Matthew 25:46
Matthew 25:4646And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Jehovah's Witnesses cite to support their annihilationist view — the NWT renders the Greek kolasin aionion as "everlasting cutting-off" rather than "eternal punishment," reframing the verse to mean permanent destruction rather than conscious, ongoing punishment. The Watchtower teaches that hell is not a place of torment but simply the grave, and that a loving God would never torment people forever. In the judgment-according-to-works framework, JWs also use the sheep- and-goats parable of Matthew 25 to argue that the final verdict depends on works performed — specifically, that the sheep inherit the kingdom because of what they did for "the least of these."
The Protestant reading makes two key moves. First, the same Greek adjective aionios is used for both the punishment and the life in — "eternal punishment" and "eternal life." If the life is genuinely eternal, so is the punishment; you cannot limit one without limiting the other. Jesus himself taught conscious, ongoing punishment, not annihilation. Second, in the parable the sheep are already identified as "blessed by my Father" before any works are mentioned (v. 34), and the kingdom was "prepared from the foundation of the world." The sheep are surprised by their own works ("Lord, when did we see you hungry?"), indicating they were not building a portfolio before God. Their works flowed unconsciously from a transformed nature. The judgment reveals the verdict God has already rendered in Christ, using works as the public evidence — not as the ground of acceptance. The works are the display of a life already made new, not the cause of the verdict.
The NWT renders kolasin aionion as "everlasting cutting-off" rather than "eternal punishment." The Greek kolasis means punishment or chastisement, not annihilation. Every major English translation (ESV, NASB, NIV, KJV) renders this as "eternal punishment." The NWT's "cutting-off" smuggles annihilationist theology into the translation itself. The same adjective aionios modifies both the punishment and the life in the same sentence — if the life is eternal, so is the punishment.