The Heavenly Jerusalem: God’s Home With His People
When we speak about going to heaven, we often leave the explanation there. We know we will be with the Lord, but we may picture little beyond clouds, light, and an escape from the troubles of this life. Scripture gives us a much fuller expectation. God will raise His people bodily, make a new heaven and a new earth, and dwell with them. John describes a holy city coming down from God, with gates, foundations, a river, and the tree of life. The heavenly Jerusalem belongs within that promised future.
I want us to follow how that promise develops, because Revelation does not introduce God’s desire to dwell with His people as a new idea. Abraham looked for a city God would build. The tabernacle and temple taught Israel about His presence. In the final chapters of Revelation, the separation caused by sin has ended, and God’s servants live before Him without the curse that has burdened human life since Eden.
The City God Has Prepared
Abraham obeyed God’s call and went to the land He promised, yet he lived there in tents. Receiving the promise did not mean that Abraham possessed its complete fulfillment during his lifetime. Paul explains in Hebrews that Abraham was looking ahead:
For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
A tent can be taken down and moved. A city with foundations suggests a settled home, and Abraham trusted God to provide one. Hebrews 11 goes on to speak of a better, heavenly country and of God preparing a city for those who died in faith. Their deaths did not cancel His promise. The God who called them would fulfill what He had said beyond the limits of their earthly lives.
Later, Paul tells believers that their relationship to this heavenly city has already begun through Christ:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels.
Believers have access to God and belong to His heavenly assembly now. We do not have to wait until death to become His people. But Hebrews 12 does not say that the city has already descended to the new earth or that our bodily resurrection has already occurred. Our present standing in Christ assures us of an inheritance whose full enjoyment is still ahead.
John describes that future in Revelation:
Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
The bridal description expresses beauty, preparation, and the closeness of the redeemed to their Lord. Revelation 21:9–10 makes the connection especially plain: the angel offers to show John the bride, the Lamb’s wife, and shows him the holy city. I understand the city as a real dwelling whose glory is inseparable from the people who belong to the Lamb. The imagery does not require us to discard its gates, foundations, or streets as though God were promising no actual home.
The city comes from God. Human effort does not gradually construct it, and no political project can turn the present world into the New Jerusalem. God prepares the dwelling and brings it down. John then hears what its arrival means for those who live there:
And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.”
This promised life with God includes the resurrection of our bodies. The city descends in the setting of a new creation, where His redeemed people will live. Being with Christ after death is a blessed expectation, but Scripture carries our hope onward to resurrection and life with Him in the world He makes new. I develop that broader subject in the study on Heaven.
A Measured City With Named Gates and Foundations
John is shown more than a distant brightness. An angel measures the city with a reed and records its dimensions:
The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal.
Then he measured its wall: one hundred and forty-four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel.
A furlong is an ancient unit of distance; twelve thousand of them describes an immense city. Its length, breadth, and height are equal. The wall is measured separately in cubits, a unit based on the length of a forearm. John gives enough detail to convey the city’s vastness and order, although he does not supply every detail needed for a construction drawing. For example, the wall’s measurement does not itself explain whether John means its height or thickness. We can receive what he records without pretending that he has answered every architectural question.
Along with the measurements, John records names on the gates and foundations. These connect the city to the people through whom God made His promises known:
Also she had a great and high wall with twelve gates, and twelve angels at the gates, and names written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.
Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
The gates recall God’s dealings with Israel, while the foundations bear the names of the apostles who testified concerning Christ. Jesus came through Israel as the promised Messiah, and His apostles proclaimed His death and resurrection. The city displays the unity of God’s work of redemption without erasing the distinct place of Israel or the apostles.
Twelve appears repeatedly in this description: twelve gates, twelve foundations, and a wall measured at one hundred and forty-four cubits, which is twelve times twelve. I see that repeated pattern as expressing the completeness of what God has prepared. But recognizing meaning in the numbers does not oblige us to turn the whole city into an abstraction. A real place can also communicate what God has accomplished. Its measurements, names, and beauty all serve the description John was given.
God’s Dwelling Without a Temple
To understand why the city’s equal dimensions are striking, we need to look back at the sanctuary. When God instructed Moses to build the tabernacle, He stated its purpose:
And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.
God intended to dwell among Israel, and He prescribed how they were to approach Him. Moses was not free to devise a sanctuary according to his own preferences. Paul explains that the earthly arrangement represented heavenly realities:
Who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
Within the sanctuary, the Most Holy Place was set apart from the rest. The tabernacle’s arrangement points to a cubical inner chamber, and the dimensions of that chamber in Solomon’s temple are stated explicitly:
The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and twenty cubits high. He overlaid it with pure gold, and overlaid the altar of cedar.
The New Jerusalem’s equal length, breadth, and height recall that inner sanctuary. I understand the correspondence to convey that the whole city is a dwelling in God’s holy presence. What was represented by a restricted chamber in the earthly sanctuary extends throughout the home of His redeemed people. John nevertheless reports no temple building within the city:
But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
The absence of a temple does not mean that worship has disappeared or that God has withdrawn. He and the Lamb are present with His people. Under the old covenant, veils, priestly duties, and repeated sacrifices taught Israel about God’s holiness and the seriousness of sin. In the New Jerusalem, the people redeemed through the Lamb’s blood enjoy the fellowship toward which those arrangements pointed. There is no remaining sin to bar their approach and no need for another sacrifice.
God’s presence also accounts for the city’s light:
The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.
John says the city does not need the sun or moon to illuminate it. We should keep his wording in view; he is explaining the source of its light, rather than answering every question about heavenly bodies in the new creation. The glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. Isaiah had spoken of the Lord providing everlasting light for His people:
The sun shall no longer be your light by day, Nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you; But the LORD will be to you an everlasting light, And your God your glory.
The Lamb is Jesus Christ, the eternal Son who is fully God. He does not illuminate the city as a created lamp standing beside God. Revelation speaks of the throne of God and of the Lamb, placing the crucified and risen Savior at the center of this dwelling. The One whose blood redeemed His people will be with them in glory, and their worship and service will continue in His presence.
The New Creation and the End of the Curse
Revelation also tells us where this city belongs in the sequence of future events. Chapter 20 describes Christ’s thousand-year reign, Satan’s final rebellion, his judgment, and the judgment before the great white throne. Then John sees the new creation:
Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.
I distinguish the millennial kingdom, Christ’s future thousand-year reign on earth, from the eternal state described here. They are connected parts of God’s purpose, but they are not interchangeable. The final rebellion and judgment come before the new heaven and new earth. We should not move every detail of the New Jerusalem backward into the millennium or use the eternal state to erase God’s promises concerning Israel and Christ’s earthly reign. The study on the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God considers the kingdom language more fully.
The new creation will be free from the evil that now spoils our life together. Peter describes it as the fulfillment of God’s promise:
Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
We know what it is like to see people lie, exploit the vulnerable, or ridicule those who obey the Lord. Even when justice is done in one case, another wrong follows. Righteousness dwelling in the new creation means that this corruption will no longer characterize human life. God will not merely grant His people a temporary respite before evil regains its hold.
John’s description of the city then takes us back to what humanity lost in Eden. After Adam and Eve sinned, they were expelled from the garden and denied access to the tree of life. In Revelation 22, the water of life flows openly from God’s throne:
And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
The river and the tree display life supplied by God in abundance. John describes fruit yielded every month and leaves for the healing of the nations. He does not explain every feature of how life in the new creation will function. We do know that this description belongs with his assurance that death, sorrow, crying, and pain have passed away in Revelation 21:4. The healing of the nations must be understood within that restored creation, rather than as a prediction that the present cycle of disease and bereavement continues indefinitely. The study on the tree of life follows its place in Scripture from Eden to the New Jerusalem.
Alongside these provisions for life, John announces the removal of the curse that followed human sin:
And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him.
God’s servants will serve Him, see His face, and bear His name, as the following verses explain. Their life will include purposeful service and fellowship with Him. The passage gives no reason to picture endless boredom or an eternity in which redeemed people have nothing to do. They will reign forever, with no curse to frustrate their labor or corrupt their relationships.
Nor are they being placed in a restored garden only to face another fall and expulsion. In the sequence John records, Satan has already received his final judgment, the wicked have been judged, and death itself has been cast into the lake of fire. The city’s inhabitants will not live under the threat that their home may eventually be lost. For more on the resurrection passages that lead into this future, see the last day and the first resurrection.
Who Enters the City, and How Should We Live?
Because the city is free from sin, we cannot treat its description as a promise that everyone will enter regardless of their response to Christ. John identifies those who belong there:
But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
Our hope rests in the Lamb who redeems sinners. Family ancestry, religious reputation, and an interest in heavenly things cannot reconcile us to God. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, became man and lived without sin. Wicked people inflicted His bodily suffering and death, which He willingly endured for our redemption. Through His shed blood and death, He completed His saving work before rising bodily from the dead. We are called to repent and trust Him, rather than attempt to establish a claim to this inheritance through our own merit.
Jesus had already assured His disciples that He would provide a place for them. On the night before His crucifixion, He spoke to them about His Father’s house:
In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
Jesus places the emphasis on being with Him. Although He does not give the city’s dimensions here, He assures His disciples that He will prepare a place and come again to receive them. They can trust Him with their future because He has undertaken to bring them to Himself. I discuss our expectation of His coming further in the study on the blessed hope.
Until then, believers live here while belonging to the Lord who will return. Paul describes that position this way:
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The next verse speaks of Christ transforming our lowly body to conform it to His glorious body. Our hope includes the restoration of the body in which we now endure weakness and suffering. We await the Savior who will redeem it completely.
Because the Lord has secured our future with Him, we can hold our possessions with the freedom Abraham had when he lived in tents. His trust in God extended beyond the property he possessed during his lifetime. We should care for what the Lord entrusts to us without expecting a house, an income, or a place in society to provide the security only He can give.
Peter also connects the promised new creation with holy conduct in the present. If I expect to live in a world where righteousness dwells, I should not make peace with dishonesty, cruelty, or sexual immorality now. The grace that brings us into God’s family teaches us to leave sin behind. Obedience does not purchase our place in the city; it expresses the new life we have received through Christ.
This hope also helps us endure losses we cannot repair in this life. Some faithful believers suffer severely, and many die without seeing relief from those who persecute them. The promise of the New Jerusalem does not suggest that their faith failed. God has promised them resurrection, life in His presence, and an end to death itself. We can grieve honestly while trusting that the harm sin has done will not govern our future forever.
My Final Thoughts
From Abraham’s expectation of a city to John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, God has promised His people a home He Himself provides. The tabernacle and temple taught them about His holy presence; the Lamb’s redemption brings them into fellowship with Him. In the new creation, that fellowship will be enjoyed without sin, death, or the curse.
I want us to read these passages with enough care to distinguish what God has revealed from the details He has not explained. He has told us who dwells there, whose throne is there, and why nothing unclean can enter. Our confidence belongs in Jesus Christ, who gave Himself to redeem us and promised to receive us to Himself. We can obey Him through the hardships of this present life knowing that He will keep His promise.