God’s Blessing to the Church
In the “new heaven” and “new earth,” God will give the blessing of his presence to all those who have faithfully followed the Lamb despite the hardship this has entailed (Rev. 21:1–8; cf. Isa. 65:17; 66:22).
John’s description of this new universe recalls the accounts of creation and of life in the garden in Genesis 1–3, where God spoke directly with the first man and woman (Gen. 2:16–17; Gen. 3:9–19), walked among them (Gen. 3:8), and provided for their every need (Gen. 2:9, 16, 18–25; Gen. 3:21).
1 The most important blessing of the church’s new existence will be its similar experience of the immediate, palpable presence of God. John communicates this reality by describing the new creation in a kaleidoscope of three images: a city, a bride, and God’s “dwelling,” the temple:
How Discipleship Yields Restoration
Transformation by the Spirit
The Acts of the Apostles is basically an account of how the Holy Spirit, the powerful and personal presence of God, transforms the earliest followers of Jesus into the restored people of God, the beginnings of God’s new creation. “You will receive power,” Jesus tells his disciples at the story’s beginning, “when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Luke (the author of Acts) then describes how the Spirit guides and empowers the first Christians to carry out their mandate of gathering a new people of God composed not only of Israelites but also of people from the earth’s many nations.