“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. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Rev. 21:1–2)
If to be exiled is to be separated, displaced from, or cut off from the place or people we most love, then the end of exile must mean, among other things, reunion: the coming back together of what has been kept apart through exile.
Scripture’s story arc goes from union in Genesis to reunion in Revelation. We were together with God in the garden then exiled because of our sin (Gen. 3:23–24), cut off from God’s presence until Christ purchased our reconciliation on the cross. This turning point set the course for exiled people to return, through Christ’s blood, to the paradise of God’s presence. In this glorious reunion it’ll be declared from the throne, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man” (Rev. 21:3).
The end of exile in John’s Apocalypse includes vivid imagery of climactic battles (20:7–10), God’s triumph over the “that ancient serpent” Satan (v. 2), judgment before a “great white throne” (vv. 11–13), and Babylon’s fall (18:1–24). The climactic victory over Babylon is especially sweet for the exiled church. Symbolizing all the cities of the world (in John’s day, especially Rome) who oppose God and are “drunk with the blood of the saints” (17:6), Babylon will be brought to ruin, her oppression of God’s people halted forever.
This epic victory over Satan and Babylon sets the stage for the magnificent reunion envisioned in chapters 21–22. I want to reflect here on two interrelated images of “reunion” we see in Revelation’s description of the new heavens and new earth: (1) the marriage supper of the Lamb and (2) the “garden-city” description of the new creation.
Scripture’s story arc goes from union in Genesis to reunion in Revelation.
In the marriage image, God’s beloved Bride (the church) finally unites with the Bridegroom in wedded bliss. And in the garden-city image, we catch a glimpse of the city—since Genesis 3 a fragile attempt by a fallen man to create his own paradise—reaching its perfected form in God’s presence, being reunited with the paradise so long ago lost.
Longings of Every Exile
Revelation’s author, John, is an exile in the most literal sense. He writes from the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, where he’d been exiled due to Roman persecution of Christians (likely under the emperor Domitian). No doubt feeling the ache for reunion with his brothers and sisters in Christ across the sea, John writes to encourage his fellow exiles—specifically seven historic churches in Asia Minor.
The dual threats of pagan polytheism and Roman persecution caused some of these fledgling churches to falter, but John pushed them to persevere. To the beleaguered, weary, and impatient exiles of his day—and to those in the generations that followed—John’s Apocalypse communicates a rousing and hopeful message: God wins in the end. So hold fast.
Though originally written to strengthen and encourage first-century Christians, Revelation speaks to the church throughout its existence between Christ’s first coming (already) and second coming (not yet). It’s a dispatch to exile-believers in every age.
In every century, God’s people are an eschatological people: a people in tension. We feel the tension of a long-distance relationship between an engaged couple—the desperate longing to be with our Beloved. We feel the tension between the earthly city where we’re aliens and the city of God where we’ll be citizens.
It’s the longing felt by the bride who keeps watch at home as her husband is off fighting a distant, dangerous war—her eyes ever on the horizon, waiting for his return. It’s the longing of every exile, wanderer, or refugee displaced from his homeland—his heart haunted by a home he may never see again.
We all feel these exile longings, even if we’ve never been a military wife or a refugee. These are the spiritual longings of a pilgrim people, and they make the payoff of the Bible’s Revelation denouement all the more dramatic.
Longest Engagement Ever
History is moving toward a marriage feast. We’re living in the longest engagement season ever. This is the picture in Revelation 19:7: “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure.” The Bride is us, the people of God. The Bridegroom is Jesus, the Lamb. The wedding feast is our longed-for reunion.
The imagery continues in 21:2: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Again, the Bride is the universal church. John uses the imagery of the holy city (a symbol of the community of God’s people) synonymously with bridal imagery. And in both 19:7 and 21:2, words of readiness and preparation are central. The time has finally come. It’s the moment when the doors are opened, the music is cued, and the ravishing bride—having long waited for this moment—sees and walks toward her groom.
If you’ve ever planned a wedding, either as a fiancé (man), fiancée (woman), or financier (parents), you know what the waiting is like. My wife and I had a seven-month engagement, which felt long in the moment. But it’s nothing compared to the thousands-of-years-long engagement story the Bible tells.
We’re living in the longest engagement season ever. The wedding feast is our longed-for reunion.
From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is a roller-coaster marriage story. In the Old Testament, Israel is often depicted as an unfaithful wife (e.g., Hos. 2). And in the New Testament, Jesus refers to himself as a bridegroom on more than one occasion (Matt. 25:1–13; Mark 2:18–20). At the Cana wedding scene, the bridegroom gets the credit for the “good wine” that mysteriously appears, but we know it was Jesus—the ultimate Bridegroom—who miraculously supplied this wine (John 2:9–10).
The gospel story has all sorts of parallels with ceremonial elements of first-century marriages (and contemporary marriages, for that matter). Like a dowry or bride-price paid to secure a marital union, a great price is paid by Christ on the cross to secure his Bride (1 Cor. 6:20). Like a betrothal or engagement, which is followed by an interval of waiting before the marriage is consummated, Christ came to earth in the flesh and made a promise to his Bride that he’d go and prepare a place for her and then come again to retrieve her—after which they’d begin a forever life together (John 14:2–3). In the meantime, we wait for his return—and for that unending Revelation 19 wedding feast to finally and beautifully begin.
Christ is preparing. We, the Bride, are preparing. Both wait expectantly, aching for the reunion that will come in that marriage-feast moment.
Whether you’re married and can remember your engagement season, or you’ve walked closely with someone through theirs, put yourself in that mental space again: anticipation, expectation, preparation, giddy excitement, slight apprehension, hope. That’s the space we’re in now.
But then recall the feeling of the wedding itself, particularly the post-ceremony party, feast, and honeymoon: the unbridled joy, the overflowing love, the ecstasy of two becoming one, and that blissful morning-after feeling of an entire future together that’s only just beginning.
That’s the “not yet” we’ll one day have—only infinitely better than we can presently imagine.
Eternal City
There’s something magical about city gardens. Central Park in New York. Hyde Park in London. Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Any time I visit a new world city, I make it a priority to spend time in its most famous gardens. Some of my favorites are Cape Town’s Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, Barcelona’s Park Güell, Vancouver’s Stanley Park, and San Diego’s Balboa Park.
We love city parks because they bear witness (albeit in a slightly artificial, highly manicured way) to the possibility of organic, interdependent peace between thriving people and thriving land—an ancient beauty that’s haunted us since we were exiled from Eden.
When Adam and Eve were banished from the garden (Gen. 3:22–24), they were cut off from its bounty and from the perfect balance within God’s presence. An angel barred reentry and access to the Tree of Life, forcing them to build civilization outside the boundaries of God’s sacred space. Yet in Revelation, we see the reversal as man is given access again to what had been cut off, “that they may have the right to the tree of life” (Rev. 22:14).
Scripture is bookended by the Tree of Life—this image of God’s life-giving presence and ceaseless bounty, where humans coexist with nature and never hunger or thirst. Yet in between the trees—where we now live—cities and gardens are in tension. Disunity and discord reign. Humanity and the natural world coexist in tenuous balance. Ecological degradation and the depletion of natural resources result.
Yet whereas human cities (which create high demand for consumer goods) and nature (which has a limited supply to meet that demand) have been in a fraught, fragile balance since Genesis, in Revelation’s vision they’re a perfect, harmonious blend, the people’s needs fully met by God’s abundant supply. Revelation 21–22 doesn’t show a city with a garden in it but a garden city, like one gigantic park full of rivers and trees (22:1–3). Note the rivers of life described in verse 1 flow “from the throne of God.” The river doesn’t go by or around the throne but proceeds from it. This is imagery of God-originating abundance. It communicates a return to what was lost in Eden: an ecology of perfect supply that depends entirely on God’s infinite generosity.
Just as we live now in the “engagement” tension of a fiancé and fiancée longing to become one, so we live in a period in which the city (human civilization east of Eden) longs to be reunited with the garden (Edenic paradise of God’s perfect presence). Humanity’s attempts to construct paradise on its own terms have repeatedly fallen short.
The first city builder mentioned in Scripture is Cain (Gen. 4:17), and it’s noteworthy his city-building immediately follows his banishment from God’s presence (v. 16). Stripped of the shalom and security of God’s place, Cain is left to wander and build his own city in a hostile world. “For God’s Eden [Cain] substitutes his own,” observes Jacques Ellul, who describes this substitution as “the act by which Cain takes his destiny on his own shoulders, refusing the hand of God in his life.”
Indeed, from Cain’s first city (which he named Enoch) to the great cities of today—from Babel to Beijing, Nineveh to New York, Sodom to Sin City (Las Vegas)—cities often evoke a certain spirit: if not outright opposition to God, at least proud independence from him. Ellul says city-building is man’s “I’ll take care of my problems” response to God’s curse. It’s man’s flex against God.
Augustine famously described this tension in terms of “two cities”: the City of God and the City of Man. It’s a corollary to the “two cities” John juxtaposes in Revelation (Babylon and the New Jerusalem) as well as the garden versus city tension we exiles have experienced since Genesis 3. In City of God, Augustine says the two cities were created by two kinds of love: “The earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self. In fact, the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.”
Cities today are monuments to man’s glory. Aside from the presence of the occasional skyline-dominating cathedral (mostly in Europe) or the jarring Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, God is an afterthought in many contemporary cities. Humanity is the star. From Babel to the Eiffel Tower in Paris to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the earthly city glories in the heights of man’s technological, artistic, and commercial achievements.
But this glory has a cap. The man-centeredness of the earthly city often promises utopia but delivers much less (poverty, homelessness, crime, unrest, class and racial segregation). Yet the ultimate city—the heavenly city described in Revelation—will be glorious with no caveats. Why? Because the God who makes all things new (Rev. 21:5) will be there, replacing the sun as the source of light (v. 23), his trees and rivers of life ensuring unending abundance.
Yet nature now groans (Rom. 8:22). Cities weep (Luke 19:40). They aren’t what they were meant to be. They’ve been pitted against each other, yet they’re still drawn to one another magnetically. Nature was meant to support cities and cities to steward nature. The garden-city paradise may now feel elusive, but it’ll come. Our banishment from the closed garden will end, and we’ll be welcomed into the glorious garden city of a new world. Civilizational discord and disunity will be distant memories. We’ll know a city of perfect harmony and union.
Embrace the Waiting
For anyone who puts his or her trust in Christ, exile will end. Whatever exile you now feel—displacement from home, estrangement from family, ostracism in the culture, dissonance even in your own body—it’ll one day end. But not yet.
The waiting in exile can feel cruel. But it’s also a kindness.
Whatever exile you now feel—displacement from home, estrangement from family, ostracism in the culture, dissonance even in your own body—it’ll one day end.
Think about the engagement season. As eager as a bride and groom are to get married, the period of preparation is such a gift. When my wife and I do premarital counseling with engaged couples, we often tell them, “Embrace this season! You’re only engaged once. Lean into the theological meaning of expectation, anticipatory longing, and impatience.”
There’s a special sort of joy that touches our hearts when we lean into longing, when we see the imperfections of this life as teasers of the perfect to come.
It’s the joy of being in a beautiful city garden or a national park and for a moment feeling a foretaste of heaven (then leaving with a sense of sorrow: Will I ever return to this beautiful place again?). I remember feeling this distinctly when, in 2012, I visited Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina and Brazil. It was as Eden-like a place as I’ve ever been, and yet I doubt I’ll ever return. That bittersweet, gut-punch thought is nonetheless joy.
It’s the joy of spending a day wandering a vast, vibrant, bustling city—each alley and plaza whispering of a heavenly metropolis. But then the day ends, never to be repeated.
I had a day like this with my wife, Kira, on New Year’s Eve 2016. We were in Rome with six young adults from our church. We walked more than 10 miles that day, wandering the streets of our early Christian forebears. We visited the Mamertine Prison where Peter and Paul were once held, and in the Jewish Quarter we saw the San Paolo alla Regola (built over a house where tradition says Paul lived and taught). We meandered through Testaccio and Trastevere all afternoon and in the evening had an extravagant multicourse dinner in the Piazza Navona. At midnight, we toasted as Rome erupted in fireworks and frivolity. It was magical—a day that felt like a postcard from eternity.
Yet even though this all took place in the “Eternal City,” Rome is decidedly not eternal, as the ubiquitous crumbling ruins of ancient temples and forums attest. Even the greatest earthly city will come to dust. But the heavenly city will remain. That hope can empower us to persevere today, as it did for Abraham so long ago. Our forefather in faith left his home in Ur to journey forth into unknown lands because “he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10).
The “city that has foundations” will one day be our home, as it will for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, John, and all the saints who sojourned and suffered in this life. Exiles now, we’ll one day be permanent residents. No need to take photos for scrapbooks or purchase souvenirs, grasping for some token of permanence. We won’t ever ask, “Will I return one day?” Because we won’t ever leave.
And so now, dear exile, take heart: this tension is a passing thing. The long engagement will give way to happily-ever-after matrimony. The minor key will resolve to a major chord. Mourning will give way to dancing. Tear-damp faces will give way to glowing smiles. Death, mourning, crying, pain: the former things will pass away (Rev. 21:4).
As Gandalf memorably reminds Pippin in Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King, this age’s present pain will dissipate as the “grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back.” And then we see it: “White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
The sun will rise for good, and it’ll never set. We’ll be home with our beloved Bridegroom, at last, in the true eternal city.
