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.”
Revelation 21:2-3 ESV
Many readers think the City is something that exists at or after the end of the world and/or after death. This is understandable. The next verse says there is no longer any death in this city.
Ultimately, the new Jerusalem, won’t be perfectly realized until after the resurrection, but I don’t think that means it is nothing but a future hope. My main concern here is that people assume, whatever their eschatology, that the city is simply a heavenly creation given to us like manna was given in the desert or Jesus gave blind men their sight.
Yes, we can easily think of the city as one “whose designer and builder is God,” though Hebrews 11:10 clearly states God is the architect of the foundations of the city, leaving room for something more like what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.
If you flip back to Genesis 2, you will realize the city is described in ways that are familiar. The last two times gold is mentioned in the entire Bible is in describing the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:18, 21). Both times it is not just “gold” but “pure gold.” And downriver from the Garden God planted in the east of Eden, God made sure to provide and tells us about gold (Genesis 2:12). “And the gold in that land is good” (v. 13).
That same verse tells us there is also onyx stone, which happens to be the material of which one of the new Jerusalem’s gates is constructed (Revelation 21:20).
God created Humanity to fill the earth and subdue it. One part of that project was to glorify God by importing gold and other things into God’s garden to make it a great city. Genesis shows sin derailing this project and fallen men twisting the project through impatience and unbelief, but Revelation is obviously a transformed Garden of Eden with the tree of life and a river flowing from it (Revelation 22:1-2; Genesis 2:9, 10).
While the city is built by God’s grace and power, it isn’t simply given to us. We build it and become it:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:19–22 ESV
And if a Temple, then also the holy city. And also a body: the temple grows by us being joined together with Christ and that is how the Church grows.
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Ephesians 4:15–16 ESV
The city is us. Yes it is a divine gift and the cornerstone is Christ, but we get to participate in the construction of it. We become God’s civilization.