Revelation 21:5; Behold, I Make All Things New (2)
Revelation 21:5 (KJV) And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
What is new?
God’s glory restored: Here, praise God, is where heaven comes in. Despite all the sin and tragedy, there is one untouched, uncontaminated, created realm where God’s glory still shines in transcendent beauty—and that is heaven. Satan has been banished from heaven. In that joyful place, the holy angels worship and serve the Lord in all His majesty and splendor. In heaven, God’s glory has always shone. In heaven, it keeps on shining.
It is from that bright region that the crushing counterattack comes. Heaven is the place from which God’s glory returns to earth to make earth and its people glorious. The story of the Bible is the story of heaven coming back to this world, taking it over and filling it once again. It is about the revelation and restoration of God’s glory, and that in a far richer and more wonderful way in Christ than ever was seen in Eden or in Adam.
So, God begins to work in history. Everything that He does is for one reason—for His glory. That is God’s purpose and passion. He elects a people in eternity. Why? For His glory. He chooses Israel for His glory. He delivers them from Egypt for His glory. He restores them after exile for His glory. As you read the Old Testament, say to yourself, “The glory is coming, the glory is coming!” On every page, in every era of Israel’s history, the glory is coming.
Then at last God sends His Son. When Christ is born, the heavens are opened, and a multitude of the heavenly host is praising God. Their theme? “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to- ward men” (Luk 2:14). John says that God’s glory was visible in Jesus of Nazareth, “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” (Joh 1:14). Jesus smashed the devil, glory’s enemy. He lived a perfect life and died an atoning death2 to pay for the sins of His people. As He came towards the cross, He summed up His life and work in these words: “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (Joh 17:4). After His death and resurrection,3 He returned to the glory from which He had come.
And the glory of heaven, which Christ possessed and revealed, and for which He lived and died, is transmitted to others. At the very
moment in which people believe in Him, it can be said that they enter heaven. Believers receive and enter glory. We pass from death to life, and God makes us “sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). Then slowly, step by step, we grow in grace, and the glory starts to shine in us and from us. On we go, week after week, year after year, being transformed “from glory to glory” (2Co 3:18) into the image of Jesus Christ. We see God’s glory in each other’s faces; that is heaven coming down to earth and the glory spreading. When we die, our souls immediately pass into heaven, into glory.
Then Jesus will come again in the clouds of heaven. We will be raised, and our bodies will be changed, transformed and glorious. The whole created universe will be renewed when God by Christ will rec- oncile all things to Himself. All the effects of sin will be removed and everything Satan has done will be cancelled. The New Jerusalem will come down from God out of heaven to earth, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth: one marvelous reality filled with the radiance of God, pulsating with His immediate presence and transcendent glory. God’s glory will be fully restored.
Listen to Jonathan Edwards:
“In the creature’s knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged…The beams of glory come from God, are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and He is the beginning, and the middle, and the end.”4
Heaven is created for God’s glory. It is the place where His glory is most fully known.
[Edward Donnelly, Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 2001]