The vision of the New Jerusalem is a crowning picture of redemption consummated, a vision of triumph and peace after the conflict is over and the victory won, portraying the eternal bliss of the redeemed in the immediate presence of God, whose glory is realized in the intimate fellowship and ultimate well-being of his creatures that have been finally recovered from sin and fully confirmed in righteousness. In this closing vision of the Revelation we reach the goal of Christian hope in the future life with God. Some future-historical interpreters have, however, regarded this section as describing the millennial glory upon earth, preceding the final consummation of all things; but the view is involved in so many difficulties that relatively few have accepted it. On the contrary the Christian mind of all ages has instinctively found in the vision a perspective view of the heavenly glory, an opinion that it may be confidently said is not a mistaken one.564 The New Jerusalem presents the resultant condition of victory following the long struggle against sin, “the world to come” already ushered in, which lies beyond the millennium and the resurrection. At this point it may be well to call attention to the fact that the millennium in Hebrew thought is the culmination of “the age to come”, i. e. the age which is the triumphing period of the Messiah upon earth; whereas the New Jerusalem is the realization of “the world to come”, i. e. of the world that is future and eternal. These ideas were quite distinct in Jewish thought, and they ought also to be distinct with us. The wonderful account of the new heaven and the new earth speaks of other conditions than those of the present time; and the view of the glorious city in this closing vision (ch. 21:2-22:5) is aptly divisible into eight parts, the symbol of culmination, or of a new life or period begun, the division indicated in the comments that follow.
In this verse we are presented with a view of the [pg 227] new creation which environs the New Jerusalem, the sign of the changed and exalted conditions of future existence which await those that are Christ's, the creation redeemed as well as the creature, “for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away”, and all things have become new.565 This idea, which coincides with that of Paul in the Epistle to the Romans (ch. 8:19-23), is not, however, further developed, but the view turns at once to the heavenly city, for the vision has its proper center in the city, and is designed to present a view of redeemed humanity in the presence of God to which that of the redeemed creation is merely incidental.
Heaven, its joys and its inhabitants, is described under the type of a city, the New Jerusalem, the counterpart of the Old whose warfare has been accomplished, a civic and social dwelling-place that is new, holy, and glorious, an ideally perfect city in the midst of an ideally perfect world;566 the symbol of the glorious conditions of the redeemed and purified church in the midst of the new life of eternity, and the antithesis of Babylon, the type of the old sinful and polluted world. The description is full of echoes from the Isaian rhapsody of Zion Redeemed (Isa. 54, 60, and 65), and Ezekiel's vision of Jerusalem Restored (Ezek. 40 and 48).567
The city in its entirety becomes the antitype of the tabernacle of Israel, especially of the inner sanctuary or holy of holies, where God forever dwells with men, and they shall be his peoples,568 and sorrow, pain, and death shall be no more, for the former things are passed away. [pg 228] This is authoritatively declared by a voice out of the throne, a divine message, possibly given by one of the Angels of the Presence, as a comforting and assuring promise of the divine nearness and guardianship in the future life of God's people.
The city, the dwelling-place of the redeemed, and the symbol of the new conditions of the glorified church in the midst of eternity, becomes now by metonymy the symbol of the redeemed church herself, the Bride of Christ, the inhabitants being thought of to the exclusion of all else. The great city, the holy Jerusalem, is seen coming down out of heaven from God,569 as a bride adorned for her husband on her marriage day,—a figure of the intimate and tender relation of Christ with his people in the final state of the blessed. The city in these verses (9-10) is manifestly the symbol of the church that dwells within it; but the view that makes the New Jerusalem the symbol solely of the redeemed church, not only here but throughout the entire passage,570 fails to realize the flexibility of prophetic usage. The idea of place and local surroundings in the general description of the city undoubtedly stands first in the Apocalyptist's thought, and would seldom be questioned by the ordinary reader, though it includes also the inhabitants as well, and may be used for the inhabitants alone, as is done in this part of the passage, without invalidating the general meaning. In the ninth verse, with the announcement of the angel, “Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb”, the account in verse second is resumed, and is wrought out in detail. One of the vial-angels carries John away in the Spirit into a mountain great and high that he may see the vision more fully, an indication of its importance.
All things are declared new and changed, and to be the inheritance of those that shall overcome,571 to whom [pg 229] also the fulness of divine sonship is awarded; but the craven and unbelieving, the sinful and impure, shall be cast into the lake of fire which is the second death. These words of authority, promise, and threatening, are spoken by him who sitteth on the throne, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, who now himself, when all is fulfilled, speaks openly instead of through those mysterious voices that have hitherto issued from out the throne and temple, another token of the nearer communion of the saints with God in the new heaven and the new earth.572 And John is again commanded to write, for the words spoken are “faithful and true”, and “they are come to pass”, i. e. all God's promises and threatenings have been fulfilled, even the things of the new creation have already come into being, and the mystery of God is ended, according to the prediction of the angel with the book (ch. 10:7), i. e. the mystery of the divine purpose in the great work of creation and redemption has now been fully made known.
“Having the glory of God”, i. e. the glory of his abiding presence, which is reflected in the glory of gate and wall and street, yet the city is described for our better understanding in terms of the earthly creation. Its light is like unto a stone most precious, and the materials of its structure are most costly; the building of the wall is of jasper, the city and the street of pure gold, and the foundations of the wall adorned with all manner of precious stones,574 while the several gates are each of a single pearl,—the mingled symbols of brilliancy, glory, costliness, and beauty. The city lies foursquare, a perfect figure, the distinctive number of the earthly creation still, though new, with twelve foundations, gates, and angels, the church number, reflecting the number of the tribes of Israel and of the apostles of the [pg 230] Lamb, and with walls one hundred and forty-four cubits high, the square of the church number, and twelve thousand furlongs in length on each of the four sides,575 the church number multiplied by a thousand, and the number of the sealed in each tribe (ch. 7:5f.),—pertinent symbols, all of these, of the perfect home of the redeemed, as well as of the symmetry of the perfect church. The city is further described as a perfect cube like the holy of holies in the sanctuary, the length and breadth and the height of it being equal (v. 16) which perhaps means that in the height is included the eminence on which it stands, though others think that there is an intentional absence of all verisimilitude.576 The symbolical meaning of the cubical dimensions is evidently that of a symmetrical and ideal perfection which is proportional in all its parts, and like to the holy of holies in the earthly temple.577 The circuit of the walls is forty-eight thousand stadia, i. e. four times twelve thousand furlongs or stadia, and seems to be a designed reference to the city of Babylon, the greatest city of the ancient world, the circuit of which was four hundred and eighty stadia, i. e. four times one hundred and twenty furlongs or stadia, while that of the New Jerusalem is greater a hundredfold, which is evidently the language of symbolism.578 The city which is first seen from afar, coming down out of heaven (v. 11-14), is afterward measured, and its glories pointed out by the angel (see the divisions indicated by paragraphs in the text of the Revelation given in the first part of the volume).
The nations walk amidst the light thereof, and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it, a description which seems to reflect the thought of a new earth that will be peopled as well as the holy city, as implied in the first verse of the chapter, and perhaps designed to show the cosmopolitan character of the New Jerusalem.
The city has no more sea, i. e. the old, earthly, turbulent sea of conflict and unrest (v. 1); no more death, neither mourning, crying, nor pain any more (v. 4); no separate temple or inner sanctuary of partial access to God, for the city is all temple, and God forever dwells among his people (v. 22); no sun, nor moon, nor night, for the Lamb is the light thereof, his spiritual light superseding the physical (v. 23, 25, and ch. 22:5); no shut gates of defence or hindrance, for there is no longer either night or enemy abroad (v. 25); and no more curse, nor any unholy to renew the conflict, nor anything unclean or that maketh an abomination and a lie, for Christ is throned as victor (v. 27, and ch. 22:3). In this final view of heaven not only has the temple disappeared, but also the elders, and the four living creatures, and all that accessory symbolism of the earlier visions which was appropriate to the church-historic period. These are no longer needed, for the conditions which they served to symbolize have passed away. Even the angels are no longer seen within, for this is a vision of redeemed men who look upon the face of their Redeemer.
As the antidote of death the eternal city is seen to possess a “river of water of life” that flows out from the throne of God and of the Lamb in the midst of the street thereof, the source of enduring life to all the holy (Ps. 46:4-5). The city is, also, seen to have the “tree of life”,579 the seal of God's first covenant in Eden (Gen. 2:9; 3:22), bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and with leaves for the healing of the nations, which has at last wrought its beneficent results and forever removed the curse. The word tree is in the singular, but the context shows that it is to be understood generically, i. e. a tree of life which is found on this side of the river and on that, or trees of life growing by the river-side.580 We notice, also, that the river, [pg 232] which in the earthly Paradise was parted and became four heads when traced to its source, is now replaced by a single river of water of life in the heavenly; and the Scripture story of man, viewed from its beginning to its close, is seen to finally lead up from the lost Paradise of creation to the Paradise regained by redemption. And in that city forever dwell only those “that are written in the Lamb's book of life”.
The crowning glory of the holy city is the abiding presence of Jehovah, for the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein, and the redeemed shall see his face581 in the beatific vision, and his name shall be upon their foreheads, and they shall reign for ever and ever. Then and there man redeemed, who has so long been separated from the face of God by the ruinous results of sin, shall be at last restored to the fulness of the divine presence to abide throughout eternity.582 Whether, indeed, God in his essential being can ever be directly apprehended by the finite spirit, is a question that with our present light we cannot definitely determine. It may well be in eternity as in time, there as well as here, that for us to see the Son is to see the Father, and that the beatific vision for which men have so often longed and hoped and prayed in the past, is to be realized in a way quite different from the common thought, by the blessed vision of the glorified and exalted Christ in the fadeless life of the perfected kingdom of God in heaven. The name which shall be upon the foreheads of the redeemed is evidently the “new name” of chapter three (v. 12) which sums up in itself all the fulness of the future revelation of God to the glorified, the transcendental and ineffable name to men upon earth “which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it”, i. e. in the future life of the heavenly kingdom.
It is surely worthy of our attention here to note in closing, how all God's revelations of himself have not only tended to grow in intensity and clearness, but also to center in the name by which he is made known. Beginning with the announcement of his sacred name [pg 233] Jehovah, as distinct from his former name Elohim, in connection with the great events of Israel's redemptive history, there is a manifest movement in the historical self-revelation of God to men that is marked by progressive steps which lead on through all the promise and mystery of the incarnate Christ to this final revelation of himself, lying beyond history, that shall be made to the redeemed under the “new name” when redemption is complete. He who was first promised to men, to be born “of the seed of the woman”, and “of the seed of Abraham”, and was afterward more clearly revealed to Israel as “the son of David”, “the servant of Jehovah”, “Immanuel”, “the Son of Man”, and “the Messiah”, and who was made known to men in his incarnation as “Jesus”, “the Christ”, and “our Lord”, was finally recognized by the church under his full redemptive title as “the Lord Jesus Christ”, by which name he shall be known throughout all the centuries to the end of time. But the vision of the city of God reaches far beyond this, and tells of his name to be then written upon the foreheads of the redeemed, manifestly his “own new name” (ch. 3:12) that is to be revealed to the glorified when redemption is complete, which stands for the full, final, and complete revelation of God in Christ in the new relations of the great future life in heaven.
Thus, with the redeemed enthroned in power, and dwelling in the unveiled presence of God revealed, there is completely fulfilled the ultimate divine purpose of man's creation and redemption. This, in John's view, is the consummation of all things, that
The transition to the closing part of the book is now made, but it is not very definitely marked, and in the division into chapters it was overlooked entirely, for the twenty-second chapter should begin at this point. Some would make the break at the close of verse seven, but it more properly belongs at the close of verse five, where the description of the New Jerusalem ends.