Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Rev. 21:1-4)As Christians, we frequently speak about faith and love, and rightly so. But we don't seem to speak as much about hope. Hope seems to have been forgotten. Or perhaps, as in Dante's Inferno, abandoned.
Of course, because God is faithful to us even when we are not faithful to him, the true Christian could never entirely abandon his hope, for his hope is tied to his union with Christ. Still, sometimes the Christian needs a reminder or an encouragement to continue hoping.
With these things in mind, I'd like to ask two questions:
1. What is our hope?
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more."
First, our hope is the promise of the new creation. While this world is a beautiful and good world, it is also a fallen world. While there are diamonds to be mined here, and beauties to behold in lands near and faraway, and while the starry heavens silently but unceasingly declare the glory of their Creator, nevertheless, it is all wearing down and falling apart. It is all passing away. Like old clothes ready to be discarded. Yet our hope is God's promise that there will soon come a new heavens and a new earth. Imagine all the goodness and beauty of this world, and, knowing God's promises in places like the end of Isaiah and Revelation, imagine how much better the world to come will be than even this world which is already beautiful! If even atheists like Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins can marvel at creation, in all its imperfections and fallenness, how much more should Christians not only appreciate the world as it is today but also how much more will Christians marvel when creation itself is renewed and paradise restored! Along these same lines, we know that creation itself groans in expectation of such things to come. Shouldn't we likewise long for his kingdom to come, and soon?
"And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."
Next, our hope is the beauty of holiness. Our hope is to be adorned like a bride is for her husband. As Christians, we long to be made perfect in holiness. We long not merely to be justified legally, which we already are in Christ, but we long to be made perfectly morally sanctified in our person, loving God and neighbor wholeheartedly and never amiss. We long to be free from sin, to no longer have sin dwell within us, because it clouds our fellowship with God, and grieves the Lord who longs jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. We long to be like Christ, to be holy, because he is holy.
"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with the, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God . . .'"
Our hope is God himself dwelling with us and among us. Our hope is to be with God and for him to be with us. Not just as a lover might send letters to his beloved from across the sea, but to be with our beloved in person. Our hope is Christ himself.
Our hope is not merely to be adorned like a bride, as above, but in fact it is to be with our Bridegroom, with Christ himself. "For your Maker is your husband; the Lord of hosts is his name" (Isa. 54:5). As much as we desire to be clothed in robes of righteousness, what we long for even more is Christ himself. We long to see his beautiful face. As Anne Cousin wrote: "The bride eyes not her garment, but her dear Bridegroom's face; I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace." Just as every bride awaits her wedding day with her groom with hope and excitement, so too do we as Christians long with eager hope to see our Lord and Savior, face to face, for then we shall be able to say with humble gratitude and joy: "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine!"
Our hope is the divine romance and its fulfillment.
"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."
Our hope is for the end of evil and sin and suffering. Today there are hospitals, doctors, and nurses because there is disease and death. But our hope which will be fulfilled is that there will be no more need for hospitals, doctors, and nurses, because there is no more disease and death.
Today there are police departments, police officers, legal systems and judges, and even militaries because there is sin and injustice in this world. Justice therefore needs to be established in order to restrain sin. But our hope is that there will be no more police or judges or even military required because there will be no more lawbreakers since people will no longer desire to sin. God alone will be our King and Judge, and his law joyfully obeyed from within our hearts because it is written and engraved in our hearts without our abiding sin resisting it. We shall beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks.
Our hope is that there will be no more pain. Our hope is that there will be no more suffering. Our hope is that there will be no more sadness. Our hope is that there will be no more grief. Our hope is that there will be no more loneliness. Our hope is that there will be no more broken relationships. Our hope is that there will be no more tears. No more bitterness and hatred. No more wasted time or lives or could-have-beens or would-have-beens or should-have-beens. Our hope is that there will be no more goodbyes. In a word, our hope is that there will be no more death, but only life -- endless, enduring, undecaying, incorruptible, undying, abundant, glorious, eternal life, with the Lord and his people, forever.
Our hope is that the Lord himself will console us and comfort us by wiping away all our tears, restoring all that was lost to us in service to him, perhaps in ways we could not have possibly imagined, but will surely be immensely thankful for. And even if we receive nothing but the Lord himself, we will be more than satisfied. "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life" (Matt. 19:29). "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).
And our hope will be fulfilled by the Lord when he does away with and tramples underfoot all evil and evil people. All he does is good, and will be seen to be good.
Of course, we don't understand his ways in the here and now. The bud of our lives may have a bitter taste. But soon we will understand, at least more so than we do now. And, then, sweet will be the flower. "Jesus answered him, 'What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand'" (John 13:7).
John Lennon couldn't have imagined a better ending!
Indeed, "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor. 2:9).
2. What is our hope for?
We know what our hope is now. But what is our hope for?
To answer this, let's look at verse 7: "The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son."
In a phrase, our hope is so that we might conquer. So that we might overcome. So that we might fight the good fight and finish the race. So that we might keep the faith. So that we might enter the kingdom of God. So that we might have God as our God and be called his sons and daughters.
Our hope is so that we would make it through this world which, along with our sinful flesh and the devil, conspire to take us down in order to discredit the good name of the Lord of grace. This they will do by any means possible, whether subtly or overtly, whether by hook or by crook, whether as a serpent to deceive us or as a dragon to assail us. Satan, this world, and our very flesh want us to give up. Nothing would please them more. They want to wear us down. To break us. To see us throw in the towel and quit. But we must not give up or give in. Rather, we must overcome. And God promises the true Christian that he will indeed overcome. So we have hope in order to overcome because Christ has promised his people that we will overcome. By God's grace to us, we will be victorious because Christ has already won the victory for us.
Few objections to Christianity are truly intellectually sound. And of the ones that I know of that might be, existentially speaking, it wouldn't be any better than believing in the fairy tale of Christianity (assuming Christianity isn't true). There'd be no grounds for believing in the one over the other. In other words, they "salvage" intellectual soundness, if such a thing would be intellectual in the first place, by giving up reason and rationality altogether. For all practical intents and purposes, however, nearly all the apostasies that I know of occur not because of persuasive intellectual arguments, primarily, but because of moral lapses or immoralities.
That's why it's important to think through things rather than to merely give up because one is going through a difficulty, however hard it may be. Or even if one is suffering through an outright evil. For starters, the doubting Christian might think along these lines: "Give up, and maybe I'll get some sort of a reprieve from my pain or suffering. At best, I might receive some pleasure here or there in this life. But, ultimately, it'll all either be meaningless, or if the Bible is true after all, then I'll possibly be separated from God and all goodness for eternity." In addition, one might seek to inoculate oneself against such an attitude or bent by reading books such as How Long, O Lord? by D.A. Carson and/or various essays and works by men like John Frame on the problem of evil and suffering.
And we ought to make our decisions for things small as well as great with the light of eternity in mind. As John Wesley wrote to his brother Charles: "I desire to have both heaven and hell ever in my eye, while I stand on this isthmus of life, between two boundless oceans."
To close, hope is the anchor of our soul. We hope in these things, and ultimately we hope in Christ, because he is our rock and he is the one who keeps us steady amidst the rising and falling waves and seas of this turbulent life. He is the solid rock on which we stand; all other ground is sinking sand. He is the one who keeps us anchored. Therefore, let us continue to hold fast to the hope set before us, let us continue to hope in the sure and steadfast anchor of our soul, let us continue to "lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb. 12:1-2). Let us continue to hope in Christ, because he already went before us and made the way for us, and because he continues to walk with us and even carry us through it all, even in the midst of the raging furnaces of this life.
And, most of all, let us continue to hope in Christ and his promises because he first loved us and gave himself for us. He who spent himself and died for us when he gave himself for us on the cross will never leave us nor forsake us. Never; it cannot be. Could Christ desire to save and redeem us, and to love us by causing his Spirit to dwell within us, but not also desire to bring us home safely to his kingdom? And can love such as Christ's which came and sought us and died for us to save us then fail to bring us home safely? Could his promise, "I give [my sheep] eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one" (John 10:28-29) fail, or fall short? Could the Father give us to the Son, but then the Son lose us (cf. Col. 3:3)? Could God give us eternal life, but then we perish in the end? No, for God cannot lie, and his word is truth.
So let us hope and continue to hope in Christ who is infinitely worthy of our hope.
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:31b-32, 37-39)
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