The New Jerusalem

The city of Jerusalem goes back to the first millennium before Christ; it has been continuously inhabited for more than three thousand years. Jerusalem has been the scene of over 100 battles by those attempting to maintain control of this “City of Peace.” It has been conquered dozens of times, including by the Persians, Romans, Ottoman Turks, and the British.

So important is the city that even our verse for today, pointing to the future, talks about it—but not the Jerusalem of ancient history, of the toppled temples, of the Crusaders, or even of modern Israel. Instead, it’s the new Jerusalem, which, along with the “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1), will be the future, eternal home of the Redeemed of all ages.

In today’s verse, we see the “New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Isaiah describes the redeemed as being the ornaments with which Zion is decorated: “Thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth” (Isaiah 49:18 KJV). Jesus took up the same illustration in His parable of the wedding feast, describing God’s people as the guests at the wedding (Matthew 22:1–14). Her beauty, the “fine linen” with which she is adorned (Revelation 19:7, 8), is the righteousness of Christ.

This city is not like the Jerusalem of old or any other city on Earth, which have typically been places of sin, vice, violence, crime, and death. No, this Jerusalem will be the center of “eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began” (Titus 1:2) to those who have been saved by the blood of Jesus, the one who “[bore] our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4) at the cross.

Yes, the death of Jesus outside the old Jerusalem paves the way for us to have eternal life in the New Jerusalem.

Lord, may I have through Jesus an abundant entrance into the New Jerusalem.

For Further Study: Isaiah 53:5; Hebrews 13:12; 1 John 2:2

Key Bible Texts

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Revelation 21:2 KJV)