The new heavens and the new earth

All things made new

The Bible begins with creation and ends with new creation. God promised through Isaiah, "behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth" (Isaiah 65:17), and Peter wrote, "we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13). John saw it come.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21:1-2

The hope is not that people leave the earth for heaven, but that God comes down to live with them: "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man" (Revelation 21:3). Creation, which now groans in bondage, "will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). Jesus called that day "the renewal of all things" (Matthew 19:28), and Peter "the restoration of all things" (Acts 3:21). "No longer will there be any curse" (Revelation 22:3), and "the kings of the earth will bring their glory" into the city (Revelation 21:24).

The hope the church has held

The Nicene Creed ends looking for "the life of the world to come" Nicene Creed. Irenaeus taught that the creation God made will not be thrown away but renewed, and that the righteous will enjoy God in it Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 5. John Wesley wrote on Romans 8:21: "Destruction is not deliverance: therefore whatsoever is destroyed, or ceases to be, is not delivered at all." Wesley Christians often call their final hope ‘heaven’, but the picture Scripture ends with is God's people, raised bodily, seeing and serving him in a renewed heaven and earth: eternal life.

Where the traditions differ

Christians have long discussed whether the new heavens and earth are this world renewed or a world made new after this one is done away. Second Peter 3:10 says the elements will be destroyed by fire, and its last clause reads differently in different manuscripts, ‘laid bare’ or ‘burned up’. Several seventeenth-century Lutheran theologians taught that the substance of this world will be annihilated and a new one created; many in the Reformed and Wesleyan traditions stressed that the same world will be purified by fire and renewed. The Orthodox churches stress the transfiguration of the whole creation in Christ, filled with the glory of God.

On every view the new creation is God's work, and in it there will be no more sin, death or tears. This hope is the goal of eschatology, and a reason to treasure God's world now. For more, see the lesson Resurrection, judgment and the new creation and What is hope?