Revelation 21:5 Commentary and Bible Study

God will create all things new. There will be nothing that remains from the old world that is untouched by this act of creation. If the first creation is a work of God that dwarfs our imagination and has taken us many thousands of years to begin to understand, how much more wonderful will this new creation be! The old creation was glorious but God acted with some restraint. It was a world suitable for unglorified mankind. In making the next heaven and earth, he will not be so restrained. What he makes will be made forever; it must be suitable for eternity, a world in which his creatures have direct access to him and fellowship with him. It will not hide his glory, but reveal it to the fullest possible extent. Man’s mind will be so much more adept at grasping the significance of the workmanship of God and the creation will be correspondingly more wonderful. God will be free to recreate the laws of nature in a way that suits that new world, if we can speak of such things. Nevertheless there will be some continuity with the old. There will be a heaven and an earth. Though these will be so different, they will be recognisable as the correlates of the old. They will display the glory of God; they will be a home suitable for man to dwell in. Man himself will come from the old world. Though our bodies will bear the image of the heavenly man and our souls will have been purged from all sin, we will know where we came from. We will not have had the work of redemption erased from our memories. We will remember all the way God has led us and all he has done for us, with greater clarity and insight than we have at present. We will see the grand scheme of his purpose from beginning to end. But most of all, God himself will be the same. The same God who has loved us and sent his Son to die for us will be with us forever. As he has been our Father in this world, so he will be in the next. He will not leave us as orphans, but embrace us as dear children.