11 Blessed by Living in the New Creation with Jesus

Blessed by Living in the New Creation with Jesus

Have you ever experienced something or done something that made you think to yourself, I was made for this? I remember feeling that way when I got my first job as a publicist at a Christian publishing company. Because I was musical, I had originally pursued a job hoping to find a place in the record and music side of the company. But the open position was for a publicity assistant in the book publishing side. I loved books, so I went for it. And it didn’t take me long to recognize that I had landed in a job I was made for.

I suppose some people have this sense when they discover that they have a body made for running fast, or a mind made for numbers, or a flare for cooking or decorating. I was not made for any of those things.

Perhaps the opposite of having a sense of “I was made for this” is a sense of “This is not the way it should be.” And most of us have felt that way at one time or another. Achieving what we hoped for shouldn’t be this hard. Relationships shouldn’t be this fragile. Governments shouldn’t be this corrupt. Bodies shouldn’t be this vulnerable. Losses shouldn’t be this painful. Work shouldn’t be this frustrating. Churches shouldn’t be this conflict-ridden. Life shouldn’t be this lonely. So much of our life is marked by “This is not the way it should be,” isn’t it?

Fortunately, we have the Bible, which reveals to us what we were all made for as well as why things are not the way they should be. There is a relationship, a home, a purpose we were made for that Adam and Eve lost for us in that day they turned away from the goodness of God in the garden of Eden. It was their rebellion against God that ushered in the “This is not the way it should be” in this world. Fortunately, however, the Bible assures us that this is not the way it will be forever. Revelation 21 and 22 present us with a picture of the day when all who are in Christ will leave behind “This is not the way it should be” for good, to enter into the ultimate and eternal “I was made for this,” because, in fact, we were made for this. Revelation 21 and 22 shows us the relationship we were made to share, the land we were made to inherit, the community we were made to be a part of, the glory we were made to bask in, and the satisfaction we were made to enjoy forever.

At the center of the passage is a declaration, which is actually the hope at the center of our existence, so we’ll start there:

He who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Rev. 21:5)

We’re told lots of things by untrustworthy sources, by people who have an agenda. But here, we’re presented with a truth that is solid enough to build a life on. The person speaking does have an agenda. His agenda is blessing, and his means of accomplishing this agenda is pervasive, permanent newness. This is the newness that we long for in a world in which everything breaks down, everything wears out, everything is impacted by the curse. The promise here is not that God is going to make all new things but rather that all of the things in his creation that have been impacted by the curse are going to be restored, renewed, and resurrected.

He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” (Rev. 21:6)

The one who set things in motion in the beginning is the one who will bring all things to their intended end. We read about the beginning in Genesis 1 through 3, and now, we get to read about the end here in Revelation 21 and 22.

~ The Alpha and the Omega who, in the beginning, presented a bride to his son Adam will, in the end, present a bride to his Son, the second Adam. This is the happy marriage we were made to enjoy.

~ The Alpha and the Omega who, in the beginning, created a land for Adam and Eve and their offspring will, in the end, give that land—the whole world—as an inheritance to all who become his sons and daughters by faith (Rom. 4:13). This is the land we were meant to inherit.

~ The Alpha and the Omega who, in the beginning, instructed Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, will, in the end, welcome a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation into a city that will fill the earth. This is the multicultural community we were made to be a part of.

~ The Alpha and the Omega, who, in the beginning, walked with his people in the sanctuary of Eden, will, in the end, dwell with his people in the most holy place, which will extend to every corner of the earth. This is the glory we were made to bask in.

~ The Alpha and the Omega, who, in the beginning, planted the tree of life in the center of the garden to nourish and sustain his people, will, in the end, welcome the nations into a new garden where all will find healing and wholeness, fullness of satisfaction and provision. This is the life, the healing, and the satisfaction we were made to enjoy forever.

Doesn’t all of this sound good? This is the world, the life, we were made for. And it is exactly what John saw in his vision.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (Rev. 21:1)

The “first earth,” or the “old order” as some translations of Revelation 21:4 put it, the way things work in a world impacted by the curse, is no more. John saw what the creation will be like when “his blessings flow far as the curse is found,”1 after the creation is purged of evil, when “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). The sea is portrayed as a place of chaos, evil, and danger throughout the Scriptures, and in Revelation the sea has been the abode of the beast. So when John says that the sea is no more, he’s saying that nothing evil will ever arise in the new creation.

John then begins to use the imagery used throughout the Bible—the imagery of marriage, inheritance, the city, the temple, and the garden—to put the wonders of what the new creation will be like on display, beginning with the Bible’s imagery of a marriage.

The Marriage You Were Meant to Share

In the beginning, God brought a bride to his son Adam. This was a marriage filled with so much promise. It was a marriage with a mission. They were supposed to fill the earth and subdue it, extending the boundaries of Eden so that the whole earth would become a garden paradise filled with God’s image bearers. Two sinless people with nothing to hide and everything to share. But when sin entered the picture, the joy of being presented with a bride turned into finger-pointing at the bride, saying “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). The impact of the curse meant that their marriage became infected with power struggles and disappointment.

A more faithful bridegroom than Adam was needed, one who would obey rather than rebel, one who would faithfully lead his bride to eat from the tree of life together rather than cause them to be barred from it. And when Jesus showed up on the scene, that’s how John identified him in his Gospel, as the faithful bridegroom. John records John the Baptist saying, “The one who has the bride is the bridegroom” (John 3:29). Paul presents Jesus in these terms as well, writing that ever since that first marriage in Eden, marriage has always been most profoundly about the greater eternal marriage of Christ and his bride (Eph. 5:32). In 5:31 he quotes Moses, who wrote, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24) and says, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (5:32). Human marriage was always intended to tell us something about the relationship God desires to share with his people.

Of course, so far, as we await this eternal marriage to Christ, it has proved to be a very long engagement. And Revelation seems to recognize that it can be so very hard to stay faithful over a long-distance engagement. The book of Revelation has been a call for patient endurance, a call for the bride of Christ to patiently and expectantly watch for her bridegroom to come. And in Revelation 21, John sees a vision of the day when the waiting will finally be over:

I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Rev. 21:2)

It is the beautiful bride of Christ, ready for the wedding, ready for the consummation of an eternal marriage to her bridegroom. The separation will be over. Finally, bride and bridegroom will be at home together:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:3–4)

This dwelling with man is what God has always wanted. And if you think about it, that’s really quite amazing, isn’t it, that God desires to dwell with us? He does. And clearly he wants to draw close, so close that he will be able to wipe away the tears from our eyes, all the tears we have shed over the suffering and losses of this life. Patient endurance in this life doesn’t mean that what we experience as we wait doesn’t hurt. There is so much to living in this world that brings pain. But we can be sure that our bridegroom has seen the hurts, the sacrifices, and the slights. He knows what it is like to live in this world because he entered into this world to live in it, and he experienced the worst of this world’s hurts. One day he is going to come again for us. He will arrive as a warrior king on a white horse to do away with everything that has brought us pain and sorrow. And then he will come to us as a bridegroom so that our eternal marriage can begin. We’ll finally have the intimacy with him we’ve always longed for but have never been able to achieve or maintain. We will love him who first loved us.

You may have been blessed in this life with a long and happy marriage. If so, you’ve had a foretaste of heaven. Or you may have spent a lot of years longing to be married or a lot of years disappointed in a marriage or have come to the place of giving up on marriage altogether. The truth is, as good as human marriage can be, no marriage can live up to the level of our desires for what only this eternal marriage to our divine bridegroom can and will provide.

One day God is going to present us as a bride to his Son, the one who loved us and gave himself up for us, that he might sanctify us, having cleansed us by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present us to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that we might be holy and without blemish (see Eph. 5:25–27). His face will radiate with a joy that will be reflected in our faces. He will welcome us into his home so that the eternal marriage can begin.

The Land You Were Meant to Inherit

While the imagery of bride and bridegroom captures the intimacy we will share into eternity with Christ, the imagery of father and son captures the inheritance that will be ours in Christ:

The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. (Rev. 21:7–8)

In the beginning, Adam and Eve were given dominion and told to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Had they obeyed, the whole earth would have been theirs. But when Adam and Eve disobeyed, they were ejected from the garden and lost their access and claim to the land. So God began working in his people to give them an inheritance of land by calling Abraham to leave his family and his country to go to the land he was giving to him. Abraham’s descendants went into exile in Egypt for four hundred years, but Moses led them out of Egypt, and Joshua led them back into the promised land giving each tribe, clan, and family an inheritance of land. To have land in the promised land was to have a share in all of God’s promises to his people, all of his promised blessings.

Of course, Abraham always understood that the land God gave to him and his descendants was really pointing toward a far greater inheritance. The writer of Hebrews says, “By faith [Abraham] went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:9–10). Abraham evidently saw through the promise of the land of Canaan into its deeper reality. Paul writes that “the promise to Abraham and his offspring [was] that he would be heir of the world” and that everyone who lives by faith is “his offspring” (Rom. 4:13, 16). That means that if you are in Christ, you, along with the rest of your brothers and sisters, stand to inherit . . . the world. One day, our greater Joshua is going to lead us into the land of which the promised land of Canaan was always a mere shadow. We will finally take full possession of our inheritance in the true land of milk and honey. This will be the land we’ve always longed for, the land that Canaan was always pointing toward, the land where we will finally be at home.

But to make this grand inheritance possible, Jesus had to be cut off from the land. Isaiah writes that “he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.” (Isa. 53:8). Jesus was exiled from the land of blessing and descended into the realm of the dead so that you and I can anticipate living in the land of promise forever.

You may be blessed with a tremendous inheritance from your earthly family. Perhaps you stand to inherit a significant amount of wealth or some valuable property. Perhaps you’ve been given a name that commands respect and a great sense of belonging. Or perhaps you don’t have any of these things. Perhaps you have been estranged from your family or have never really had a home or a place where you feel you belong. No matter what your earthly father and mother have or haven’t provided for you or passed along to you, if you are in Christ, you can be sure that your heavenly Father intends to provide you with a vast inheritance. He has already given you his name. Your brother has gone ahead to prepare a place for you. A treasure is being stored up for you as you love and serve him. Arms are being opened for you. A table is being set for you. So you must refuse to make your home in this world, refuse to believe its false promises, refuse to indulge in its contaminating sins. Those who love this world will also have an inheritance, or as John describes it, a “portion” (Rev. 21:8), but it won’t be in a cleansed creation, in a heavenly land. It will be in a lake of fire.

To be blessed is to live this life with no fear of receiving that portion, but instead to live this life anticipating that one day you are going to be welcomed into the new creation where you will receive an inheritance that will make up for every lack in your life. You’ll be blessed by an undeserved, unfathomable, unlosable inheritance.

The Community You Were Made to Be a Part Of

Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed—on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. (Rev. 21:9–14)

In these verses John overlaps two metaphors to describe the same reality. The angel says he intends to show John the bride, the wife of the Lamb, and then shows him the holy city. So, the bride, all people who are joined to Christ, are a city, the holy city of Jerusalem. This city is said to come down out of heaven, because this city—these people—are the result of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of ordinary sinners. There is no sign of that sin in their lives anymore. They radiate the beauty, the glory, and the holiness of God.

And when we read it, it should cause us to consider what cities have been like throughout the Bible. There was the first city built by Cain, named for his son Enoch, in Genesis 4, which was a city built with the express purpose of keeping God out. That has always been the way with cities built by men. That’s the way it was for the next significant city we read about in the Bible—the city called Babel. This was a city built in defiance of God’s command to spread throughout the earth. They were out to make a name for themselves. Instead of giving glory to God, they wanted to create their own glory. Of course, Babel came to an inglorious end. We read about the city of Sodom, which was inhabited by “wicked, great sinners” (Gen. 13:13) and the victims of their sexual violence and injustice. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with sulfur and fire. The next significant city in the story of the Bible is Jerusalem. Jerusalem was meant to be a city in which the people of God would enjoy the presence of God in their midst. And she had her good days. But Jerusalem became thoroughly sullied by idolatry and other evils. The city God determined to use to judge and purge her evil was none other than Babylon, who took the inhabitants of Jerusalem to live in a refugee camp outside the city of Babylon. Eventually the people of God returned from exile to rebuild their city, but it was never as glorious as it once had been. This was the Jerusalem that Jesus came to and wept over. This was the Jerusalem that rejected and killed Jesus.

So in many ways, it is quite stunning that John describes the community of those who are joined to Christ as the “new Jerusalem.” What does this reveal to us? This shows us that God is making out of the idol-loving, God-defying, Christ-rejecting city of man a holy city that he intends to live in with his people. This is at the heart of what it means to be made new. God is taking men and women like us who worship idols of pleasure and pride, men and women like us who love to hate God, men and women like us who continually reject the riches of Christ for the trinkets of the world, and he is remaking us into a city, a community, he wants to live in.2

There are twelve gates on four sides of the city: east, north, south, and west. In other words, people are going to come from every direction to live in this city. The gates have the names of the twelve tribes, and the wall has twelve foundations on which are written the names of the twelve apostles. What is John trying to tell us? Certainly one thing he’s telling us is that there are not two communities—one for Israel and one for the church. God has one multinational, multicultural people. What defines them, no matter which corner of the earth they come from, is their embrace of the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed by the apostles. This is how a person enters into this city, by embracing this glorious gospel.

But there is more to what these gates are telling us. People are coming into this city from every direction. We live in a world of suspicion, elitism, racism, and nationalism that fills many with pride, rage, and resentment and creates deep divides between people groups. As we leave those things behind and embrace our brothers and sisters in Christ of different colors and cultures, we become a living preview of the beautiful community we’re going to live in forever.

Just imagine it. No division. No discord. No distrust. We’re going to live together with brothers and sisters in Christ from every tribe, tongue, and nation, sharing in the love of Christ forever.

This is a city with walls. Walls speak of security. You and I now live in a world that is insecure. We shut our gates and lock our doors. We are bombarded by scenes of bombings in the heart of major cities, refugees risking their lives to escape poverty and danger, news reports about deadly viruses, killer bees, natural disasters, polluted waters, nuclear weapons, cyber-attacks, and civil unrest. And we know we’re vulnerable. But that vulnerability has an expiration date.

One day we’re going to make our home in the new creation that will be completely secure. Perfectly peaceful. It will have unsurpassed beauty and abundant resources.

John has used the imagery of a bride, a son, and a city to help us to grasp the excellencies ahead for us in the new creation. And we’ve been seeing that each of these images overlaps to portray a particular aspect of what the world will be like and who we will be as a bride, a son, and a community in the new creation. Next, he uses the imagery that has been at the forefront of the Bible’s story since the beginning, the imagery of the temple.

The Glory You Were Meant to Bask In

John is still speaking in terms of a city, but he lets us know that the city is also a temple, by the measurements he gives for the city:

The one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. (Rev. 21:15–16)

In the beginning, God made a sanctuary that was flooded with radiant light, embedded with beautiful jewels, filled with his permeating glory, and inhabited by his people. It was a holy place, and when Adam and Eve sinned, they could no longer dwell in this holy sanctuary with a holy God. So God began working out his plan to purify his people so they could enter into his presence once again. He had his people build him a sanctuary in the form of a tent and instituted sacrifices for cleansing. Inside the tent was the Most Holy Place, a room that was a perfect cube in which he came down to dwell among his people. The priests who entered after offering sacrifices for cleansing had beautiful jewels embedded in their garments. Later, when his people had a more permanent home in Israel, God came down to dwell among them in the Most Holy Place of the temple. But there was a problem. Only one person, one time a year, could ever enter into the presence of God. The high priest entered the Most Holy Place once a year, but everyone else had to keep their distance. The only way God’s people could ever come into the presence of a holy God is if they were made perfectly holy. But how could that ever happen?

God is working out his plan to bring us into his presence through Jesus, who entered into this world that was sullied by sin and offered himself as a once for all sacrifice for sin. God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Even now God is at work in us making us holy so that we will be able to enter into his Most Holy Place that will no longer be confined to a 15 x 15 x 15–foot room in a temple in the Middle East. Instead, the whole of the earth will become the Most Holy Place of the temple. One day, when God’s sanctifying work in us is complete, we will finally have the glory, holiness, and beauty that we were made for so that we will be able to enter into the presence of God to behold his beauty. It is this beauty that is pictured for us in the jewels embedded in this temple-city’s foundations:

He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. (Rev. 21:17–21)

C. S. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory, “We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”3 And one day we will. John’s picture of this reality makes us long for it:

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. (Rev. 21:22–27)

There will be no temple in this city because the city will be a temple. And it will be filled with people—people who have been made clean by the blood of the Lamb, had their name written in his book, and made holy by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. We will all be in the immediate and abiding presence of the one who loved us and gave himself for us.

The holiness of heaven is a little intimidating to us now. There’s a sense in which we know we just would not fit in in a place that is perfectly holy. We’re afraid we’ll leave muddy footprints of our moral failures everywhere we step. But the blessing of the new creation is that he who began a good work in us will have been faithful to complete it. The one who said, “Be holy for I am holy,” will have completed his sanctifying work in our lives so that we really will be holy as he is holy. Perfectly, pervasively, permanently holy. This is what we were made for.

The Satisfaction You Were Made to Enjoy

John has one more image to pile on to the images of marriage, inheritance, community, and temple: garden.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. (Rev. 22:1–3)

In the beginning, God planted a garden. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there too, the tree at which Adam was meant to judge good as good and evil as evil according to what God had said. It was there that Adam should have crushed the head of the serpent when he tempted Eve to eat of this tree. But he didn’t. Had Adam and Eve passed the test of obedience represented in the forbidden tree, they would have been able to feast on the tree of life in the garden and would have thereby been given a glorious, unending, fully satisfying life. But they didn’t. The glory given to them became marred, life gave way to death, and satisfaction became elusive.

Because of their disobedience Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, and God placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the tree of life. So God sent his Son, a second Adam, who also faced temptation regarding a tree, the tree of Calvary. To make it possible for his people to enter into the presence of God, Jesus came under the flaming sword. On the cross, Jesus was pierced by that flaming sword of judgment. Jesus entered into death so that we might one day be welcomed into this greater garden that John saw in his vision.

This garden will have a river of water. This is the water Jesus told the Samaritan woman about when he said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). And the tree of life will be in this garden. Except it will have expanded. No longer will it be one tree with one kind of fruit and one crop of fruit per season. It will be on each side of the river. It will produce twelve kinds of fruit, with a new crop every month. The number twelve here indicates that this tree is not going to simply provide for us; it is going to provide ultimate, complete, eternal satisfaction.

This will be a healing garden. All of the ways that sin has disfigured and diseased us will be healed. No longer will anything be accursed. Everything the curse has taken from us will be restored to us.

And then John gets to the best part of the new garden:

They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. (Rev. 22:4)

This is what the psalmist gave us the words to pray for when he wrote, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4). It is what the Aaronic blessing promises to us when the words, “The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you” are prayed over us (Num. 6:25). Face to face with his beauty. Marked and transformed by his beauty. Perfect acceptance and belonging. No more seeing in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. No more knowing in part; then we shall know fully, even as we have been fully known (1 Cor. 13:12).

And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Rev. 22:5)

The story of the Bible began with man and woman being made in the image of God and told to exercise dominion over creation. But, of course, we know that they failed, allowing a creeping thing to exercise dominion over them. The writer of Hebrews describes the reality we have lived in ever since: “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb. 2:8). It seems like an understatement. We live in a world in rebellion against Christ. But that’s only what we can see from our vantage point of the here and now. John was enabled to see what this world will be like on the day when all who are in Christ come into the dominion or reign that God always intended for his people. When that day comes, all the prayers we have prayed for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven will have been answered. Our wills will perfectly coincide with his. Free from sin and self, we will live in this world in his radiant presence, wanting nothing other than what he wants, loving nothing other than what he loves. That’s reigning forever and ever. That’s his will done on earth as it is in heaven.

Hearing and Keeping Revelation 21:1–22:5

What are we to do with the wonder of the new creation that John presents to us in these verses? How do we hear and keep this incredible promise? First and foremost (and forgive me if I’ve become a broken record on this urgent implication of the book of Revelation, in fact the whole Bible), we must become joined to Christ. Paul writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come” (2 Cor. 5:17 NIV). In other words, the newness of this new creation—its intimacy with Jesus and belonging to Jesus, its beauty, security, community, satisfaction, illumination, holiness, healing, and happiness—is not solely reserved for the future. It is an increasing reality in the interior of our lives right now if we are in Christ.

~ This picture of the new creation as a marriage sustains us as we await the coming of our bridegroom, Jesus. It causes us to direct our desires toward this eternal marriage.

~ This picture of the new creation as an inheritance helps us to be content. We don’t get so uptight about what we have or don’t have here and now because we really do believe and anticipate that one day we, along with all of the other children of Abraham by faith, are going to inherit the world.

~ This picture of the new creation as a multicultural community leads us to open the doors of our hearts, the tables in our homes, and the pews in our churches for people who may come through a different door, from a different culture, and have skin that’s a different color. We love them and welcome them and invest in relationship with them now because we know we are going to be sharing eternity with them.

~ This picture of the new creation as a holy temple causes us to increasingly hate what is evil and love what is good. Instead of holding on to our pet sins, we find that we have an increasing desire to be holy as he is holy.

~ This picture of the new creation as a garden keeps us from expecting that this world is ever going to fully satisfy us. We’re thirsty for the living water. We’re hungry for the fruit of the tree of life. We long for the full and complete satisfaction that awaits us in the new and greater garden to come.