Then shall he say also to those on the left, Go from me, cursed, into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels
The King's last word to those on His left hand sends them away, into a fire never built with them in mind. Two questions press: who stands there, and why does a place "prepared for the devil and his angels" become the portion of human beings?
Who the King judges
This scene is not the judgment of the raised dead. It is a sifting of people alive on earth when the Son of Man takes His throne. William Kelly points to the mixed crowd itself as the proof:
He separates them one from another. At the great white throne, where the dead stand to be judged, there is no need of separating them there. But here there is a mingled company. Such a mixture is never found in heaven or hell, but only on the earth. So every clause gives proof that our Lord speaks of a judgment of the living on the earth.
What put them on the left hand
Their sentence turns on what they left undone toward the King's messengers.
The remarkable thing about the latter is that their judgment, as here set out, rests only on what they had not done. It looks as if they had tried to take a middle course between being "for" and "against." They had not joined the followers of the beast. Those men rose in open rebellion against the King, and the sword killed them (Rev. 19:21). But neither had they identified themselves with His cause and with His servants. They had seen the servants persecuted and killed. They gave them neither help nor sympathy, and so showed the state of their hearts. Is not the lesson here that in divine things there can be no middle ground?
A word left unsaid
The two sentences in this chapter are not mirror images. To the sheep the King says they are "blessed by my Father." Here He stops short. Kelly makes the omission speak:
Notice, He does not say, Cursed by My Father, matching "Blessed by My Father." God hates putting away. So when the awful moment comes to pronounce the curse on these wicked nations, He says, "Depart from Me, you cursed." I believe this is the deepest sorrow to God. It throws the whole weight of destruction on those whose own sin it was. They rejected His love and holiness and glory when they rejected His Son.
A fire never prepared for man
The kingdom was "prepared for you." The fire was not. That difference shows where the responsibility lies.
In a word, then, it is plain that God has "prepared" a kingdom of glory, and "vessels of mercy" to inherit that kingdom. But He has not prepared "everlasting fire" for men. He prepared it for the "devil and his angels." And He has not fitted the "vessels of wrath" — they have fitted themselves.
Kelly adds a note of pity from the same passage:
Hell was not prepared for poor guilty man. He deserves it, but it was prepared for the devil and his angels. There was no hope of deliverance for these fallen angels — no redemption for them. They left God deliberately, and no one tempted them. Man was tempted by an enemy, and God feels for guilty man, drawn away by a rebel mightier than himself, even if not more guilty.
How long "eternal" lasts
The chapter closes by setting eternal punishment beside eternal life. W. W. Fereday weighs the wording:
The awful future of the ungodly could hardly be stated more clearly than in the Scripture before us: "These will go away into eternal punishment." The same word covers both "punishment" and "life." The length of the one is the length of the other. Yet eternal fire was not prepared for men. It was prepared for the devil and his angels. But those who prefer the voice of the devil to the voice of God while on earth must share his doom for ever.
Where that fire is
Later Scripture gives the fire a name and a place. Fereday describes it:
Somewhere in God's universe there will be a restricted area ("a lake"). God will shut evil up there and punish it for ever. No one there will be able to act in sin, though hatred in the heart towards God and His Son must remain. Neither new birth nor repentance is possible there. God will enforce complete subjection (Phil. 2:10-11). Satan and all those he deceived, whether angelic or human, will be found together.
Summary
- Prepared — God prepared a kingdom for the blessed. He prepared the fire for the devil and his angels, and He fitted no one for it.
- Chosen — those who take no side have still taken a side. Refusing help to His servants showed hearts already turned away.
- Cursed — He says "you cursed," not "cursed of My Father," and so lays the whole weight of ruin on the sinner's own choice.
- Shared — people who preferred the devil's voice on earth end up sharing the devil's portion for ever.
- Eternal — one word covers both the life and the punishment. Its length is the same on both sides of the throne.