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45 Then he will answer them,[a] ‘I tell you the truth,[b] just as you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.’ 46 And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”[c]

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Footnotes

  1. Matthew 25:45 tn Grk “answer them, saying.” The participle λέγων (legōn) is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.
  2. Matthew 25:45 tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amēn), I say to you.”
  3. Matthew 25:46 sn Here the ultimate destination of the righteous is eternal life. In several places Matthew uses “life” or “eternal life” in proximity with “the kingdom of heaven” or merely “the kingdom,” suggesting a close relationship between the two concepts (compare Matt 25:34 with v. 46; Matt 19:16, 17, 29 with vv. 23, 24). Matthew consistently portrays “eternal life” as something a person enters in the world to come, whereas the Gospel of John sees “eternal life” as beginning in the present and continuing into the future (cf. John 5:24).