All Things New: Part 1

English Standard Version Chapter 21

The New Heaven and the New Earth

21 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. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 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. 4 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.”

5 And 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.”

Eva Cassidy’s song ‘Way Beyond the Blue’ is not in the same theological league as the great hymns from Charles Wesley, but her beliefs about the Christian hope for the future are in line with many. ‘Oh I’ve got a home in Glory Land that outshines the sun, way beyond the blue’ is how she expressed it. On this view, we hope to leave this earth behind, and shoot off to another place that we may call ‘heaven’ where, it is imagined, we live eternally in a state of disembodied bliss. What we will spend our time doing is vague and unspecified, maybe along the lines of singing hymns on an eternal loop, accompanied by harps.

All this is far removed from the witness of the New Testament, which speaks in the clearest terms about ‘a new earth’, which Peter describes as ‘the home of righteousness’. What, we may ask, is the point of a new earth if it is not inhabited? And how can it be the home of righteousness if it is not populated by righteous people?

The mistaken idea behind Eva Cassidy’s song (which has found its way into all too many Christian hymns) comes not from the Bible, but from Plato. He developed the erroneous philosophy that matter, physical stuff, including the human body, is inferior and a thing to be escaped from to a higher, ‘spiritual’ form of existence.

Nothing could be further from the truth. God repeatedly saw that the physical creation was ‘good’ in Genesis 1, and finally declared it to be ‘very good’. And God is utterly committed to restoring that very good creation in a day to come. He inaugurated that new creation by the resurrection of Jesus, and that resurrection guarantees that one day that new creation will be gloriously consummated.

Our text then does not describe believers leaving the earth, but rather the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God in a wonderful coming together of God’s dimension of existence and ours. Just as man was banished from God’s presence in Eden, so he now enjoys it for ever: “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.’ It is repeated for our reassurance and for emphasis.

Just two final points about these lovely verses.

First, we are told that ‘the sea was no more’. We may not be overly happy about that - if we take it too literally. In New Testament times the sea was not a place for cruises or lazy holidays on the beach. It was seen as a place of chaos and threatening. It is the place from which terrifying monsters emerge in Revelation. So it is telling us that all of that is now gone.

Second, we are also told that there will be no more tears, death, mourning, crying or pain. Those things belong to the old creation. Thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus, they have a limited shelf life and will soon be gone for good.

‘All things new’ is what we can look forward to. So even what it means to be new will be new. Let us encourage one another to lift our eyes and ears above the groaning of the present creation and live for and in the light of the one to come.