Day 9: The End

Part 1

Welcome to Day 9! You made it well past a whole week into the challenge, and we arrived at the story's end. My hope for today and tomorrow is to truly set our end goal in mind so that as we read and study scripture, we won’t get lost in the woods. Our destination matters greatly to us. In the 21st chapter of the Book of Revelation, we get a glimpse of what it will look like as we read:

21 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.² And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
⁴ he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

⁵ And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” ¹

While Genesis 3 launches humanity into a broken world, that is not the end of the story. This metanarrative concludes with "a new kind of unification of heaven and earth”² in "the New Jerusalem [as it] comes down out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband.³ Heaven and Earth now overlap entirely. There is no separation between God's kingdom (heaven) and where we dwell (Earth). It is important to note that this "new earth" is not a rejection of the old, where it is burnt up and destroyed, as many of our brothers in the Calvin or Reformed⁴ traditions believe. Instead, the Earth reaches its completion, achieves its τέλειος (teleios), attains its perfection, and becomes what it was always meant to be.

We see this same completion, perfection, τέλειος (teleios), regarding humanity. The fulfillment of God's plan is in verse 3:

““See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;.”⁵

God desires humanity to be in a whole relationship with Him. Since the beginning, God has been moving towards us so we can once again be a people with a place in God's presence.

I have been careful not to use the word "restored" because as we turn our attention to Christ and the significance of the Holy Spirit in human hearts, this is no mere restoration to what was happening in the beginning. Instead, God is bringing our relationship to its τέλειος (teleios) to be what God had always intended it to be. However, it is not merely our relationship with God that is brought to perfection (teleios), but with creation as well! N.T. Wright explains it this way:

God’s plan is not to abandon this world, the world of which he said that it was ‘very good’. He intends to remake it. And when he does, he will raise all his people to new bodily life to live in it. That is the promise of the Christian gospel.

To live in it, yes; and also to rule over it. There is a mystery here which few today have even begun to ponder. Both Paul and Revelation stress that in God’s new world those who belong to the Messiah will be placed in charge. The first creation was put into the care of God’s image-bearing creatures. The new creation will be put into the care, the wise, healing stewardship of those who have been ‘renewed according to the image of the creator’, as Paul puts it.⁶

There will be work to do in this “new heaven and new earth,” and we will be the ones to do it. To take up our roles as co-creators with God and with each other. The city in verse 2 is the biggest clue to the advancement of God’s kingdom. Where once there was only a garden, there is now an entire city. Humanity was always created to build, cultivate, design, and invent, just like their God. And that work does not stop; it becomes magnified as we will have access to the fullness of our gifts, passion, and creativity—the people God created as we live into what it truly means to be perfect (teleios).

So we find ourselves in a place with God, but what about the people?

And we realize that our direction was always our destination. (Matthew 22:37-40)

36 "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" 37 He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

Jesus' conversation with the lawyer on Day 4 manifests itself in this new heaven and new earth. Jesus invites us into perfection, fully aware of our created purpose. Bob Johnson captures this concept exceptionally well:

So teleios is when something becomes what it was created to be. What were human beings created to be? According to Genesis 1:27, as we saw earlier, human beings are created to bear and reflect the image of God in God’s temple of heaven and earth, to bear and reflect the oneness, community, intimacy, and wholeness God experiences within the Trinity. And human beings were meant to spread that blessing of oneness through the domestic mandate as we care for God’s temple in faithfulness to the dominion mandate. For Christians, that means bearing and reflecting the image of Jesus, who we believe is the glory of God made manifest in the flesh. To know what God is like, we learn what Jesus is like, i.e., what he taught and did. And what did Jesus teach?

Simply put, to love God and love others.⁷

There is much more in the Book of Revelation, but the glimpse we see here is a place where the people of God; love God and each other. As we read scripture, this will be the destination we have chosen to head towards, and when we come to a crossroads in the woods, we will let it be the direction we travel.

However, there is one more day I want to spend on how the destination affects our journey, because I believe this futuristic dimension of perfection is breaking into the woundedness of today. It is healing us and invites us into life with God. N.T. Wright, John Wesley, and others refer to this idea as “already…not yet.” We know the “not yet” all too well, but what does it mean for the “already” to be here?

1. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Rev 21:1-5). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

2. N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 104.

3. Ibid.

4. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1949), 818.

5. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Rev 21:2). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

6. Wright, T. (2006). Simply Christian (pp. 186–187). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

7. Johnson, Bob (2018). The Genesis Project The WHY of Discipleship (pp. 97).