Heaven (11 page)

In
Genesis 3, the earth's first radical transition (mankind's fall and first judg­ment) can be seen as one bookend of human history.
In Revelation 20, we see the second bookend in the earth's last radical transition (Christ's return and last judgment), creating
a picture of great symmetry.

In Genesis, God plants the Garden on Earth; in Revelation, he brings down the New Jerusalem, with a garden at its center,
to the New Earth. In Eden, there's no sin, death, or Curse; on the New Earth, there's no
more
sin, death, or Curse. In Genesis, the Redeemer is promised; in Revelation, the Redeemer re­turns. Genesis tells the story
of Paradise lost; Revelation tells the story of Para­dise regained. In Genesis, humanity's stewardship is squandered; in Revelation,
humanity's stewardship is triumphant, empowered by the human and divine King Jesus.

These parallels are too remarkable to be anything but deliberate. These mir­ror images demonstrate the perfect symmetry of
God's plan. We live in the in-between time, hearing echoes of Eden and the approaching footfalls of the New Earth.

Paul Marshall concludes, "This world is our home: we are made to live here. It has been devastated by sin, but God plans to
put it right. Hence, we look for­ward with joy to newly restored bodies and to living in a newly restored heaven and earth.
We can love this world because it is God's, and it will be healed, be­coming at last what God intended from the beginning."
⁶⁶

The earth matters, our bodies matter, animals and trees matter,
matter
mat­ters, because God created them and intends them to manifest his glory. And as we'll see in the following chapters, the
God who created them has not given up on them any more than he has given up on us.

† An important limitation of this chart is its inability to fully reflect the "already and not yet" paradox of our being raised
with Christ and seated with him in Heaven, the present reality of our righteousness in Christ, and the fact that God's new
creation has already started with the death and resurrection of Christ.

CHAPTER 9

WHY IS EARTH'S REDEMPTION ESSENTIAL TO GOD'S PLAN?

Albert Wolters

T
he entire physical universe was created for God's glory. But humanity re­belled, and the universe fell under the weight of
our sin. Yet the serpent's seduction of Adam and Eve did not catch God by surprise. He had in place a plan by which he would
redeem mankind—and all of creation—from sin, cor­ruption, and death. Just as he promises to make men and women new, he prom­ises
to renew the earth itself.

Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. (Isaiah 65:17)

"As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me," declares the Lord, "so will your name and descendants
endure."(Isaiah 66:22)

In keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. (2 Peter 3:13)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. (Revelation 21:1)

Many other passages allude to the new heavens and New Earth without us­ing those terms. God's redemptive plan climaxes not
at the return of Christ, nor in the millennial kingdom, but on the New Earth. Only then will all wrongs be made right. Only
then will there be no more death, crying, or pain (Revelation 21:1-4).

Consider this: If God's plan was merely to take mankind to the present Heaven, or to a Heaven that was the dwelling place
of spirit beings, there would be no need for new heavens and a New Earth. Why refashion the stars of the heavens and the continents
of the earth? God could just destroy his original creation and put it all behind him. But he won't do that. Upon creat­ing
the heavens and the earth, he called them "very good." Never once has he renounced his claim on what he made. He isn't going
to abandon his creation. He's going to restore it. We won't go to Heaven and leave Earth behind. Rather, God will bring Heaven
and Earth together into the same -dimension, with no wall of separation, no armed angels to guard Heaven's perfection from
sinful mankind (Genesis 3:24). God's perfect plan is "to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head,
even Christ" (Ephesians 1:10).

God's redemptive goals are far less modest than we imagine. He surrenders no territory to the enemy. C. S. Lewis said of Milton's
Paradise Lost,
"Reading [it] makes us feel what it is like to live in a universe where every square inch, every split second, is claimed
by God and counterclaimed by God."
⁶⁷

Christ died not merely to make the best of a bad situation. He died so that mankind, Earth, and the universe itself would
be renewed to forever proclaim his glory.

GOD'S EARTHLY RENEWAL PLAN

God has never given up on his original creation. Yet somehow we've managed to overlook an entire biblical vocabulary that
makes this point clear.
Reconcile. Redeem. Restore. Recover. Return. Renew. Regenerate. Resurrect.
Each of these biblical words begins with the
re-
prefix, suggesting a return to an original con­dition that was ruined or lost. (Many are translations of Greek words with
an
ana
prefix, which has the same meaning as the English
re-)
For example,
re­demption
means to buy back what was formerly owned. Similarly,
reconciliation
means the restoration or reestablishment of a prior friendship or unity.
Renewal
means to make new again, restoring to an original state.
Resurrection
means be­coming physically alive again, after death.

These words emphasize that God always sees us in light of what he in­tended us to be, and he always seeks to
restore us
to that design. Likewise, he sees the earth in terms of what he intended it to be, and he seeks to restore it to its original
design.

Religion professor Albert Wolters, in
Creation Regained,
writes, "[God] hangs on to his fallen original creation and salvages it. He refuses to abandon the work of his hands—in fact,
he sacrifices his own Son to save his original project. Humankind, which has botched its original mandate and the whole creation
along with it, is given another chance in Christ; we are reinstated as God's managers on earth. The original good creation
is to be restored."
⁶⁸

If God had wanted to consign us to Hell and start over, he could have. He could have made a new Adam and Eve and sent the
old ones to Hell. But he didn't. Instead, he chose to redeem what he started with—the heavens, Earth, and mankind—to bring
them back to his original purpose. God is the ultimate salvage artist. He loves to restore things to their original condition—and
make them even better. God's purpose in our salvation is reflected in a phrase from the hymn "Hallelujah, What a Savior!":
"ruined sinners to reclaim."
⁶⁹
Reclaim
is another
re-
word. It recognizes that God had a prior claim on humanity that was temporarily lost but is fully restored and taken to a
new level in Christ. "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it" (Psalm 24:1). God
has never surrendered his title deed to the earth. He owns it—and he will not relinquish it to his enemies.

In
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
C. S. Lewis portrays the White Witch, who parallels the devil, as having a hold on Narnia that makes that world "always winter,
but never Christmas." Those loyal to Asian, though they've never seen him, eagerly await his appearing, for only he can make
the world right again by assuming his role as rightful king. (First, however, he will shed his redemptive blood on the Stone
Table.)

It's not only the
individuals
of Narnia who need Asian to come, it is the en­tire
world
of Narnia. Similarly, Scripture tells us, "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8).

Notice Asian's intention. He is the king, the son of the great Emperor be­yond the Sea. Yet he delegates the responsibility
of ruling the world to sons of Adam and daughters of Eve: Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy. They are the rul­ers of Narnia.
Likewise, God intends for
us,
sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, to be rulers of his New Earth, which he powerfully delivers from its always-winter-never-Christmas
curse.

It's impossible to understand the ministry of Christ without the larger view of redemption's sweeping salvage plan. Albert
Wolters points out that most of Christ's miracles "are miracles of
restoration
—restoration to health, restoration to life, restoration to freedom from demonic possession. Jesus' miracles provide us with
a sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely
living as intended by God."
⁷⁰
God placed mankind on Earth to fill it, rule it, and develop it to God's glory. But that plan has never been fulfilled. Should
we therefore conclude that God's plan was ill-conceived, thwarted, or aban­doned? No. These conclusions do not fit the character
of an all-knowing, all-wise, sovereign God.

God determined from the beginning that he will redeem mankind and re­store the earth. Why? So his original plan will be fulfilled.

Scripture shows us God's purpose with remarkable clarity; yet for many years as a Bible student and later as a pastor, I did
not think in terms of renewal and restoration. Instead, I believed God was going to destroy the earth, aban­don his original
design and plan, and start over by implementing a new plan in an unearthly Heaven. Only in the past fifteen years have my
eyes been opened to what Scripture has said all along.

What lies behind our notion that God is going to destroy the earth and be done with it? I believe it's a weak theology of
God. Though we'd never say it this way, we see him as a thwarted inventor whose creation failed. Having realized his mistake,
he'll end up trashing most of what he made. His consolation for a failed Earth is that he rescues a few of us from the fire.
But this idea is emphati­cally refuted by Scripture. God has a magnificent plan, and he will
not
surrender Earth to the trash heap.

As Wolters says, "Redemption is not a matter of an addition of a spiritual or supernatural dimension to creaturely life that
was lacking before; rather, it is a matter of bringing new life and vitality to what was there all along.... The only thing
redemption adds that is not included in the creation is the remedy for sin, and that remedy is brought in solely for the purpose
of recovering a sinless cre­ation. . . . Grace
restores
nature, making it whole once more."
⁷¹

THE NEW EARTH IS THE OLD EARTH RESTORED

Peter preached that Christ "must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long
ago through his holy prophets" (Acts 3:21). We're told that a time is coming when God will restore
everything.
This is an inclusive promise. It encompasses far more than God merely restor­ing disembodied people to fellowship in a spirit
realm. (Because living in a spirit realm is not what humans were made for and once enjoyed, it would not qualify as "restoring.")
It is God restoring mankind to what we once were, what he de­signed us to be—fully embodied, righteous beings. And restoring
the entire physical universe to what it once was.

Where will the restoration that Peter preached about be realized? The an swer, he tells us, is found in the promises given
"long ago through [God's] holy prophets." Read the prophets and the answer becomes clear—God will restore everything
on Earth.
The prophets are never concerned about some far-off realm of disembodied spirits. They are concerned about the land, the inheri­tance,
the city of Jerusalem, and the earth they walked on. Messiah will come from Heaven to Earth, not to take us away from Earth
to Heaven, but to restore Earth to what he intended so he can live with us here forever.

Luke tells the story of the prophetess Anna, a woman in her eighties, who worshiped at the Temple night and day, fasting and
praying. Upon seeing the baby Jesus, she immediately approached Mary and Joseph and "gave thanks to God and spoke about the
child to all who were looking forward to the redemp­tion of Jerusalem" (Luke 2:36-38).

Notice Luke's exact wording. What were God's people looking forward to?
Redemption.
Their own redemption? Of course. But it was much more than that. It was the redemption of not only themselves, but also their
families and community and even their city, Jerusalem. And the redemption of Jerusalem would also be the redemption of Israel.
As the entire world was promised bless­ing through Abraham, the redemption of Jerusalem and Israel speaks of the re­demption
of the earth itself.

And who would be the agent of that redemption? Jesus, this child, the Mes­siah who would become King not only of redeemed
individuals, but also King of a redeemed Jerusalem, and King of a redeemed earth. This is the gospel of the Kingdom. Anything
less is a narrow view of God's redemptive plan.

So, will the earth we know come to an end? Yes. To a
final
end? No.

Whatever sin has touched and polluted, God will redeem and cleanse. If redemption does not go as far as the curse of sin,
then God has failed. Whatever the extent of the consequences of sin, so must the extent of redemption be.

STEVEN J. LAWSON

Revelation 21:1 says the old Earth will pass away. But when people pass away, they do not cease to exist. As we will be raised
to be new people, so the earth will be raised to be a New Earth.

Did Peter invent the notion of all things being restored? No—he not only learned it from the prophets, he heard it directly
from Christ. When Peter, hoping for commenda­tion or reward, pointed out to Jesus that the disciples had left everything to
fol­low him, the Lord didn't rebuke him. Instead, he said, "At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his
glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Matthew 19:27-28).

Note Christ's word choice. He did not say "after the
destruction
of all things" or "after the
abandonment
of all things" but "at the
renewal
of all things." This is not a small semantic point—it draws a line in the sand between two fundamentally different theologies.
Mankind was designed to live on the earth to God's glory. That's exactly what Christ's incarnation, death, and res­urrection
secured—a renewed humanity upon a renewed Earth. Jesus explic­itly said "all things" would be renewed. The word
paligenesia,
translated "re­newal" in Matthew 19:28, comes from two words which together mean "new genesis" or "coming back from death
to life."
⁷²
When Jesus said that "all things" would be renewed, the disciples would have understood him to mean "all things" that were
part of the only lives they knew—those on Earth. Apart from those aspects of our present earthly lives that are inherently
sinful or are fulfilled by a greater reality (more on this later), "all things" appears to be com­prehensive.

J. R. R. Tolkien portrays a similar view of renewal in
The Hobbit,
when the dwarf king, Thorin Oakenshield, speaks his last words to Bilbo Baggins,whom he has wronged: "Farewell. . . . I go
now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and
go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate."
⁷³