A new heaven and a new earth: the holy city

Revelation 21 opens the last vision of the book. It was written to seven churches in Roman Asia, probably about AD 95, though a minority place it under Nero. Its first hearers were small communities who lived beside the grand cities of Ephesus, Smyrna and Pergamum and under the pressure of an empire that called its capital the eternal city. Chapters 17 and 18 showed the fall of Babylon. Chapter 20 ended with the judgment of the dead and the destruction of death. Now John sees what replaces it.

The chapter belongs to a long line of prophetic hope. Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 promised new heavens and a new earth, and Ezekiel 40 to 48 described a restored temple and city, ending with the name of the city: the LORD is there. The exiles in Babylon, who first heard these promises, were people of a destroyed city. Revelation 21 is addressed to people in a very different position, but it shares the hope: God will make a place for his people and live in it.

Verses 1-8 give the new creation, the city as a bride, God's dwelling with humankind, and the promise to the one who overcomes. Verses 9-27 describe the city, introduced by one of the bowl angels, as in 17:1 one of them showed John the prostitute. The two cities, Babylon and Jerusalem, stand side by side across the book.

The chapter is apocalyptic vision, and it speaks in symbols. A city shaped as a perfect cube, made of gold like glass, with gates of single pearls, is not a floor plan. The Old Testament gives the key. The Most Holy Place of Solomon's temple was a cube (1 Kings 6:20), and Ezekiel's vision of the city has twelve gates named for the tribes (Ezekiel 48:30-35). The stones of the foundations recall the high priest's breastplate (Exodus 28:17-20) and Isaiah 54:11-12. The point is that the whole city is a temple: all of it is the place of God's presence. The chapter also reverses Genesis: where Genesis opens with the first creation, the sea, the night, the curse and the tree of life guarded from humanity, Revelation closes with a new creation, no sea, no night, no curse and the tree available. The repeated word 'overcomes' picks up the letters of chapters 2 and 3, where the promises to each church find their fulfilment.

Two interpretive questions divide readers, and the four approaches answer them differently.

• The first concerns the new creation: whether the present earth is renewed or replaced.
• The second concerns the city: whether it is entirely future or, as some say, a picture of the church that is already true in part. Futurist readers, both dispensational (Walvoord) and others, hold that the vision describes the eternal state after the final judgment, and dispensationalists add that Israel and the church remain distinguishable in it, on the evidence of the gate and foundation names. Historicist readers have usually agreed that the vision is of the final state. Idealist readers, such as Hendriksen and Beale, take the vision as both the final state and a picture of the church as it already is in Christ, so that the city is the people rather than a building. Preterist readers diverge. Some, such as Chilton, read the new creation as the new covenant order of the church after the end of the old order in AD 70, and as the hope of the gospel's growth in history. Others, with most critical scholars, read it as the final state that the earlier visions lead up to.

The millennial views affect where this chapter falls. Premillennial readers place it after the thousand years and the final judgment of chapter 20, and see the 'new Jerusalem' as coming down only then (some historic premillennialists find a preview of it in the kingdom). Amillennial readers take chapter 21 as the final state after Christ's return, and many, following Augustine, also see in the city a description of the church already in Christ. Postmillennial readers hold that the church's glory in history is a partial fulfilment of this picture before the final state.

Our understanding of the passage is limited to this: the vision is of a restored creation in which God's presence fills everything and the redeemed from every nation live, and the picture is built from temple, garden and city imagery so that the whole world is shown as God's dwelling.

21:1-2. John sees 'a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more'. The words come from Isaiah 65:17. 'New' means new in kind or quality, not simply recent. The sea has been a threat throughout the book: it was the origin of the beast (13:1) and it gives up its dead in 20:13. In Israel's imagination the sea was the home of chaos, and on Patmos the sea was the barrier that separated John from the churches. Its absence says that the threat is gone. John then sees 'the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband'. The city comes down from God. It is not built by human effort, unlike Babylon's pride. The bride adorned echoes Isaiah 61:10 and 62:5.

21:3-4. A loud voice from the throne says that 'the dwelling place of God is with man'. The Greek uses the word for tabernacle, the tent of God among Israel. This completes the promise of Leviticus 26:11-12 and Ezekiel 37:27 that God will be their God and they will be his people. Some ancient manuscripts read the plural 'peoples', which fits the nations of verse 24. He will wipe away every tear (Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 7:17), and death, mourning, crying and pain will be no more, 'for the former things have passed away'. John's Gospel says the Word became flesh and 'dwelt', literally 'tabernacled', among us (John 1:14), so the verb already looks forward to this verse.

21:5-8. The One on the throne speaks: 'Behold, I make all things new.' He tells John to write, for the words are faithful and true. 'It is done!' is the verb of 16:17. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, as in 1:8. To the thirsty he gives water of life freely, which echoes Isaiah 55:1 and John 4:10-14. The one who overcomes will inherit all things, and God says, 'I will be his God, and he will be My son'. This is the covenant formula of 2 Samuel 7:14, given to the king of David's line and now extended to every overcomer. The list in verse 8 names the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters and liars, and their place is the lake of fire, the second death.

21:9-14. One of the angels with the seven bowls shows John 'the bride, the wife of the Lamb', and carries him in the Spirit to a great high mountain, as Ezekiel was taken to a high mountain to see the city (Ezekiel 40:2). The bride is the city. It shines with the glory of God like a jasper, clear as crystal. The wall is great and high and has twelve gates with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, three on each side, and twelve foundations bearing the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Nearly all readers take the tribes and apostles together as the one people of God of both testaments. The dispensational reading holds that Israel and the church remain distinct in identity even there, and the covenantal reading takes the double list as a sign of one people.

21:15-21. The angel measures the city with a golden rod, as an angel measured Ezekiel's temple (Ezekiel 40:3). It is foursquare, 12,000 stadia in each dimension, roughly 1,400 miles. The wall is 144 cubits, by the human measure the angel was using. Twelve and its multiples run through the description. The material is gold as pure as glass, and the foundations are decorated with twelve kinds of precious stone, the first jasper. Each gate is a single pearl, and the street is gold. These are marks of value and purity, and gold was the metal of the temple (1 Kings 6:20-22).

21:22-27. John sees no temple in the city, 'because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple'. There is no need of sun or moon, because the glory of God lights it and the Lamb is its lamp (compare Isaiah 60:19-20). 'By its light the nations will walk, and into it the kings of the earth will bring their glory', as Isaiah 60:3-11 promised for Zion. The gates are never shut, because there is no night. Nothing unclean, no one who practices an abomination or a lie will enter, but only those whose names are in the Lamb's Book of Life. Most readers take the 'nations' and 'kings' as the redeemed from every nation (5:9), seen in their national character, which fits verses 7 and 27. Some, impressed by the open gates and by 22:2, ask whether the picture leaves room for a wider hope, a question the text itself answers only by naming who is excluded.

What do all the main readings agree on? That the vision is the goal of the Bible's story. God dwells with his people, death and grief end, the curse and the sea are gone, and the redeemed from every nation live in his presence. Genesis begins with God creating heaven and earth and placing humans in a garden to dwell with him. Sin brought exile, and the story of the Bible is the long return. The prophets promised a new creation (Isaiah 65:17-25), Paul said that creation itself will be set free from its bondage (Romans 8:19-23), and Peter looked for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13). Revelation 21 shows it. The central promise is 'the dwelling place of God is with man'. Redemption in the Bible is not escape from creation but the restoration of what God made for his presence. All traditions also agree that the final state is holy: nothing unclean enters, and those outside are named.

The chapter also teaches covenant and adoption. 'He will be My son' extends the Davidic promise to all who overcome. The God who was behind the veil in the tabernacle is now present with his people.

What remains debated? Whether the old creation is destroyed and replaced or renewed. Older Lutheran theology often spoke of the annihilation of the world and a new creation, while the Reformed tradition, many modern evangelical writers, and Catholic and Orthodox theology more often speak of transformation, in which the present earth is cleansed and glorified. The continuity of Romans 8 and of the resurrection body of Christ is given in support of renewal, and the 'passed away' of verse 1 together with 2 Peter 3:10-12 is given in support of replacement. Our understanding is that the text uses 'new' of quality and that neither word settles the matter. Behind this lies a larger question for the study of the last things: whether the end is the fulfilment of creation or its replacement by something else. The chapter's own images (a garden city, kings bringing glory, a river and trees) suggest that creation is fulfilled, not discarded.

The chapter presents Christ as the Lamb at the centre of the city. He is called the husband of the bride (verses 2 and 9), and the Lamb is the temple and the lamp (verses 22-23). The temple was the place where God met his people. John's Gospel says that Jesus is that place: 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up' (John 2:19-21), and he told the Samaritan woman that worship would be in Spirit and truth and not at a mountain (John 4:21-24). Hebrews teaches that Christ has entered the greater tabernacle (Hebrews 9:11). In Revelation 21 the temple vanishes because its purpose is fulfilled in him.

The speaker of 'Behold, I make all things new' is the One on the throne, and the title Alpha and Omega is given in 22:13 to Jesus. The same words are said of the Father and the Son, which is one of the book's clear assertions of the deity of Christ. The offer of the water of life echoes Jesus' words in John 4:14 and 7:37-38. The city is also the fulfilment of the apostles' foundation (Ephesians 2:20) and of the covenant with Israel, since the names of the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles are written on the gates and foundations. Both testaments find their completion in the person of Christ, whose Book of Life decides who enters.