Rev 22:1-5
We've been looking at the final section of the book of Rev - chapters 21-22. First we looked at a chunk that I named the Isaiah shout-out, then we examined what I labeled God's Bride part 1, then last episode was God's bride part 2, and I had trouble deciding what to call today's chunk of scripture - I could call it the garden, the eternal kingdom, the perfect story ending... but since we've been emphasizing the fact that the new Jerusalem that's being described in 21:1-22:5 is in a sense US, let's just continue to call it God's Bride part 3.
Before we dive into today's scripture, here is a great summary quote about this section from Bible Project: "John's vision is a kaleidoscope of OT promises. This place is a new heavens and earth (Isaiah 65) - a restored creation that's healed of the pain and evil of human history. it's also a new garden of eden (Gen 2, Ezek 47), the paradise of eternal life with God - but it's not simply a return back to the garden; it's a step forward into a new Jerusalem (Isaiah 2, Zephaniah 3), a great city where human cultures in all their diversity work together in peace and harmony before God... And there's a new humanity there fulfilling the calling placed on them all the way back on page 1 of the Bible to rule as God's image, to partner together with God in taking this creation into new and uncharted territory."
I also just briefly want to pt out that this new city is thought by some Bible scholars to take up the whole earth. their reasoning for that includes the fact that the new eden is described as including all nations, the fact that uncleanness and sin is now kept out of the world completely implying the whole thing IS the new temple, and the fact that in ch 21 John just literally said "i saw a new heaven and new earth" then proceeds to describe this city. so many conclude that the one city spans the whole earth. and hey, we prob cant take all the measurements literally anyway, so why not assume its even bigger than the symbolic numbers have described.
remember, the OG eden was located on a mountain (high places are thought of as significant in the Bible bc it has to do with the presence and closeness of a deity, and remember the prostitute Babylon sat upon seven mountains meaning she was over lots and lots of high places, and in revelation she is juxtaposed to the Church that is to be exalted / lifted up in the final chapter as we rule and reign with Christ our supreme preeminent Lord who is higher than all other deities). So now at the end of the story arc this final city which is a garden on a mt which is us - expands and lasts forever. what Adam and Eve were commanded but failed to do: subdue the whole earth for God's purposes, Christ IS able to do.
now that we've highlighted those things about this current section we're examining, let's read today's part of it - in the Amplified translation, and then in the Message paraphrase.
22:1 Then the angel showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Christ), in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer exist anything that is cursed [because sin and illness and death are gone]; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve and worship Him [with great awe and joy and loving devotion]; they will [be privileged to] see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be night; they have no need for lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign [as kings] forever and ever.
Now in the Message:
Then the Angel showed me Water-of-Life River, crystal bright. It flowed from the Throne of God and the Lamb, right down the middle of the street. The Tree of Life was planted on each side of the River, producing twelve kinds of fruit, a ripe fruit each month. The leaves of the Tree are for healing the nations. Never again will anything be cursed. The Throne of God and of the Lamb is at the center. His servants will offer God service—worshiping, they’ll look on his face, their foreheads mirroring God. Never again will there be any night. No one will need lamplight or sunlight. The shining of God, the Master, is all the light anyone needs. And they will rule with him age after age after age.
The summary title that G K Beale gives this section of scripture is this "The garden, the river, and the inhabitants of the luminary city: the consummate, glorious presence of God with His people ensures the eternal absence of any curse and establishes their everlasting roles of priests and kings in praising and reflecting His glory." that'll preach ...
So we see that this section is still about the new Jerusalem, it could even be seen as a conclusion to all of ch 21.
Let's examine it verse by verse:
1 Then he showed me the river of living water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ...
OT precedent: gen 2:10 "river watering the garden flowed from Eden", zech 14:8 "On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem", ez 47:1-9 "saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple" , joel 3:18 "A fountain will flow out of the Lord’s house..." and some ppl also see connections with Is 35 "Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert" bc its a prophesy about latter-day Zion as well. this Isaiah passage seems to be partly what john is thinking about when he writes parts of rev 21 and the verse we're going to look at in a moment, 22:3.
In the gospel of John chapter 4 there's a story about Jesus talking with a woman at a well about this living water....
The living water is often explained as: eternal life. Bc of God, we get to live forever - this is a gift from Heaven to us, so a good analogy is water - something we're familiar with that sustains life.
This metaphor (or picture) tells us that eternal life has its origin in God and the Lamb (which btw is always presented as one unit in this bk). In Ez, the river was flowing from the temple cause it was where God's presence was back then and was the representation of heaven and of His presence, but now God and the Lamb ARE the temple / theres no need for a temple cause they will be everywhere, so the living water is now shown flowing straight from them.
and i'd like to mention yet another hyperlink: joel 3:18 "A fountain will flow out of the Lord’s house"
2a [the river flowed] down the middle of the broad street of the city. The tree of life was on both sides of the river, bearing 12 kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month.
This tree will remind many readers of Eden in Gen 2:9 there are lots of plants all over the garden - plants that God Himself planted - and there are two trees that are highlighted and named in the story: the tree of life plus the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. and u know how that story goes.
Some will say this is that exact tree of life - that after humanity sinned for the first time, the couple had to be disallowed from eating of it bc they were in a state of sin, so God didnt want to give them eternal life in that state. but after sin is eradicated here in rev, we're allowed to eat from it, meaning live forever.
i found that a handful of scholars dove into whether this was one tree with roots on both sides of the river or whether the word tree can mean woods / forrest / multiple trees / a tree area here, and it seems that Aune for instance makes an intriguing argument for the latter.
i grew up near kansas city kansas and across the river is kansas city missouri. one city, two sides of the river. but actually technically two cities that just have the same name. so who knows if this is one tree, or if we're even supposed to be thinking of it in our limited 3-D way. we know eden had multiple trees in it, so thats an argument for this being the same situation. there's actually a long tradition of holding space for both possibilities - a tension of a single tree (though in the greek it's missing the THE article that would force it to be singular) vs a grove of similar trees - a tree of life grove.
In addition, we should consider Ezekiel 47, one of the main hyperlinks here, which says "Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.” We see that there are multiple trees there. plus when you have multiple kinds of fruit usually theres more than one tree involved, but again thats just earthly nature's limitation.
of course in the new eden time may work differently and having done away with the moon and night and stuff, there may not be literal months - so john may have kept the every month thing in there bc it's a 12 - 12 months meaning all. 12 representing the people of God, there in our complete and final form.
RevelationLogic.com says: "If you read Ezek 47:7-12, you will see the following:
A river that is life-giving.
Trees on both sides of the river.
The trees bear fruit every month.
It’s leaves bring healing.
What does it mean? This passage from Ezekiel is part of a broader vision of a new and idealized temple that the prophet received, which started back in Ezekiel 40. At the time Ezekiel wrote this, the earthly temple had been abandoned by God (Ezek 10:18), and then it was destroyed by the Babylonians. While Ezekiel’s vision of the new temple promised restoration to Israel, it also went beyond the earthly temple to symbolically give us a glimpse of the eternal kingdom of God — the same eternal kingdom that is being described here in Revelation 21 and 22.
The previous chapter of Ezekiel (chapter 46) discusses a “prince” who represents Christ. This prince is offering his sacrifices in the temple (Ezek 46:4-7). Flowing out of the temple is this “river of life” that we see in Ezekiel 47. This water is flowing from the altar of sacrifice, and out of the temple through the eastern gate (Ezek 47:1). Normally, one would expect blood to be flowing from the altar of sacrifice, but here we instead see the “water of life”. This points to the uniqueness of Christ’s sacrifice. All sacrifices involved the shedding of blood, but only Christ’s sacrifice actually accomplished its purpose, which was to once and for all become the source of eternal life (symbolized by the water of life), and thus entry into the kingdom of God.
The eastern gate is significant because Ezekiel had earlier identified it as the gate through which God and his Prince who offers the sacrifice would enter(Ezek 44:1, 2, 3). Indeed, this is the gate that Christ entered on Palm Sunday as he approached from the Mount of Olives to the east (Luke 19:37). Of course, we recognize that Christ’s sacrifice is the source of the river of life.
The references to the tree of life also point to permanent renewal as we are returned to an Eden-like state (Gen 2:9, Gen 3:24) where, once again, people have access to eternal life (Rev 22:14)."
Beale says of this part of v2: "both Ezekiel and Revelation envision an escalated reestablishment of the Garden of the first creation, in which God's presence openly dwelled. Even the decorative palm trees and cherubim portrayed as part of Ezekiel's temple allude to the garden setting of eden. The depiction in Ezekiel's temple was anticipated earlier in the Solomonic temple, which also included carvings of flowers.... the original paradise was only a small geographical part of the earthly creation, now the paradisal temple encompasses the entire geography of the new creation."
2b The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations (the NLT says here: the leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations)
this is another phrase from the Ezek vision but John adds "of the nations" cause John is taking previously jewish-centered prophesies and applying them to the global people of God. G K Beale points out a couple other spots in Rev that use the phrase 'the nations' to mean the people of God: 5:9, and 7:9. he takes the idea of healing here to mean salvation, which is a healing - healing from an eternal death curse.
for years and years whenever i've come across this verse my heart has been deeply stirred. partly bc im created for healing...
painting tom munson when i was 19 (make an insta reel to show yall)
To talk more about leaves being used for healing: the idea of God providing healing - completely in heaven but also his kingdom is in a sense already here; look at medicine / food / nature, and the body's built in healing systems. and also lk at the knowledge he is giving us about healing mental illness at the nervous system level... this is my speculation but doesnt God usually use humans to do His work in the world.
i wonder about who are these leaves being handed to? how is this healing being administered? is it not us His ambassadors that usher in His healing and His news and His ministry of reconciliation - of the nations, to Himself? Maybe the natural act of plucking leaves and preparing healings medicines has a spiritual counterpart that we are called to partake in - maybe those of us who are already connected to God and his river of living and tree of forever life are to bring what we have access to into the here and now and maybe we love others by explaining and offering to them what we have already experienced of Him!! and that spreads his healing!
in this verse, the leaves are probably getting pointed out as HAVING ALREADY HEALED the nations. different translations say were vs are; since there are no more tears or illnesses in the new eden, these leaves' main job may be retired, or maybe we can look at it as an ongoing state where their function is always completely fulfilled.
3a and there will no longer be any curse.
Zech 14:11 The people had been put under a ban, they are set aside for complete destruction, bc of their egregious sin. In other words they had been cursed. But Zech is saying one day that season will be over and Jerusalem will be restored.
So by placing this phrase here in Rev, John further explains what he means by the "healing of the nations" - he's saying our world will no longer be under any curse. The healing that takes place here is healing from the curse of physical and spiritual death which can be described as separation from God (bc God is our source of eternal life).
so while salvation is healing, removal of any curse means every kind of healing is happening here.
3b The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city (i'm pretty sure the greek just says "the throne of God and the Lamb will be" - and a lot of translations just say "be in it" which almost made me think for a sec,, is the throne in this river?? the water of life comes straight from the throne, so is it technically part of or IN the river of life? how exactly does all this look?? someone draw me a map
but i was apparently alone in that theory bc i didnt see any scholars bring that up as a possibility so i guess i'll trust the Bible translators on this one)
btw "the throne of God and of the Lamb are in it." this means one throne. in Rev 3:21 Jesus says "I also overcame and sat down with my Father on His throne"
remember, there is an ongoing emphasis in the last part of revelation of God tabernacling with and among the people of God. at the beginning of the Biblical story, eden was the OG temple - God walked with eve and adam - and then in the post-fall redemption arc, the temple was constructed to house God's presence among God's people. now as the enemy and the fall have been completely removed, by the Lamb, the Throne and the Lamb are central, and many would say now global. the new earth IS the temple which IS eden. the highest will and plan of God is finally able to fully take place, which is quality time with His kids, close and fun and joyful and uninhibited.
you can think of it this way: adam was the original priest of the original temple that was Eden; and eve and him were called to subdue the whole earth - to expand eden! but they failed to do so. NOW FINALLY at the end of the story arc, the temple gets to be everywhere - which was the intention all along. everything finally comes directly under the loving creator's Lordship.
3c... and His slaves will serve Him.
"His servants will serve Him." i know this last part might bother some people. like, i thought you just said we're His kids and we're free. Yes - in this kingdom, bc our king is so uniquely good and bc He literally IS love, it works like that. you serve Him, you become free. you give your life to Him, you find true life. you make yourself a lifelong bondservant to this Master, you end up with riches beyond compare. you humble yourself before this God, and He ends up lifting YOU up. bc He's so unequivocally lifted up. you choose to serve Him, He adopts you right into the family. This is our Father. this is our family story and our heritage.
4a They will see His face...
Seeing God's face is epic and climactic in the story, and is to be read as the ultimate blessing.
What did Jesus teach in the Beatitudes? Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall... SEE GOD.
1 Cor 13:12 "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
Theologian J Rodman Williams wrote about how this verse in rev represents something historically unprecedented. He writes that in the Old Testament, Moses requested to see God’s glory but was denied, with God explaining that basically human mortality cannot withstand the divine presence—mortal flesh would be destroyed by the full weight of God’s glory. The psalmists wrote things like "for the Lord is righteous, the upright will see His face" and "one thing i ask... that i could gaze upon the Lord's beauty in His temple" and "when can i go meet with God?" the hope and the longing has always been there.
Job is known to have declared:
"I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth... I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!"
It's in the age to come when we're made immortal will believers experience direct, unmediated interaction with God, in other words: see his face. nothing between anymore - no barriers and no distance.
And think about the priestly blessing in Numbers 6 "the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace"
In the new earth, we are going to live the reality of that priestly blessing - fully!
His face is near ours. That's the shining light that beats all other forms of light. GOD is shining the loving light of His countenance upon us!
Some theologians think God the Father has a face, some think Jesus being the person of the trinity that is also human is the one with the face here that we're interacting with, and some think think there might even be a bit of a merge going on here where the Father and the Son are seen as having one face somehow. I don't know what I think - I guess my initial gut feeling before reading a bit on those perspectives was that God the Father has a face. but idk...
Right now in the jewish calendar it’s Av, which has the same root as the word Father. So as we read this account of potentially the Father’s face shining upon us completely in the eschaton, I want to touch upon a topic that we’ll dive deeper into in the future, and that is the loving smiling face of our Heavenly Father for you. Some of us have an easy time believing that bc our earthly fathers had the capability to show us godly love. Others of us have a hard time believing God truly loves, approves of, and enjoys us, often bc some earthly Fathers are mean or absent or addicted or psychopathic or whatever the case may be.
My anonymous friend’s vision:
“God’s been bringing me through this training where I’m beginning to recognize my emotions and not stuff them or get stuck in them. I’m learning to process through them as they happen with the Lord, through rest, sabbath, pausing etc.
In one of these moments, I was wounded by my dad and angry, and so anger came up, and I recognized at that point, well, anger is usually this overarching cover for something. And so I needed to stop and get quiet and figure out what was really behind the anger and why I was really upset.
And it boiled down to not being seen and to my needs not being recognized or even cared about because I was raised under somebody who was just straight surviving and full of fear and trauma and all of that gets passed down.
There's only two ultimate fathers in this life. You either have the father of lies or you have the, the Heavenly Father, and our generations were influenced by one or the other and sometimes a mixture of both. But the Lord is always about pulling us out from under the father of lies and into Him.
And so in that moment, I got quiet and I recognized that I actually had to deal with the fact that my dad didn’t care about my needs. I actually had to feel the grief. I had to feel the hurt, and I had to feel the pain of that, not just explain it away, but acknowledging it, feeling it, and handing it off to the Lord, and dealing with it with Him
It led me to this moment where I was just sobbing in grief, but not wanting to get stuck in grief. I was laying down and I felt his presence as I was sorting through this and,
All of a sudden, I could see the father And I felt all this tangible fear in my chest.
I realized in that moment that I was doing the same thing that I was doing with my earthly father, that I could be in sort of the same house or the same place with him, but keep my distance from him and not get close.
I was doing the same thing with my heavenly Father. And the Word clearly says that we are in Him, Jesus and Father, He's in us, and we are in Him.
But I realized that I could be avoiding that close interaction. and I could feel this tangible fear in this moment - I wanted to run. I almost wanted to get up out of that encounter and just flee because that's my comfort zone; He was asking me to be uncomfortable in that moment.
And so I'm terrified, and then I look down, and Jesus has my left hand, and He's holding me steady. And in some miracle, He paused that crazy fear and settled me and allowed me to stay in that moment so I could actually see what the Father wanted me to see.
And then I felt this overwhelming love, but grief and sadness from the Father, this desire from the Father to be so close to me, but that He did actually see me, and that He actually was more concerned about how I felt and what His presence was going to do to trigger me, so He did not force Himself upon me.
He allowed the distance because He knew that His presence could send me into a, into a trauma response. It could completely freak me out. And His desire was to be so close to me, and I could feel His sadness, but I could feel this deep love that He actually cared more about how I felt and how His presence would affect me than His own feelings
And for the first time, I felt seen and heard
And that has caused a perfect love to be spread in my heart by the Holy Spirit to a degree that hasn't been before, that has allowed me to stand in faith And, and to come out of fear, it has allowed me to walk through things since that moment And actually have faith that there's no way I could have done it before that encounter.
And now as we sit here, I can link it back to that moment of discomfort, because that was uncomfortable to me. I was terrified in that moment. because my past experience means an encounter with the Father is painful. It means it hurts; it means I have to fix things.
It means trying to be an adult when I should have been a child. it means never being good enough. it meant pain.
Sometimes, you know, physical pain, and we don't like physical pain, and we don't like emotional pain, and we we come up with these self-protective things and these coping mechanisms that can look like so many things.
t can look like addiction to some. It can look like control. It can look like Ignoring, which is a form of control - But none of those things look like healing
Healing comes from the Father. And Jesus only did and said what he saw the Father doing. So when this month of Av was coming and everybody kept saying, "Healing's coming, healing's coming," and I just knew, you know, the Father is coming because it was the Father that healed. Because Jesus only did and said what he saw the Father doing.
So when the Father comes, the Father heals. He doesn't Band-Aid, he doesn't placate, he doesn't tell us what we want to hear, right?
He wanted my heart engaged, and He actually cared because He knew that his presence was gonna hurt me.
That mattered to him. My discomfort did matter to Him, and it took Jesus to settle my discomfort to make me brave enough to stand in that place. It took the love of Jesus to do that.
Later I had to deal with my earthly dad again and was spending time with the Lord, and I heard Jesus say to me, you know if you give me your father, you get Mine.
And my family line has shifted now. My father becomes my brother who now I can pray for. I have my needs met in the Heavenly Father.
So I’m less vulnerable to abuse from my earthly father.
I'm not in need of something, so- I'm not looking for Him, at Him to meet those things.
And so it's a restoration of my foundation. 'Cause the Father is the foundation. Finally I can feel that I have the Father I always needed.”
So the Father makes His face to shine upon us (and He’s so gracious to us). and the word Face in jewish tradition has to do with the person’s presence. so being in their view, being face to face, being the apple of God’s eye… all of this is about being in the fullness of God’s presence.
Here's what John wrote in one of his other letters: 1 Jn 3:2: "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." That sounds a lot like seeing God face to face.
This is what Beale has to say about this part of the chapter: "It's not coincidental that verse 4 has ... referred to the divine name on Aaron's forehead and applied it to all of God's ppl as His priests... In the old covenant, ... a revelation of God's face would have brought death (Ex 33:20), but now it is the means of eternal life and kingship. The role of kingship is appended to priestly functions, bc adam had such a duel role and failed and bc the Messiah Himself was finally to fulfill this duel role. The saints are so identified with the throne of the Messiah that they are identified with both his priestly and kingly roles. The saints exercise sovereignty over the new creation in a way similar to how Adam was to rule over 'every living thing that moves on the earth' (Gen 1:28)... Part of the purpose of Christ fulfilling the role of the last Adam is, in corporate solidarity with His people, to rule over the eternal new creation... Exalted believers are different from the first Adam in that, whereas God only commissioned Adam to rule (a commission he failed to fulfill), now God promises that His people will certainly reign without end."
4b ... and His name will be on their foreheads.
We've seen this throughout the book of Revelation - having God’s name inscribed on our foreheads means that we're believers, that we're God's representative servants, God's children, God's heirs, AND that we will reflect His divine glory and character. and it's our pass to get in - our seal - our guarantee that we're God's.
Here's what used to be literally written on the OT priests' foreheads: Holy To The Lord. It was a consecration of that person. So now just like the idea of the jewels that used to be relegated to the priest now being kinda everywhere and in a way in all the heavenly believers (cause the city is the temple is the army of believers), the forehead inscription now becomes all of ours too. The privilege of being consecrated to be accepted into the direct presence of God used to be limited to a selected person; now we are all brought in (by the propitiating work of Christ's sacrificial blood) and we're all able to be priests and be in God's presence and lead and rule with Him. (Do you realize that's who you are in Christ???)
David H Wenkel in his book "Shining Like the Sun, a Biblical Theology of meeting God face to face" which I've only read a small portion of but would love to read the whole thing soon, seems to tie the forehead mark in with the ability to see God face to face. He feels there's a reason John put those two things side by side here, and the reason is that our forehead mark (our identity in Christ) THEN DIRECTLY GIVES US the ability to see God face to face and not fall over dead. He says, God's people become God-beholders. AND he points out that UNLIKE Old Testament worship, which required priestly mediation, this future contact with God’s face will be direct to every believer.
5a Night will no longer exist, and people will not need lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will give them light.
John started the vision talking about this last chapter, and he ends this vision by bringing it up again. No darkness no suffering no night. Remember this fulfills the Isaiah 60 prophesy "you will have the Lord for an everlasting light... your sun will set no more... and the days of your mourning shall be finished."
5b And they will reign forever and ever.
We are made to be both the temple and the priests, both the city and the royalty over it, plus the inhabitants of the garden on the mountain in the full shining presence of Love Himself.
Have you ever met someone who has been significantly changed by Jesus? Who has encountered Him profoundly and gotten an actual glimpse of His love? who has tasted heaven, interacted with the presence of God so close that they are wrecked in the best way forever and nothing could convince them to ever go back?
Imagine for just a second how healed you are gonna be in the fullness of God's presence. face to face. It's wild.
Let's wrap today's episode with what the Christian philosopher Augustine of Hippo, one of the Latin fathers of the Christian church, wrote as he reflected on the theology of the end:
All shall be Amen and Alleluia.
We shall rest and we shall see;
We shall see and we shall know;
We shall know and we shall love;
We shall love and we shall praise:
Behold our end which is no end!