Commentary on Revelation 21:1-6; 22:1-5

• 7/27/2025: Revelation 1:4-8; accompanying text: John 8:13-20
• 8/3/2025: Revelation 4:1-11; accompanying text: John 17:1-5
• 8/10/2025: Revelation 5:1-13; accompanying text: John 1:29-31
• 8/17/2025: Revelation 7:9-17; accompanying text: John 14:1-4
• 8/24/2025: Revelation 13:1-18; accompanying text John 12:30-32
• 8/31/2025: Revelation 21:1-6; 22:1–5; accompanying texts: John 4:1-14; 16:20-22

Week 6 (8/31/2025): The New Heaven and the New Jerusalem

Revelation 21:1–6; 22:1–5

Accompanying texts: John 4:1-14; 16:20–22

What happens now is what all of creation has been waiting for (see also Romans 8:21): to become the fit and blessed dwelling place of God. The new heaven and new earth come to be, and the new Jerusalem descends from heaven as the setting for the wedding celebration. 

While the city has boundaries, they are life-giving, not death-dealing boundaries. The foursquare city has its walls, but each wall is perforated by three gates. These gates “will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there”—which is to say, the gates of heaven are never locked once and for all. Quite unlike the lake of fire, which happily, will be shut and locked eternally!

In the new Jerusalem, the name Immanuel, God-with-us (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23), becomes a living reality: “He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

Hope that is seen is not hope (Romans 8:24). Revelation knows this hasn’t happened yet. But this hope is “trustworthy and true” (Revelation 21:5). In a sense, “it is done!” (21:6). Revelation offers spectacles for stereoscopic vision—one lens perceiving and resisting the evil that continues, the other lens perceiving the victory that is already Christ’s.