14, a question is placed in the mouths of sinners for rhetorical effect: “Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” The implied answer is “None of us”; they expect to be “burned to lime” (Isaiah 33:12). To threaten sinners with eternal fire, then, is to threaten them with inevitable death, not eternal torment—and that would still follow even if eternal fire referred to fire that burns forever rather than to fire that is eternal in consequence.
In short, since no one can dwell with everlasting burnings, the threat of eternal fire in Matthew 25:41 points to inevitable death, not everlasting pain, in harmony with Matthew 18:8-9 and Jude 7.
