Scripture Daily

Context No. 1560 of 4322 · Revelation

Context · Reflection

Revelation 21:15-21: in context

15He who spoke with me had for a measure a golden reed to measure the city, its gates, and its walls. 16The city is square. Its length is as great as its width. He measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand twelve stadia. Its length, width, and height are equal. 17Its wall is one hundred forty-four cubits, by the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. 18The construction of its wall was jasper. The city was pure gold, like pure glass. 19The foundations of the city’s wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, 20the fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. 21The twelve gates were twelve pearls. Each one of the gates was made of one pearl. The street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

John watches as an angel measures the new Jerusalem with a golden rod. The city is a perfect cube, its length and width and height all equal, twelve thousand stadia each way. Its wall is jasper, the city itself pure gold like clear glass, its foundations adorned with every kind of precious stone, sapphire and emerald and topaz and amethyst. The twelve gates are twelve single pearls, and the streets are pure gold, transparent as glass. It is a city of surpassing beauty and glory.

The detail worth catching is the shape: the city is a perfect cube, its length and width and height all equal. In the whole of scripture, only one other structure was a perfect cube, the Most Holy Place, the innermost sanctuary of the temple, where God's presence dwelt and which only the high priest could enter, once a year. The new Jerusalem is shaped like that inner sanctuary, and the meaning is profound: the whole city has become the Most Holy Place. In the old temple, God's presence was concentrated in a small inner room, walled off, entered rarely and with fear; in the new Jerusalem, there is no separate inner sanctum, because the entire city is the holy of holies, filled throughout with the presence of God. The goal toward which the whole story moves is not a small holy room walled off from ordinary life, but a whole world made holy, wholly filled with God's presence, every street of it as full of God as the inner sanctuary once was. And the surpassing beauty, the gold and jewels and pearl, is not the point in itself but the fitting glory of the place where God dwells with his people. This is the hope: not merely to visit God in a sacred space and then return to a common world, but to dwell forever in a world entirely holy, entirely filled with him, where the whole city is the place of his presence. The Most Holy Place, once a small room entered by one man once a year, becomes a city, and the city becomes the world, and God fills all of it.

Is my hope set on the world God is making, where the whole city is the Most Holy Place, wholly filled with his presence, no longer a sacred space we visit but a world entirely holy, and does that promised dwelling with God draw me now?

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