What is the New Jerusalem?

Question 10105.

The New Jerusalem is the city that God has prepared for his people, described at length in Revelation 21 and 22, coming down out of heaven from God to the new earth. I take it as a literal city with real dimensions and real materials, not as a picture of the church dressed up in architecture, though it is certainly the home of the church and of all the redeemed.

John spends more space on this city than on almost anything else in his final vision, and he gives measurements. Measurements are a strong hint that we are meant to take the thing seriously as a place. So let us walk round it.

Where the city comes from

John sees it coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Two things follow from that. The city is made by God rather than built by men, and it arrives rather than evolves. Hebrews says Abraham was looking for the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God, so the expectation is old.

The name matters too. It is Hierousalem, the same name as the earthly city, with the qualifier new. God does not abandon the place-names of redemptive history. The New Jerusalem stands in continuity with the city David captured and Jesus wept over.

It descends to the new earth, which is worth noticing. The eternal home of the redeemed is not somewhere else. It comes here, to a renewed creation, and God dwells with his people in it.

The dimensions and what they suggest

The angel measures the city at twelve thousand stadia in length, breadth and height at Revelation 21:16, which is roughly fourteen hundred miles in each direction. Whether the shape is a cube or a pyramid the text does not finally settle, though the wording favours a cube. Either way the scale is startling, and a city of that footprint laid over Europe would stretch from the west of Ireland to the Black Sea.

A cube should ring a bell. The Most Holy Place in the tabernacle and in Solomon’s temple was a perfect cube. The New Jerusalem is shaped like the Holy of Holies, which says something rather magnificent: the whole city is the dwelling place of God, and everyone in it lives where only the high priest could go, and only once a year.

The wall is measured too, at a hundred and forty-four cubits, and the numbers throughout are multiples of twelve, the number of the tribes and the apostles. Israel and the church are both represented in the fabric of the place, the twelve tribes on the gates and the twelve apostles on the foundations.

What the city is made of

John describes the wall as jasper, the city as pure gold like clear glass, and the twelve foundations as adorned with twelve kinds of jewel. The twelve gates are twelve pearls, each gate a single pearl, and the street is gold, transparent as glass.

People often assume this must be figurative because gold is not transparent. I would rather say that the materials of the new creation are not required to behave like the materials of this one. If God can raise a body that is recognisably physical and yet passes through a locked door, he can manage translucent gold.

The point of the description is glory and permanence. Nothing in the New Jerusalem tarnishes, rusts, cracks or needs repointing. Everything that makes earthly cities decay has been removed at the source.

What is missing from the New Jerusalem

John tells us as much by absence as by presence. There is no temple, because the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. There is no sun or moon, because the glory of God gives it light and its lamp is the Lamb. There is no night. There is no sea. There is nothing unclean, and nobody who practises falsehood.

Above all there is no death, mourning, crying or pain, for the former things have passed away, as Revelation 21:4 promises. That list is short and it covers almost everything that has ever made a human being weep. Read it aloud in a hospice and you will discover how much weight those few words carry.

I have written separately on why there is no temple, because the answer turns out to be one of the most encouraging things in the chapter.

The river and the tree

Through the middle of the great street flows the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. On either side of the river stands the tree of life, yielding twelve kinds of fruit, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.

This is Eden restored and enlarged. The tree that was fenced off in Genesis 3 stands open in Revelation 22, and the garden has become a garden city. The Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city with a garden running through it, which is a rather better ending than a return to the beginning.

The healing of the nations does not imply sickness in eternity. The word suggests health and flourishing sustained, not disease treated. I have said more about this in my answer on the river of life.

Is the New Jerusalem literal or symbolic?

Amillennial writers generally take the city as a symbol of the church in its final glory, and they can point to the bride imagery in support. I take a different view, and my reason is consistency of method.

If I read the measurements, materials and gates as symbols while reading the resurrection, the throne and the absence of death as literal, I have made myself the arbiter of which parts are which. The literal reading is not naive; it simply refuses to spiritualise a text that has gone to the trouble of giving us a tape measure.

That said, a literal city can also carry symbolic weight. The cube shape teaches something. The gates named for the tribes teach something. Literal and meaningful are not opposites, and the New Jerusalem is both.

Who lives there

The city is the home of the redeemed of all ages. The names on the gates are Israel’s and the names on the foundations are the church’s, which fits the position I hold on the distinction between the two while showing that both belong in the one city.

Kings of the earth bring their glory into it, and its gates are never shut. Nations walk by its light. There is a wider world outside the city on the new earth, which is exactly what you would expect if the eternal state is a real creation rather than a single room.

And the servants of God will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. That is the highest promise in the Bible, and John saves it for the last chapter.

What the New Jerusalem is for

It is easy to treat the description as a catalogue of luxuries, as though the point were the property values. The point is the presence of God. Every architectural detail is arranged to say that God dwells with his people without a veil, a barrier or a priesthood in between.

That is why the absence of the temple is the loudest note in the chapter. The whole history of Israel’s worship was a system of managed distance. In the New Jerusalem the distance is gone.

If you want the doctrine in one line: God’s dwelling place is now among his people. Everything else in Revelation 21 and 22 is commentary on that sentence.

Think about how long that has been coming. God walked with Adam in the garden, then came down on Sinai behind smoke and fire, then filled a tent, then a temple, then took flesh and pitched his tent among us, then poured out his Spirit to dwell in his people. Each stage is nearer than the one before. The New Jerusalem is where that long approach arrives, and there is nowhere further for it to go.

So, now what?

If your picture of eternity has been vague and cloudy, let John retrain your imagination. Read Revelation 21 and 22 slowly, with a pencil, and notice how solid it all is. A city, a river, a tree, fruit, streets, gates and faces.

If you are weary, notice what is absent. No death, no mourning, no crying, no pain. Whatever you carried into this week, there is a place where it does not exist and you are being brought to it.

And if you have never come to Christ, notice the one condition John gives. Only those written in the Lamb’s book of life enter the city. Are you sure your name is there?

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21:2, ESV