Sunday
Sunday
All Things New
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
Revelation 21:5
The first eight verses of Revelation 21 are variations on the theme of newness. For John saw a new heaven and a new earth, to which the New Jerusalem descended. As a result, “the old order of things had passed away” (v. 4), and God could declare, “I am making everything new!” (v. 5). This promise of a new universe was first made by God to Isaiah (Isa. 65:17; 66:22). Jesus himself spoke of it as “the renewal of all things” (Matt. 19:28, literally, “the new birth”), and Paul wrote of it as the liberation of creation from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:18–25).
It is important, therefore, to affirm that our Christian hope looks forward not to an ethereal heaven but to a renewed universe that will be related to the present world by both continuity and discontinuity. Just as the individual Christian is a new creation in Christ, the same person but transformed, and just as the resurrection body will be the same body with its identity intact (remember the risen Jesus’s scars) yet invested with new powers, so the new heaven and the new earth will be not a replacement universe (as if created de novo) but a regenerated universe, purged of all present imperfection. John adds the detail that “there was no longer any sea” (Rev. 21:1), for the sea symbolizes both restlessness and separation.
Next, John heard God’s voice addressing him and explaining the meaning of the descent of the new Jerusalem: “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (v. 3). This marvelous declaration is all the more impressive because it incorporates the covenant formula that occurs again and again throughout Scripture: “I will be your God, and you shall be my people.”
The result of this living relationship between God and his people is that there will be no more pain, tears, mourning, or death. For these things belong to the old fallen world order that has now passed away. And only God can do this, since he is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End (v. 6).
For further reading: Revelation 21:1–8