The New Heavens and Earth

Scripture speaks often of the new heavens and earth as the final home of God's people. We might ask, however, why there must be a new heavens and a new earth as the home of believers.

There must be a new heavens because heaven is the place where God dwells, i.e., reveals Himself most gloriously as the God of His people (Ps. 123:1). The first heaven was affected by the fall of the angels just as the earth was by the fall of man. Satan, the head of that first heavenly creation fell from his high estate and drew many of the angels with him (Is. 14:12-15; Rev. 12:4). The heavenly creation, therefore, must be restored in Christ that God and His people may dwell there in blessed and everlasting fellowship (Rev. 21:3).

Why a new earth? First, because God does not abandon the work of His own hands. The earth which He created is not cast away and abandoned because of sin, but preserved and finally restored. And, that Christ may be glorified also in it, it is not only renewed to its first estate but lifted up to a higher glory.

Part of that glory is that it is united with the new (Rev. 21:1). But the great glory of that renewed creation is that righteousness dwells in it (II Pet. 3:13). It must be cleansed and renewed that righteousness may dwell in it, and so all that is of sin and all the works of sin must be destroyed. Nothing may remain of all that filthy sinners have accomplished.

That righteousness shall dwell there means that God's people, in whom the wonder of God's righteousness is revealed, shall have that new heavens and earth as their home. But it means especially that Christ Himself shall dwell there as the revelation of the righteousness of God, and we shall be in Him and with Him.

For this and because heaven is home we desire it most fervently. As long as we are in this world we are pilgrims and strangers. Here, we have no home, no country or city that we can call our own (Heb. 11:8-10; 13-16). What a great thing, then, it shall be finally to go home after a long, weary pilgrimage, knowing that our Father, our elder Brother, and all our family will be there, and that we will never again have to leave.

How can it be home when we have never been there? As in a true earthly home, the place is not so important as the people who are there. Them we know and love. And so, though we have never seen the place, our family and our Father Whom we do know and have learned to love are there and we desire to be with them.

When we speak of these things and realize what we are waiting for, then truly we count all other things but loss and dung. This world and the life of this world are nothing in comparison, and the greatest pleasures this world can offer nothing but dust and ashes. A person who knows that heaven is his home will never be at home in this world, and that is the way it ought to be (II Cor. 5:6-8).

Thus our hopes are stirred, we are encouraged to lift up our eyes and wait for our promised redemption and to live as those whose life is already hid with God in Christ in the heavenlies.