HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED why it’s become popular—in a certain subculture of evangelicalism, anyway—for people to sign off their e-mails not with “Love,” or “Sincerely,” or even “Blessings,” but rather with the Hebrew word shalom? It’s not as if the number of Jewish-background Christians in our normal circles has increased. In fact, most of the people wishing us “Shalom” at the end of their e-mails are as American and Gentile as we are.
Shalom is a wonderful word, packed with theological and biblical meaning. Most simply, it means “peace,” and insofar as it turns Christians’ minds both to the peace we now have with God through Jesus Christ and to the peace that awaits us in eternity—in the new heavens and new earth—it’s a wonderful thing to meditate on, whether at the end of an e-mail or as one of the most encouraging themes of the Bible’s story.
There’s an old saying that a Christian can be “so heavenly minded he’s no earthly good,” and that critique can legitimately apply to some folks. But we think it’s more often the case that Christians find themselves in trouble precisely because they don’t think enough about eternity.1 They don’t meditate long and hard enough on what God intends to do for them and with them when this age is over, and their circumstances, priorities, even sufferings are not viewed through an eternal lens. It ought to be that when the world looks at a Christian’s life, much of what they see simply will not make sense, and that’s because the Christian’s eyes are fixed on something out there in the future that the non-Christian cannot even begin to see. Eternity—the end game, the final picture, the new heavens and new earth—ought to set the trajectory of a Christian’s life so profoundly that his life doesn’t quite add up when the world looks at it. That’s why shalom—peace—is such an important concept; it describes in a single word what Christ has wrought, and what he will finally bring about fully and forever when this age ends.
In this chapter we want to spend a bit of time thinking about shalom as it’s talked about in the Bible, and ultimately about the new heavens and new earth as the place where that shalom finally reigns. There are a number of topics we need to address here:
All these issues bear heavily on the question, What is the mission of the church? In fact, a good number of recent books have argued from these issues to the conclusion that it is the mission of the church to provide health care, repair housing slums, plant trees, fund disease research, and clean streets—in short, to work toward the perfect, shalom-filled new heavens and new earth that God intends there to be at the end. Sometimes it’s talked about as “building the kingdom,” other times as “gathering the building materials of the kingdom,” and other times as “bringing heaven to earth.” But the upshot of all those phrases is the belief that the job of building what will be at the end is, at least in part, ours. Understood within a certain way of thinking, that makes perfect sense. But if you understand these issues in a different way—that God and not we will build the new heavens and new earth—well, that changes everything.
As we’ve seen, shalom is a common Hebrew word meaning, essentially, “peace.” But this peace is much more than the mere absence of hostility. Shalom means something more like “wholeness, completeness, soundness, well-being.” At its most robust, the word points to a situation in which God’s authority and rule are absolute, where his creations—including human beings—exist in right relationships with him and with each other, and where there is no separation between God and man because of sin.
Shalom, however, doesn’t always have those eternal overtones. In fact, the word has a fairly broad range of meaning, and we can’t simply read “eternal peace” into every instance of the word we run across in the Bible. So for example, shalom can refer quite simply to material prosperity, as when the psalmist says,
I was envious of the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity [shalom] of the wicked. (Ps. 73:3)
It can also refer to physical safety, as when David reminds himself of God’s goodness to him:
In peace [shalom] I will both lie down and sleep;
for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. (Ps. 4:8)
Sometimes, the word is used similarly to the way we use the word peace today—referring to the absence of fighting, or perhaps even more appropriately to an alliance—as when Scripture tells us that “there was peace [shalom] between Hiram and Solomon, and the two of them made a treaty” (1 Kings 5:12). Sometimes the word is simply used to inquire about the health and well-being of someone, as when Joseph uses it to ask about his old father Jacob when his brothers show up in Egypt: “And he inquired about their welfare [shalom] and said, ‘Is your father well [shalom], the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?’ ” (Gen. 43:27). Sometimes the same sense of “well-being” is applied to an entire city or country (Ps. 122:6–9).
Of course in certain contexts the word takes on a much more spiritual meaning, referring to a peace or well-being between God and men. In the Pentateuch a number of sacrifices are called “shalom offerings,” or “peace offerings.” No particular occasion is specified for these, but the intent is clear. The hostility that exists between God and his people is brought to an end—or at least a temporary “cease-fire,” if you will—through the shed blood of the “shalom offering.” Look, for example, at this description from Leviticus 3:1–2:
If his offering is a sacrifice of peace offering, if he offers an animal from the herd, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before the LORD. And he shall lay his hand on the head of his offering and kill it at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and Aaron’s sons the priests shall throw the blood against the sides of the altar.
We should notice several things here. First of all, even the need for a “peace offering” speaks to the hostility that exists between human beings and God because of sin. The author of Hebrews tells us that the priests would make these peace offerings for the sins of the people (Heb. 5:3). Also, any shalom between God and man is much more than one party or the other “forgiving and forgetting.” A high cost is exacted to win that peace, one of blood and life. As the Lord explains in Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.” In the garden of Eden, the cost of sin had been the death of the sinner—the life and blood of the sinner. Thus it was that life, and life alone, would bring peace between God and man.
For all this, though, the people of Israel never knew true peace. The sacrifices only deferred judgment; they did not put an end to it. They did not bring full and final peace. The sacrifices never fully took away sin; the law was but a shadow of the good things to come (Heb. 10:1–4). Because of this, the Israelites began to look forward to the coming of One who would, in fact, bring full and final shalom to God’s people. That hope was given full expression in the prophets and was realized with the coming of that child—the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ (Isa. 9:6–7; Matt. 1:21–23). Thus Zechariah would say of his unborn son, John the Baptist, that he would “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79), and the angels would declare in joy on the night of Jesus’s birth,
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased! (Luke 2:14)
It’s no wonder, then, that after his resurrection, the risen Lord Jesus’s repeated blessing on his disciples became “Peace be with you!” (John 20:19, 21, 26; Luke 24:36).
The shalom that had been lacking between God and man for so long—the shalom that the sacrifices had simply patched together, the full and final shalom that the prophets had foretold—had finally been won through the death and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus. So Paul says in Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And it’s surely no accident that Paul begins every one of his letters with some form of the blessing, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”2 Through God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ, we now know peace with him.
Let’s pause and see a few things here. First, any shalom between God and man—any lasting wholeness or well-being of man—is won through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The shalom that the Old Testament offers comes only through the sacrificial system—which of course finds its fulfillment in the sacrificial, substitutionary death of Jesus—and the promise of a coming “Prince of Peace,” which is a prophecy of the coming of Jesus, the one who would be not just Messiah, but suffering Messiah (Isaiah 9, 11, 40, 42, 53). Like all other biblical themes, shalom runs straight through the cross on Golgotha. There is no shalom between God and man apart from the cross, and we should take care not to imply otherwise.
Not only so, but it’s worth remembering that shalom does not always have an ultimate, eternal meaning. Sometimes it can refer to something as simple as the health and well-being of another person. When Joseph asks about the “shalom” of his brothers and father, he doesn’t want to know if they are submitted sufficiently to the authority of God and if they are enjoying the eternal blessedness of the new heavens and new earth. He wants to know, “Is he still alive?” (Gen. 43:27). He wants to know if his father is healthy and well. Similarly, the Bible surely does not mean to say that there was eternal blessedness between Hiram and Solomon (1 Kings 5:12); it simply means that there was a peace—at most, an alliance—contracted between them as contemporary powers.
It’s important to keep in mind this less-than-ultimate shalom when we come to passages like Jeremiah 29:7, where the Israelites are told to “seek the welfare [the shalom] of the city.” If we think shalom always refers to ultimate, eternal peace, we’ll misunderstand that passage and think it is telling the Israelites to seek the ultimate, eternal peace of Babylon. And that, in turn, could lead us to think that the Bible gives us, as Christians—the “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16; cf. Rom. 9:6)—the mission of seeking the ultimate, eternal peace of Dallas and Chicago and East Lansing and Louisville and Bucksnort, Tennessee. But that doesn’t seem to be the point of Jeremiah 29:7 at all. Rather, the letter that Jeremiah sent to the exiles seems to be saying something more prosaic:
The Lord is essentially saying to his people through Jeremiah: “You need to seek the well-being of Babylon. You’re going to be here for a few generations, so your fate is tied to its fate. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for you. If it thrives, you’ll thrive. If it gets rich, you’ll get rich. But if it gets invaded, you’ll get invaded. If it suffers famine, you’ll suffer famine. And if it dies, you’ll die. So as hard as it may seem, I don’t want you to work against Babylon. I’ll take care of them in time, but this is the time to work with the city and for the city, not against it.”
That’s why they were to seek Babylon’s shalom—not because they were to be “building for the kingdom” there, but for their own well-being. “In its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer. 29:7). The Israelite exiles were not seeking any long-term shalom of the city, much less the ultimate, eternal kind. In fact, their ultimate hope for Babylon was that it would be not at all peaceful, but completely destroyed (Jer. 50:2, 29). Through chapters 50–51 Jeremiah prophesies the downfall of Babylon, not just as bare fact but as something the Israelite exiles are to look forward to and hope for. The whole thing ends with this:
Jeremiah wrote in a book all the disaster that should come upon Babylon, all these words that are written concerning Babylon. And Jeremiah said to Seraiah: “When you come to Babylon, see that you read all these words, and say, ‘O LORD, you have said concerning this place that you will cut it off, so that nothing shall dwell in it, neither man nor beast, and it shall be desolate forever.’ When you finish reading this book, tie a stone to it and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates, and say, ‘Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the disaster that I am bringing upon her, and they shall become exhausted.’ ” (Jer. 51:60–64)
Given all that, it’s simply impossible to maintain the meaning of Jeremiah 29:7—“Seek the welfare of the city”—that so many modern authors want to give it: that it is an Old Testament statement of the mission of the people of God, namely, that we are to be working toward the eternal blessedness of the cities in which we live by engaging with their social structures. That reading of that particular verse entirely misses the point of what Jeremiah was commanding. The Israelites’ ultimate hope was not in their efforts to “bring peace to the city”; it was rather in God who would, in fact, bring something quite different from peace to that city in due time. And in the meantime, they were to settle in and seek the welfare of their captors—not even primarily for Babylon’s sake, but for their own sakes.
James Davison Hunter sees Jeremiah 29:7 as a good example of God’s people having a “faithful presence within” a fallen culture. It wasn’t that they were to work for Babylon’s eternal blessedness or even temporal ascendancy; nor was it a call for a “radical and prophetic challenge to the powers that be” or a “passive acceptance of the established order.” Rather, “The people of Israel were being called to enter the culture in which they were placed as God’s people—reflecting in their daily practices their distinct identity as those chosen by God.”3 Understanding the passage in this way, we can see its relevance to us as Christians. Like the Israelites in Babylon, we are said to be “exiles in the world” and “strangers” (1 Pet. 1:1, 17; 2:11), and therefore we too should seek the good of our society. That’s why Peter tells us to be “zealous for what is good” (1 Pet. 3:17), and Paul repeatedly tells us to “do good” (Gal. 6:10; 1 Thess. 5:15; 2 Thess. 3:13; 1 Tim. 6:18). Those aren’t calls to seek the eternal blessedness of the city. They are simply calls to the people of God to engage the culture in which we have been placed as God’s people, reflecting in our lives our distinct identity as believers in Christ.
When the Bible does talk about shalom in that eternal sense, it is almost always pointing forward to the day when God will create new heavens and a new earth. It’s true that we enjoy shalom with God now, being justified by faith through Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1), but the full consummation of that peace will take place only on the last day.
There are only four biblical passages that specifically use the phrase “new heavens and new earth,” though there are others that speak of the same reality without the terminology. It would be good to open your Bible and take a moment to read through those four passages—Isaiah 65:17–25; 66:22–23; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1–22:5—so that you’ll be able to follow the observations we make about them.
First, notice how the concept of shalom runs through all four of these passages. Isaiah 65:25 says that no one shall hurt or destroy in God’s holy mountain, a basic invocation of the concept of peace. But even more significant is the fact that all the blessings that come to God’s people in this new paradise flow from the fact that God will now “rejoice in Jerusalem” and “be glad in my people.” The hostility is ended, and what now reigns is a right relationship between God and his people—shalom in the fullest sense of the word. Not only so, but in Isaiah 66:23, the Lord says that “all flesh shall come to worship before me”; in other words, they will rightly submit to him as Lord, and thus shalom will reign. Second Peter 3:13 identifies the new heavens and new earth as the place “in which righteousness dwells,” that is, where all things conform to God and his standards, where everything is finally at shalom. And finally, in Revelation 21–22, God’s dwelling place is again with men, nothing evil will ever enter the city, and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there. In all these instances, then, the new heavens and new earth are tied tightly with the theological concept of shalom.
Second, it’s fascinating and instructive to see how passive the people of God really are in the creation and “building” of the new heavens and new earth. In each of them, it is clear that the work of “bringing heaven to earth,” so to speak, is God’s, not ours. “I create new heavens and a new earth,” he says in Isaiah 65:17. “The new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me,” he says in Isaiah 66:22. In 2 Peter 3:13, we do not build the new heavens and new earth, or even contribute to their building. We, quite simply, Peter says, “are waiting for new heavens and a new earth.” Finally, in Revelation 21:2, the New Jerusalem comes “down out of heaven from God”; it is not built by men. And it is the one seated on the throne who is “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5–6).
Of course no one argues that we Christians are tasked with building the new heavens and the new earth from bottom to top. That would be as impossible as it is ridiculous. But there are a number of people who have argued that we as Christians at least have a hand in the creation of the new heavens and new earth—that we partner with God in his mission to restore the cosmos. As energizing as that may sound, though, it simply doesn’t ring true with the way the Bible talks about the new heavens and new earth. There’s the clear testimony of the passages we’ve just considered, but there’s also the fact that the land in which God’s people dwell—whether the Promised Land or the new earth—is always said to be a gift from God to his people.
When God’s people took possession of the Promised Land, they were not earning it or building it, but receiving it as a gift. That truth is clear throughout the Old Testament narrative: “Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’ ” (Gen. 12:7; see also 13:14–15; 15:7; 15:18; and many others). Yes, they’d have to go in and take the land that God was giving them; it wasn’t going to sprout legs on its own and move to where they were. But the point, made over and over again both in word and in example, was that even the battles they would have to fight would be fought for them and won for them by the Lord himself (Josh. 1:9–13; 6:2, 16). Take a look at this extraordinary passage in Deuteronomy 6:10–12:
And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Cities they did not build, houses they did not fill, cisterns they did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees they did not plant! The whole point is that the people of Israel did not make the land for themselves; they simply received it from the Lord’s hand.
The same thing seems to hold true when we consider the new creation, which is the fulfillment of the Promised Land.4 The new heavens and new earth are not something that we build for ourselves out of the ruins of our fallen world. They are a gift from God to his redeemed people. Christians do not build the holy city, New Jerusalem, from the ground up; it doesn’t rise from the ashes of Babylon (Revelation 18–19). Rather, it comes down from heaven (Rev. 21:2), a gift of God to his people. It is “the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). And thus it is the one seated on the throne who takes the glory for this new creation: “Behold,” he declares, “I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).
Colossians 1:15–20 makes this point, too, saying that God was pleased “through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (v. 20). These are glorious verses, some of the most exalted language in the Bible about the universal and even cosmic reign of the resurrected Jesus Christ. That God intends to “reconcile to himself all things” does not point to a doctrine of universalism, but rather emphasizes the vast scope of his purposes. “Nothing less than a total new creation is envisaged.”5 Often these verses are interpreted to mean that “Christ’s death began a process of cosmic redemption in which we are called to participate,”6 or that “Christ’s shed blood began a restorative work affecting the eternal things of heaven as well as the here and now events on earth” in which “Christians are called to partner” so that we may be “conduits for him to bring healing to earth and its residents.”7
Statements like that are partly right, but they also take some steps that go significantly beyond what the passage actually says. They are right in pointing out God’s purpose to remake the universe and to set everything in this world to rights—either by redemption or judgment. But it’s important to see that it is God who does the reconciling. In Christ the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, Paul says, and through him God is pleased to reconcile all things through his shed blood. There’s simply no call here to “partner” with God in that work, or to “participate” with him or even to become a “conduit” of that reconciling work. When Paul does say in 2 Corinthians 5 that God has given him a “ministry of reconciliation,” that ministry has a specific meaning: to “persuade others” (v. 11) of the good news that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (v. 19). If in Colossians 1 “reconcile” has reference to the entire cosmos, here in 2 Corinthians 5 it refers specifically to lost sinners, for it has to do with people being forgiven of their sins. That is the ministry of reconciliation Paul understands God to have given him—to “appeal” to lost sinners and “implore” them to “be reconciled to God” (v. 20). It is not a ministry of partnering with God in his work of renewing the cosmos by confronting social problems. The whole point of Colossians 1:19–20, in fact, is to praise God because he alone has done and is doing that work.
It would seem, therefore, to be far beyond the biblical witness to talk as if we as Christians are somehow contributing to the building of the new heavens and the new earth. It’s the same idea we considered earlier, in fact, with reference to the kingdom. Just as it is God and not we who will establish his kingship over the world, so it is God and not we who will create the new earth in which that kingship is exercised. In fact, that’s really the glorious thing about the gospel of Jesus. Everything we have—and everything we will ever have—is given to us. We will not have earned it; we will not have built it. We will simply have received it all. When eternity finally comes, we will live in a land that was made and created for us, under a kingdom that was won and established for us by a Savior who died and was resurrected for us. Put simply, the gospel is the good news of a salvation, in all its parts, that is for us, and not in the least by us.
But doesn’t the cultural mandate, well, mandate that we be about the work of creating a new world? The commands that God gives to Adam in Genesis 1 and 2—namely, that he should “be fruitful and multiply,” that he should “rule,” and that he should “work” the garden and “keep” it—are often used to argue that since Adam was given the task of building God’s world, we Christians, a new and redeemed humanity, now hold that task as our own. We, like Adam, are to be about the “working” of the world around us, the bettering and perfecting of it. Some go further and even argue that this is the very mission of the church, to be about the work of “culture making” or at least “culture renewing.”
Again, that’s an exciting thought. But we’re not sure it stands up very well when you look carefully at the biblical story line to see how Adam’s cultural mandate originally functioned, what happened to it after Adam sinned, and how it relates to us now.
Let’s take a closer look at the mandate God gave to Adam in the first chapters of Genesis. That mandate really consists of two roles that Adam was to play in God’s world.
The first role is given in Genesis 1:28, immediately after God creates Adam and Eve: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ ” The first role God intends Adam and Eve to fulfill is that of being his vice-regents on earth, “having dominion” or “ruling” over all the other living things on earth. Adam’s dominion, though, is not complete the moment he is created. He will have to work at it. He and Eve will have to “multiply” and “fill the earth,” and their goal, significantly, is to “subdue” the earth and bring it into submission to their God-given rule.
Later, in the garden of Eden, God gives Adam another role to play. In Genesis 2:15, he puts Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it.” At first glance, those look like pretty straightforward commands, but there is actually something more going on. The word translated “work,” abad, means that Adam is to be the caretaker of the garden, to cultivate it and encourage its growth in maturity and beauty. The word rendered “keep,” shamar, means much more than just keeping the garden presentable. It means that Adam is to “guard” it and “protect” it, making sure that nothing evil or unclean ever enters it, and if anything does, to make sure that evil is judged and cast out. The most important thing to notice, however, is that these two words—abad (“work”) and shamar (“keep”)—are the precise job description not only of Adam, but also of the priests in Israel’s temple/tabernacle. When God first tells Moses to bring near the tribe of Levi in order to give them their instructions, he says of them, “They shall guard [shamar] all the furnishings of the tent of meeting, and keep guard [shamar] over the people of Israel as they minister [abad] at the tabernacle” (Num. 3:8). Then, when the Lord describes to Aaron the duties of the Levites (Num. 18:1–7), the two words show up over and over as they are told to do the ministry (abad) of the tabernacle and keep guard (shamar) over it. This connection with the priesthood is not coincidental. The garden of Eden is, in its very essence, a perfect temple.8 It is the dwelling place of God with man, the place where man and God meet. Like the priests who will abad and shamar the tabernacle and the temple, so Adam is to abad and shamar the temple of the garden of Eden. He is to be not only king but also priest in God’s world.
Adam utterly fails at that task. He defaults in both the roles God gave him. Instead of fulfilling his duty as priestly “keeper” of God’s temple—judging the Serpent and casting it out of the garden—Adam surrenders to it and allows sin to enter. Further, instead of carrying out his kingly mandate to rule the world under God, he joins the Serpent in rebellion against God and attempts to take the crown for himself.
With that tragic story in mind, how should we think about Adam’s original mandate with relation to us as Christians? For one thing, it seems clear from Scripture that Adam’s original mandate does not remain unaffected by the fall. Every command included in it is subjected to severe frustration by the curse God pronounces in Genesis 3. Yes, Adam and Eve will continue to be fruitful and multiply, but that reproduction will now be massively frustrated and attended by hardship (Gen. 3:16). Adam will continue to work the ground, but it will be “in pain” and “by the sweat of [his] face” (Gen. 3:17–19). As for Adam’s “dominion,” yes he continues to be God’s image (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9), but his rule is now cruelly ironic. The earth will no longer submit to his hand; now it will only reluctantly bring forth its fruits. And instead of the earth being subdued before him, now Adam will be subdued before it:
For you are dust,
and to dust you shall return. (Gen. 3:19)
Finally, God casts Adam out of the garden he was to “keep,” and God places an angel at the entrance whose flaming sword will “guard [shamar] the way to the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24). If the priestly vice-regent will not shamar the garden, then the High King will do the job himself. The upshot of all this, of course, is that the ultimate goal of Adam’s mandate—the subduing of the world to man and ultimately to God—is no longer attainable by him. Yes, mankind will continue to carry out some of that original mandate’s provisions, but now only with great frustration and without any hope of actually fulfilling Adam’s charge to subdue the earth.
This point is only magnified when we consider God’s restatement of the cultural mandate to Noah after the flood. That mandate, recorded in Genesis 9:1–7, clearly reflects the original mandate given in Genesis 1 and 2, but it’s also obvious that something has gone terribly wrong, for it differs from Adam’s mandate in some important respects. The mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” is still there, but we know already that reproduction is now to be marked by “multiplied” pain (Gen. 3:16). Moreover, Adam’s “dominion” of the animals is reasserted, but this time they won’t come meekly to him to receive their names. Instead, the animals will be filled with “fear” and “dread” of him. His “rule” is no longer godly “dominion,” but rather a fearful domination. There is also the new and necessary institution of a sword-wielding government, one that will have the power to take human life when human blood is shed (9:6). We can see the vestiges of the original mandate here—multiplication, domination, work—but things are clearly not the same. Perhaps most significantly, the words “and subdue it” are conspicuously absent from the whole thing: the goal of the original mandate is no longer attainable. Unlike the Adamic mandate, this Noahic version is not a matter of progression to paradise, but rather of preservation in a fallen world.
It’s also important to see that as the biblical story unfolds, the role of picking up Adam’s failed mandate and completing it is not ours. That role is assumed by the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ (see Romans 5); in every particular, he completes what Adam failed to complete; as both King and Priest, he succeeds where Adam failed. Look at Hebrews 2:6–8, for instance. There the author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 8, which praises God for his care of mankind and speaks of his exaltation of mankind above all creation—that is, his rule. The psalm is a commentary, really, on the first two chapters of Genesis. But it’s interesting to see to whom the dominion of Adam is said ultimately to fall. It’s Jesus whom we see “crowned with glory and honor” (Heb. 2:9). Interpreted by the author of Hebrews, the mandate given to Adam to rule the earth is fulfilled not ultimately by us, but by the last Adam, Jesus. Where Adam failed as king, Jesus succeeds. The same is true of Adam’s priestly role. Where Adam failed to protect the garden and condemn the Serpent, Jesus does so. That was the promise of Genesis 3:15, and it is fulfilled by him who “binds the strong man” (Matt. 12:29; Mark 3:27), who defeats the beast (Rev. 19:20) and commands that “the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan” be locked into the bottomless pit (Rev. 20:1–3), and who ultimately crushes his head by throwing him in the lake of fire, where he “will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:7–10).
Thus Jesus, the last Adam, does what the first Adam failed so miserably to do: he reigns as King, bringing all things into submission to himself (Eph. 1:22; Heb. 2:8) and ultimately to God (1 Cor. 15:24), and he completes his work as Priest by destroying the Serpent once and for all.
All this means, to put it simply, that we are not little Adams striving to accomplish Adam’s original work. No, that work has been picked up and completed by our Lord Jesus. We simply share in the fruits of his victory and even in his reign (Eph. 2:6). But it’s also crucial to recognize that our reign with Christ hasn’t been consummated yet. Yes, we reign with him now, but we will reign with him in fullness only then. The throne is ours in Christ now, but we will not fully exercise its authority until the last day (Matt. 19:28; 2 Tim. 2:11–12). Until then, we continue to live in a world where the curse yet remains; we still live in the age of the Noahic version of the cultural mandate. Childbirth still involves pain, work still involves sweat, the animals still run from us in fear, and the creation is still subjected to frustration.
Another question influencing one’s response to these issues has to do with how we should understand the relationship of this world to the new one that God will create. Are they completely distinct, meaning that this present world will be destroyed and replaced? Or are they more continuous, meaning that we can be relatively sure that our cultural works in the present will be “carried over” into the age to come?
We’ve heard those questions answered with great confidence by people on both sides of the issue. The fact is, both sides are making legitimate points, since the Bible contains passages that teach both substantial continuity and radical discontinuity. There’s simply no way to read the entire Bible and come away thinking that there is no continuity between this world and the next, and there’s no way to read it and think that it will be seamlessly continuous, either.
Let’s consider some of the passages that are important in this discussion.
Radical Discontinuity
First, there is in Scripture a strong note sounded of a radical discontinuity between this world and the next. Isaiah says the heavens will vanish like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment (Isa. 51:6). Psalm 102 says the foundations of the earth will perish, and the created order will be changed like a robe (vv. 25–26; see also Heb. 1:10–12). And Jesus himself tells us that “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matt. 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33).
There is also the famous passage in 2 Peter 3:10, where the apostle Peter writes, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” There is some debate over the meaning of the word “exposed” (Gk., heurethēsetai) at the end. Some translations use the words “will be burned up” (KJV, NASB) because some Greek manuscripts have the word katakaēsetai. But “will be exposed” (ESV), “will be laid bare” (NIV), or “will be disclosed” (HCSB) is probably the better rendering. Thus instead of teaching that the earth and the works that are done on it “will be burned up” into nothing, the passage probably teaches that when the last day dawns, nothing will remain hidden. All will be uncovered before him who judges.
Nevertheless, the passage still contains a strong note of radical discontinuity. Even if Peter says “exposed” and not “burned up,” he still says that the heavens will “be burned up and dissolved” and that “the stoicheia [the stuff, or elements, of which the universe is made9] will melt as they burn” (2 Pet. 3:12). Perhaps most significantly, he also joins Jesus, the Psalms, and other apostles (Matt. 24:35; Mark 13:31; 1 Cor. 7:31; 1 John 2:17) in saying that the world will “pass away,” a phrase that must mean something like disappear (Job 6:15–17), cease (1 Cor. 13:8), go away (Amos 6:7), die (Job 34:20), perish (Ps. 102:26).
Whatever else we understand about the new heavens and the new earth, therefore, we must not think that there is a full, one-to-one continuity between this world and the new one that God will create. This world will pass away, and there will be a radical discontinuity between this world and the next.
Genuine Continuity
For all that, though, there are other passages of Scripture that teach that there will indeed be some kind of continuity between this world and the next. Romans 8:18–25 is probably the most important passage to consider here. Paul says without ambiguity that during this age, the creation is “subjected to futility,” but in the certain hope that on the last day, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” To say that the creation will be “set free from its bondage to decay” and that it will “obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” is a glorious image, one that speaks of God’s refusal to let man’s default on his obligations be the last word.
In thinking about this very idea, Charles Spurgeon envisions the creation as a vast orchestra, poised with their bows drawn, their mallets raised, their fingers on the cello and violin strings, their mouths open as if ready to sing—and yet totally still, covered with cobwebs, and unable to accomplish the task for which they were gathered. The problem? The conductor has defaulted; he, like mankind, has failed to step to the dais to direct the symphony of creation, and so now creation waits, both in frustration and in eager expectation, for the conductor to arrive and begin the music. That’s an arresting and even beautiful image for exactly what Paul is talking about in Romans 8. On the last day, when the sons of God are revealed and receive “the freedom of their glory,” they will finally follow their Lord to the dais. The bows will move, the mallets will fall, the voices will rise, and the music will begin. The creation will be released from its bondage and restored to its original purpose—the unfettered and unfrustrated praise of God.
Of course, the image of creation restored, freed, and released from bondage is quite a different image from that of it “passing away.” And yet they are both taught in the Bible, and therefore they are both true. But how? How can the world both “pass away” and at the same time be “set free from its bondage to decay”? It’s important that we don’t lean so far in one direction that we undercut the other. We should not so emphasize continuity that we wind up denying that there will be a cataclysmic end to this age and even to the present heavens and earth. The transition to eternity will not be a smooth one. On the other hand, we also should not so emphasize discontinuity that we wind up saying that this world does not matter. Scripture tells us that there is in fact continuity of some kind between this world and the next; the cataclysm is not absolute.
But how do we draw these two ideas together? Perhaps the best way to think about it is that creation will experience a kind of death and resurrection that is more or less analogous to the death and resurrection that we ourselves will experience. There is most certainly a continuity between my body now and the resurrection body I will one day have. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul compares that relationship to the continuity between a seed and the full-grown wheat (v. 37). But there also will be a radical discontinuity between my body now and the resurrection body I will have. It will be something crucially different. As Paul says, “So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (vv. 42–44). Perhaps then we should understand that the creation itself will experience something similar. Perhaps it will “pass away” in a kind of death but then be “released from its bondage to decay” in a kind of resurrection. Death and resurrection. Discontinuity and continuity.10
Implications of Continuity and Discontinuity in the World to Come
All this should lead to a great deal of humility in our claims about what we are really accomplishing with our cultural achievements. Of course we can point to some kinds of continuity with a great deal of confidence. For example, even though Jesus rose from the dead in a glorified body, he was still Jesus. So, too, we will be the same people in eternity that we are now. Greg will be Greg, Kevin will be Kevin, and you will be you. Also, we’ve already seen that there will be some continuity between our present body and our resurrection body, and it also seems that the world itself will be continuous in its physical substance. The world isn’t destined to be annihilated and remade from scratch; rather, as we’ve seen, it is destined to be “released from its bondage to decay.”11 The comparison to the flood in 2 Peter 3:5–7 is a helpful analogy here. The earth is said to have “perished” in the flood (v. 6). But we know the earth was not obliterated. In the same way, perhaps, everything will be burned up at the end of history. The earth will be destroyed, but the planet will still be here, still the same earth ready like a phoenix to rise from the ashes. The present form of the world will pass away (1 Cor. 7:31), but that doesn’t mean the whole universe will be annihilated. We will spend eternity here, on the earth. It won’t be this same world, but it won’t be a completely different world either. It will be a new world, a cleansed world, a reborn world. Not only so, but Revelation 7 seems to indicate that there will be some continuation of our ethnolinguistic identity. When John turns to see the great multitude standing before the throne, he realizes immediately that they are “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9).
But what about our cultural achievements and artifacts? Is it possible that cultural works will “make it” into eternity? Well, maybe. But we have nothing in Scripture that promises that to us, and so we should not talk as if we do. To be sure, there are some images in Scripture that seem to indicate that certain aspects of human culture will “make it” into eternity. Isaiah 60, for example, says that at the last day, “the wealth of the nations” will be brought to Jerusalem, and even that “ships” will make their way into the ports. But then again, we’re dealing there with poetic imagery—and besides, doesn’t Revelation say there will be no more sea (or is that just apocalyptic imagery, too)?
You can see the point. If we want to use such language, we should frame it in terms of a possible implication, not as a definitive certainty, being careful not to go beyond what is written. Can we really say, “We already have biblical assurance that the ships of Tarshish will be there; perhaps they will share a harbor with an America’s Cup yacht and a lovingly carved birch bark canoe”?12 At the end of the day, we simply can’t know with any certainty, and therefore we should not be so bold as to insist that our efforts at cultural renewal will have an impact on the renewed earth. That would be like insisting that when I lift weights with this present body I am somehow guaranteeing bigger biceps on my resurrection body! We wouldn’t say such a thing about the resurrection; why would we think we can so confidently say it about the renewal of the earth?
No, our task, as it has always been for the people of God, is to live in this passing age with simple faithfulness. We are to strive for a “faithful presence” in a fallen world. That is a more chastened posture toward the world—and far more biblical, we think—than a claim that we are somehow building culture for eternity, that we somehow expect our cultural and social works to “make it” through the judgment. The fact is, the Bible simply doesn’t give us enough information to know. What we know is that there will be cataclysmic judgment (Rev. 11:19; 16:17–21)—this world and its desires will “pass away”—and we also know that on the other side of that judgment the creation will be released from its bondage to decay. But we fool ourselves if we think we can figure out the details of what happens in between.
This is an area of biblical theology that could use some scholarly attention. Too often the discussion just bounces back and forth between strong assertions of extremes—Continuity! Discontinuity!—without a sober acknowledgment that the Bible in fact teaches both. This chapter has offered an initial, cautious proposal for how we might draw those two emphases together, but there are many other questions that could be asked, answered, and applied to important issues in our life and doctrine as Christians.
Of course, we should also note again that, once we step back from the technical aspects of this discussion, we find ourselves right back at the main point we have been laboring to make in this book all along. The most important thing we can say about shalom and about the new heavens and new earth is that they are only to be obtained by those who have been redeemed through the blood of the resurrected Lord Jesus. Therefore, even if we could wrap an entire city in shalom and push it over the threshold of eternity, the citizens of that city would not go with it unless they had heard from our lips and believed the gospel of the Lord Jesus.
1Note C. S. Lewis's perspective: "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." Mere Christianity, 3rd ed. (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 134.
2See Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:3; Eph. 1:2; Phil. 1:2; Col. 1:2; 1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:2; Philem. 3; Titus 1:4. The word "mercy" is added in 1 Tim. 1:2 and 2 Tim. 1:2.
3James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 278.
4All the blessings promised to Abraham—land, seed, and universal blessings—are said to be fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth. See Isa. 66:22–23: land—"For as the new heavens and the new earth ["land"] that I make shall remain . . ."; seed—"so shall your offspring . . ."; blessing—"All flesh shall come to worship before me." It seems plain, then, that the "new land," with its security, peace, harmony, and wholeness of relationship between God and man, is the ultimate fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham to give him "the land of [his] sojournings," which itself was a picture of the land of the garden of Eden, where that wholeness had existed in the very beginning.
5N. T. Wright, Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 81.
6Jonathan Merritt, "Creation Care: As Much as God Is," Christianity Today (June 2010); available online at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/june/26.46.html.
7Gabe Lyons, The Next Christians: How a New Generation Is Restoring the Faith (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 55.
8See G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), and T. D. Alexander, From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2009).
9So Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, The New American Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 2003), 384; Douglas J. Moo, 2 Peter, Jude, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 190.
10In a very helpful section, Herman Bavinck draws the analogy with the person who is now "new creation" in Christ: "Just as anyone in Christ is a new creation in whom the old has passed away and everything has become new (2 Cor. 5:17), so also this world passes away in its present form as well, in order out of its womb, at God's word of power, to give birth and being to a new world. Just as in the case of an individual human being, so at the end of time a rebirth of the world will take place as well (Matt. 19:28)." Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation (Grand Rapids, Baker, 2008), 717.
11As Bavinck argues strongly, "The passages that are assumed to teach [the destruction of the world's substance] do indeed describe in very graphic terms the change that will set in after the day of the Lord, but they do not imply the destruction of the substance of the world. . . . God's honor consists precisely in the fact that he redeems and renews the same humanity, the same world, the same heaven, and the same earth that have been corrupted and polluted by sin" (ibid., 716–17).
12Andy Crouch, Culture Making (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity: 2008), 170.