Do You Have the Guts to Remain in the Church? — Revelation 21:1-8
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My impression is that nowadays the word church evokes more unpleasant than pleasant feelings. There are many reasons for this.
First, we’ve been saturated for decades with the phrase “church sex-abuse scandal.” The abuse of children, so wicked, so monstrous and abhorrent to the gospel and all that the church is intended to be, has nonetheless stained the church’s name.
Then, church leaders are a sorry parade of more-or-less flawed people. There are fallen celebrity preachers like Jimmy Swaggart (who contracted prostitutes) and Joshua Harris (who kissed Christian sexual ethics, his wife, and Christ goodbye). There are the great intellectuals whose good work was flawed in some way, like Augustine (who taught baptismal regeneration) and John Wesley (who taught perfectionism). All the Reformation fathers bore a magnum vitium, a great blemish, like Martin Luther (who wrote fiercely against the Jews) and John Calvin (who oversaw the burning of Servetus). Local church leaders are more-or-less weak, inconsistent, ungodly, and hypocritical. I know.
We may add a nagging sense that the church seems little, feeble, and pathetic in comparison to such world powers as Google, Hollywood, and the CCP. And who hasn’t suffered conflict, disappointment, and a lack of love and care in the church?
To top it off, Christians are now routinely demonized or ridiculed in the social sphere, so church membership is not safe. That was certainly true for the first readers of Revelation, for whom church attachment meant social ostracism at best, and even violent death.
Perhaps you feel all of this, and you are already treading the well-worn path out of the church: losing your joy in church; losing your desire to serve and give to the church; losing your confidence in the church and your love for the church; and learning to dislike and despise the church. You make excuses and take opportunities to stay away. In your heart you have left, actual leaving is imminent. In short, we are all somewhere on a spectrum where the church looks more-or-less irrelevant and unattractive, and where we are tempted to leave.
How does the church look in God’s eyes? Does he share our negativity, our pessimism, our dislike? Is it something he would like to leave? Not at all. In Revelation 21:1-6 God shows us the church as he sees it. We may highlight four things from this magnificent passage, this Mount Everest of Scripture.
1. God is preparing an extraordinary place for the church.
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 (Rev. 21:1).
Compare this with the opening words of the Bible, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). To punish sin, God justly cursed his good creation with pain in child-bearing, marital conflict, frustrating and toilsome labor, and death (Gen. 3:16-19). Yet, Christ comprehensively destroys sin in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). He lifts the curse for sin, and John sees the “new” heaven and earth.
Revelation 21 shows heaven and earth remade, renewed, restored, and vastly greater because we will see something that Adam and Eve could not see before the Fall—God’s grace. The renewed heaven and earth, astonishingly glorious, is nonetheless only the setting for something greater.
2. God has prepared the church to be his Son’s bride.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev. 21:2).
We decorate wedding venues with beautiful and expensive things. Guests dress up in their better clothes. The groomsmen’s beards are clipped and their new shoes shine. A pianist plays calming ballads amidst fragrant bouquets of ivory roses. Yet, the person everyone is waiting for, the focus of attention, is the bride. What groom would disagree that all the beautiful accoutrements are a setting for his bride?
It is the same with the new heaven and earth. God renews it and prepares it as the breathtaking setting for the arrival of his Son’s bride. The bride is described as Jerusalem, the City of God, God’s chosen dwelling.
By the time Revelation was written, earthly Jerusalem had been razed. Jesus prophesied this, and the Romans under Titus came in AD 70 and obliterated the city that had committed both cosmic and political rebellion. Here in Revelation 21 is the true Jerusalem of which the earthly city was a pale and flawed shadow. It is the new Jerusalem, Jerusalem renewed, restored, vastly greater than its earthly type.
“Note a poignant detail in Revelation 21:4. God does not promise to “wipe tears” from our eyes, but to “wipe every tear,” as in every individual tear.”
God prepares and adorns the city-bride for his Son. The Greek word kosmeō means, on one level, to tame chaos, “to put in order so as to appear neat or well organised.” On another level it means “to adorn, to decorate ... to make beautiful or attractive” (BDAG, p. 560).
This is the church in God’s eyes, the beautiful bride that he has adorned for his Son. Note that God did not pick up the pre-existing institution of human marriage as a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the Church. Christ and the Church is primary and human marriage is secondary. Our marriages are meant to be object lessons—living billboards—showing our children, our society, and the world the love of Christ for his church. The church is heaven’s brightest jewel, as verses 9-27 show. Though we will see even greater glories.
3. God sees the church as his home.
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” (Rev. 21:3).
After Adam sinned, God banished and drove him out from Eden, where God was present (Gen. 3:23-24). Revelation 21 shows that our banishment has ended. “Dwelling” translates the biblical word for tabernacle (σκηνη, skēnē). As God camped with Israel in the desert, so God will come in the new heaven and earth to live closely with his people.
Yet, whereas Israel’s tabernacle served to separate the people from God’s holy and dangerous presence, there will be no such separation in the new heaven and earth:
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor. 13:12)
Since the Temple veil was torn during the crucifixion of Christ Jesus (Matt. 27:51), God has not tied his presence to any building or city or “sacred space.” Now his Holy Spirit blazes over the heads and within hearts of each and every one of his people—just as the Pentecost tongues of fire demonstrated. And the Father’s grace, mercy, and peace is with us “in truth and love” (2 John 1:3). And the Son has thrillingly and abundantly kept his promises to be a constant living presence among his people:
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matt. 18:20)
“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20)
The church is glorious because God is not just El, “God,” but Immanu-El, “God with us.”
4. God sees the church as creation perfected.
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. And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:4-5a).
Sin brought the curse, and the curse brought death and pain, grief and tears. But God does away with these things because the πρωτα, prōta, these “first things” or “former things,” have completely gone.
Note a poignant detail in Revelation 21:4. God does not promise to “wipe tears” from our eyes, but to “wipe every tear,” as in every individual tear. He will specifically and individually assuage every single cause of upset and every single manifestation of upset.
Mourning refers to inner anguish, the quiet sorrow that we so often feel. Crying refers to those loud outward expressions of grief, to wailing, and even shouts of pain and distress. The point is, every type and expression of grief will be removed. There will be nothing left to grieve for.
Here and now pain stabs and claws at our hearts. Warm friendships grow cold. Family ties are rent by stinging words. Drenching cascades of bitter regrets soak us to the bone. Our frail bodies ache and tire under the inexorable grinding disintegration of ageing. Death’s arrows, black and sharp, defeat every armor, pierce every tender place. Sin, that bleak ghoul, that anti-Midas, turns everything it touches to poison and shame.
For now, sackcloth is our native garb. Dust and ashes are our wretched crown:
I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping. (Ps. 6:6)
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?” (Ps. 42:3)
Yet, the Man of Sorrows came to help: “Surely he has borne our griefs” (Isa. 53:4). He has lifted from us our sin and grief, sin’s poisonous fruit. He has wiped away every tear. God loves the church because in the new heaven and earth the church will never grieve and will always rejoice.
While we live in the midst of the picture, God sees the whole finished picture: “It is done!”
Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done!” (Rev. 21:5b-6a).
There is something thrilling about those three words, “It is done!” It is not the same as “It is finished” (John 19:30) when Jesus declared his redeeming accomplished. “It is done” translates a word (γινομαι, ginomai) that refers to the process of being born, created, and becoming.
“Revelation 21:1-6 shows us the church as God sees it. He’s created a new heaven and earth for it. It is his Son’s precious bride. The church is the home of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. ”
Imagine God’s work of new creation painted on a vast canvas. On the left-hand side is the death and resurrection of Christ. In the middle are the Last Days in which we now live. On the righthand side is the Final Judgment, and the final presentation of the bride to the Son.
We live in the midst of the picture, and what we see around us is far from complete. God sees the whole finished picture, “it is done.” (Word nerds will want to know that this verb is in the perfect tense. The action is completed, and the resulting state is ongoing now.) And here he shows us the completed picture so that we can enjoy it and be encouraged by it!
Do you want the new heaven and earth? Do you hunger and thirst for it?
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Rev. 21:6b-8).
Do you want the new heaven and earth? Do you hunger and thirst for it? It is free. It comes free from the grace of God. All we must do is hold onto Christ and stand firm in the onslaught of evil.
The character traits of those who succumb reflect the reasons why people leave the church. Sometimes they give in to cowardice, for it takes guts to remain in the church. They leave to be free to unbelieve, to act vilely, to hate, to indulge in sexual immorality, to indulge in alcohol and narcotic substances (that’s what “sorcery” involves), and to pursue other world views, other gods, and untruth.
Yes, the word church may evoke unpleasant feelings. Monstrous scandals, flawed leaders, weakness, conflict, disappointment, and lovelessness have stained the church’s reputation. Church-membership is not safe.
We’re always tempted to leave. Many have, and many more will. Maybe you are half out the door.
Revelation 21:1-6 shows us the church as God sees it. He’s created a new heaven and earth for it. It is his Son’s precious bride. The church is the home of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And he will ultimately perfect the church from sin and the grief of sin. In fact, he will transform our flaws into tools, tools that create humility, empathy, hatred of sin, and total dependence on the Savior.
May we learn to see, love, cherish, and honor the church as God does. May no persecution or hardship push us out of the church. May we stand firm now, so that we will stand and enjoy her then, and for all eternity, in all her perfected glory.
