Matthew 10:28
Matthew 10:2828Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Jehovah's Witnesses cite to support the doctrine that the soul (Greek psuche) is not an immaterial entity distinct from the body but simply means "life" or "the person." On this reading, Jesus is saying: do not fear those who can take your physical life, because God can do something far worse — destroy you entirely in Gehenna, which the Watchtower equates with permanent annihilation. The verse is paired with ("the soul that sins, it shall die") and ("man became a living soul") to build a cumulative case that the soul is mortal and ceases to exist at death. The Watchtower uses this framework to deny any conscious intermediate state between death and resurrection, reinforcing soul sleep and annihilationism.
Protestants observe that even in the NWT rendering, Jesus draws a clear two-part distinction: (1) humans can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, and (2) only God can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. If the soul were merely the body or "life force," then killing the body would kill the soul — but Jesus explicitly says it does not. The soul is something that survives physical death and over which only God has authority. This is progressive revelation: whatever nephesh meant in , Jesus adds that the soul persists beyond the body's death. The verse also implies an afterlife state — Gehenna as a place where God deals with both soul and body — rather than mere cessation of existence. Reformed apologists note that the NWT's own English preserves this distinction, making it one of the simplest and most powerful arguments for the soul's immaterial persistence directly from Jesus' own lips.