I understand you to have said that the personality of the unsaved will disintegrate in eternity, and you equated that with perishing. Please can you explain this more clearly?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Christian Philosophy of Man’ (1994).
To take one verb that is used by our Lord to describe the state of the impenitent and lost, what I meant1 was that they perish. I do not understand that to mean that they cease to exist. Rather that, among other things, if people die unrepentant they not only come under the wrath of God and his displeasure, but they suffer the consequences of their wrong choices in life.
'Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul', says Peter to his fellow believers (1 Peter 2:11).
Paul talks about lusts which drown people in perdition (1 Timothy 6:9 KJV), and about 'your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires' (Ephesians 4:22). He talks of others, 'and their talk will spread like gangrene' (2 Timothy 2:17).
We shall consider then, not simply the eternal penalty of sin, but the eternal consequences of sin. If envy is allowed to go on it will overmaster a person and make him a freak of a human. If lust is unchecked, it will distort a human being's personality for eternity. That's what I mean.
In our life as believers we surely know the importance that confidence in the Lord plays when we are battered by difficult circumstances. When our emotions are harrowed and disturbed and tempestuous, when we meet all kinds of problems and there seems little light upon them, it's our confidence in the Lord that keeps us together. But imagine being in eternity, and having no true confidence in God. That's what I mean by using what is not a biblical term, I admit, 'personality disintegrating'. To still exist, but what a terrible thing it will be.
'Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are . . .'—there are the most horrible perversions that life has ever known (Revelation 22:14–15). There is no magic wand that turns them into sanitized sinners. As far as I can see, what a man has sown by way of character, he shall reap.
1 See ‘The Christian Philosophy of Man’, pp. 16f. ‘1. Man in relation to God (chs. 1–4)’.