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 any more, 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.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 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 sulphur, which is the second death.”
It is significant to realise that what is unfolded here is the complete reversal of the tragedy of the Garden of Eden. There, man became estranged from God through sin, as the cherubim and flaming sword placed at the east of the Garden to guard the way of the tree of life are meant to indicate (Genesis 3:24). Here, the great reconciliation has been effected, and God and man are again at one. The Hebrew epistle begins with the sublime words, 'God…. hath spoken.... in His Son', and in that tremendous word the gulf was bridged, the silence of sin broken, and the tragic isolation penetrated by the Incarnation and Atonement of Jesus Christ. Here we have the final act, so to speak, the consummation of a great drama inaugurated in the gathering darkness of Eden, when the primal promise of redemption was given in the assurance that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent. This reversal, however, is not simply a return to the status quo. Christ's redemption brings about something infinitely more wonderful - a new heaven and a new earth. This new creation, however, bears an integral relation to the old, as the word 'new' indicates. In the Greek, there are two words for 'new', and John uses one which means 'new' but not 'other', in the sense of being completely and unrelatedly different. In other words, there is a continuity between the old order and the new. It is the same heaven and earth, but gloriously transformed and transfigured into a new thing. (This is a principle that is paralleled throughout the New Testament theology; the same kind of relation exists between the Christ of the flesh and the risen Christ - it was the same Jesus, yet gloriously - and indefinably - different. So also the relation between the old man and the new - it is the same person, yet undeniably changed. It is seen even more graphically in Paul's teaching about natural bodies and spiritual bodies; we shall be changed, but it will still - recognisably - be we who shall have been changed, and clothed with new bodies).