Revelation 21 explained: God Makes His Home With People

A new heaven and earth (vv. 1-4)

John sees a new heaven and a new earth, the first ones passed away, and no more sea, which in ancient imagery and earlier in this book (13:1) often stood for chaos and threat. A holy city comes down dressed like a bride, an image the book links to God's people (19:7-8), and a voice promises that God will live among them and end death, grief and pain.

Everything made new (vv. 5-7)

God, called the Alpha and Omega (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, meaning beginning and end), says he is making everything new and gives the water of life free to anyone thirsty. Those who are victorious, the book's word for staying faithful under pressure (chapters 2 and 3), are promised a place as his children.

Who is shut out (v. 8)

A list headed by the cowardly, likely meaning those who abandoned their faith under pressure, is sent to the burning lake the book calls the second death (20:14). Most churches have read this as endless punishment, while some Christians understand it as final destruction.

The bride as a city (vv. 9-14)

An angel from the same group that showed John the corrupt city Babylon in chapter 17 now shows him its opposite: the bride of the Lamb (this book's name for Jesus), shining with God's glory. The gates carry the names of Israel's twelve tribes and the foundations the names of the twelve apostles, which many read as God's people from before and after Jesus joined in one city.

Measured and jeweled (vv. 15-21)

The city is a cube about 12,000 stadia (roughly 2,200 km, or 1,400 miles) each way, which many scholars see as echoing the cube shaped inner room of the old temple where God's presence was thought to dwell (1 Kings 6:20). Most read its twelves, its jewels and its gold clear as glass as symbols of completeness and splendor, though some take the details literally.

No temple, no night (vv. 22-27)

There is no temple and no need for sun or moon, because God and the Lamb fill the city with their presence and light, echoing Isaiah 60. Its gates never close and the nations bring their glory in, yet nothing impure enters, only those listed in the Lamb's book of life, the register of those who belong to him.

Key verse: Revelation 21:3

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether the vision describes a literal city or a symbolic picture of God's people, and on whether this present world is renewed or replaced by a new one.

Something to think about

If you imagine a world with no more tears, which losses or pains would you most want undone, and what from life as it is now would you hope not to lose?