With Christ in Heaven: Paradise Regained

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever. - Revelation 22:1-5

    'And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him' (Revelation 22:3)

    When God created the first man, Adam, he placed him in the Garden of Eden. Eden was a place of innocence, abundance, life, and joy. It was Paradise on earth. But Paradise was not complete for Adam until the Lord God had given him a woman to be his bride. So the Lord caused Adam to sleep in the earth and took a rib from his side. From Adam’s wounded side Eve was made. She came from Adam. She was a part of Adam. Without Adam, Eve could never have lived. Yet, without Eve, Adam could never have been complete.

    Adam and Eve had for their home the Paradise of God. There they lived in perfect harmony, holiness, and happiness. But soon the serpent beguiled Eve and persuaded her to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Adam, when he saw what Eve had done, took the fruit of the tree in rebellion against God. Sin had entered the world. Paradise was lost. Fallen man was driven away from the presence of the Lord.

    But, in the fullness of time, the second Adam was born. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to seek his beloved Bride, his elect Church. He came to recover for us what we lost in Adam. By his obedience unto death, he has regained for us all that we lost in Adam: righteousness, peace, life, fellowship with God, and Paradise. And he has already entered the Paradise of God as our Representative, claiming it in the name of his people (Heb. 6:20). But, as Adam without Eve was incomplete, so Christ without his beloved Bride is incomplete. The Head must have the Body. The Bridegroom must have his Bride. And Christ must have his Church, 'Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all' (Eph. 1:23). When Christ and his Church are united in heaven, in the perfection of heavenly glory, Paradise shall be fully recovered.

    In this passage, John describes the Holy City, New Jerusalem, using symbols drawn from the Garden of Eden. (Read vv. 1-5.) The eternal, heavenly state of God’s saints with Christ is Paradise regained. Our Lord said to the thief on the cross, 'Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise' (Luke 23:43). The apostle Paul was 'Caught up into Paradise' (2 Cor. 12:4). That blessed place and condition is described as, 'The paradise of God' (Rev. 2:7). When God’s saints leave this world, they enter into Paradise, not purgatory, not limbo, but Paradise! What is it like? In these five verses John shows us six things about Paradise:

    1. The river of paradise

    The earthly Paradise was watered by a mighty river. But it was only a river of water for the earth. The heavenly Paradise is watered by the river of the water of life (v. 1).

    This river of the water of life is the everlasting love of God (Ps. 46:4)

    Like a river, the love of God is ever flowing towards his elect, abundant and free (Eph. 3:18-19). The streams of this river make glad the hearts of God’s people. The streams of this river, like the river in Eden, run in four directions across the earth. The streams of the river are: eternal election, blood atonement, effectual calling, peace, pardon, justification, and eternal life. Flowing to sinners from the river of God’s everlasting love, through the mediation of Christ, these blessings of grace bring us eternal life. This river is called the 'river of the water of life' (Zech. 14:8-9; John 7:38-39) because the love of God is the source and cause of life, revives the saints with life, and sustains them in life.

    God’s love for us is a mighty, flowing river that is pure and clear as crystal

    His love for us is pure, sincere, true, without hypocrisy. And the love of God is as clear as crystal. It is free, without motive or condition. It promotes purity. The gospel, which reveals it, is a gospel of purity and holiness. The grace which is the fruit of it is righteousness. And every discovery of this love compels and constrains us to consecrate ourselves to Christ in obedience, love, and faith. The love of God is free from licentiousness and can never promote licentiousness.

    The source of this great river of love is the throne of God and of the Lamb

    God’s love for us is not caused by or conditioned upon our obedience or love to him. His love for us precedes our love for him and is the cause of our love for him (1 John 4:19). God’s love for us is not caused or conditioned even upon the obedience and death of Christ as our Substitute. It was God’s love for us that sent Christ to die for us and redeem us (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8; 1 John 3:16; 4:9-10). God’s love for his elect is free. He said, from eternity, 'I will love them freely' (Hosea 14:4). God’s love for us is like God himself, eternal, immutable, and indestructible. And the source and cause of his love is his own sovereign will and pleasure (Rom. 9:11-18). It cannot be attributed to anything else.

    2. The tree of paradise (v. 2)

    In the Garden of Eden there was a tree of life. Adam, by sin, lost his right to eat of that tree. In the Paradise of God there is another Tree of Life. And that Tree of Life is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He is that One in heaven who heals chosen sinners scattered through the nations of the earth by virtue of his finished work of redemption and by the power of his Holy Spirit. Christ, the Tree of Life, fills heaven. He is seen in the midst of the street and on both sides of the river. The City of God is full of Christ. That is the blessedness of heaven. Christ is there! Luther’s doctrine concerning the ubiquity of Christ’s physical body after his glorification may not be correct, but his heavenly body is such that he is immediately known and accessible everywhere and to everyone at all times. What mortal can imagine such a body? Our Savior’s immortal body and the immortal bodies we shall have after the resurrection will be free of all limitations and hindrances necessary to this earthly existence. Christ, the Tree of Life, bears twelve manner of fruits. He bears fruit for the twelve tribes of the Israel of God. He has fruit sufficient for the whole Israel of God, the whole body of his elect. All fullness is in him. And we have our perfection and completion in him (John 1:16; Eph. 1:6; Col. 2:9). The fruit of this Tree of Life is abundant at all times. From it we obtain abundant, perfect righteousness, (both for justification and for sanctification), plenteous redemption, (from the curse of the law by Christ’s atonement, from the dominion of sin by the power of his grace, and from the very being and consequences of sin by the resurrection of our bodies), and eternal life, with all its blessedness in time and eternity. The leaves of this Tree are for the healing of the nations. The leaves of this tree are the blessed doctrines of the gospel: substitutionary redemption and imputed righteousness. Through the preaching of the gospel today, God sends his grace into the nations of the world for the healing of men’s souls (Rom. 1:15-16; 10:17; 1 Cor. 1:21). And in heaven’s glory the leaves of this tree, the blessed gospel of Christ, will yet preserve all God’s elect in life as the tree of life in Eden would have preserved Adam in life (Gen. 3:22-24). Even in that blessed, eternal state God’s saints will be 'kept by the power of his grace.' In a word, everything in Christ will unceasingly contribute to and secure the everlasting life and joy of God’s saints in heaven.

    3. The freedom of paradise

    'And there shall be no more curse.' Having been redeemed from the curse of the law by Christ’s precious blood (Gal. 3:13), the curse of the law cannot fall upon the redeemed. Where there is no sin, there is no cause for the curse. And Christ has put away our sins forever. We shall not even suffer loss or be treated any the less graciously because of our sin. Imagine that! God will not impute sin to those for whom Christ has died (Rom. 4:8), neither in this world, nor in the world to come. In that blessed state awaiting us, there shall be no possibility of a curse because there shall be no possibility of sin. Not only has the Son of God saved us from the fall, he has saved us from the possibility of another fall (John 10:28). Consequently, in the holy city, New Jerusalem there will never even be the fear of the curse of God’s holy law!

    4. The throne of paradise

    'But the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.' It is the presence and stability of this throne that guarantees the security of God’s saints and removes all possibility of curse from us. It is called 'the throne of God and of the Lamb' because God and the Lamb are One and God is seen, known, and revealed only in the Lamb (John 1:14,18). This throne is the source of all things, the rule of all things, and the end of all things (Rom. 11:36). This throne, a throne of free grace (Heb. 4:16) and sovereign dominion (Dan. 4:35-37), is the joy of all believers, and the dread of all rebels.

    5. The joy of paradise (vv. 4-5)

    'His servants shall serve him.' In eternity we will serve God our Savior perfectly and perpetually. 'And they shall see his face.' Then, when we see him who loved us and gave himself for us face to face, we shall enjoy perfect communion with him, complete acceptance with God in him and with him, and full satisfaction in him. In heaven’s glory he will make a full disclosure of himself, his works, and his ways to us. And when we see his face, seeing all things as he sees them, we will be filled with intense, indescribable delight! 'And his name shall be in their foreheads.' That simply means that we will own and be owned, accept and be accepted of our God forever. We will confess him to be our God; and he will confess us to be his people forever. 'And there shall be no night there.' There will be no darkness of any kind in heaven: no darkness of sin, sorrow, ignorance, or bigotry. In the New Jerusalem, there will be no need for secondary lights, no need for the symbolic ordinances that now contribute so much to our worship, neither believer’s baptism (the confession of Christ) nor the Lord’s Supper (the remembrance of Christ). There will not even be a need of pastors and teachers to instruct, guide, and correct us. The reason is this - 'For the Lord God giveth them light.'

    6. The duration of paradise

    'And they shall reign for ever and ever.' When the Lord Jesus Christ has presented his bride, his body, the church and kingdom of God in its entirety to the Father, holy, blameless, unreproveable, and glorious, we shall reign with him for ever and ever (1 Cor. 15:24-28) in 'the glorious liberty of the children of God' (Rom. 8:21). Let these thoughts sustain, comfort, and rejoice your heart, child of God, as you live in the hope of that city whose Builder and Maker is your God: (1.) Our Adam, the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ is in Paradise now. (2.) From his wounded side God is forming a bride for him. (3.) Paradise will not be complete for Christ until he has his beloved Bride with him. And (4.) Christ shall have his bride. Not one of God’s elect, given to Christ in eternity, redeemed by Christ at Calvary, and called by the Spirit of Christ in time shall be missing in the heavenly Paradise.