Five-minute study · Day 10 · Revelation 21
Revelation 21:1
A word worth stopping on: new καινός kainos
The Bible's final picture of the future. A new heaven and a new earth. Most people read this and imagine the old world getting incinerated and something completely different showing up in its place. The Greek word John uses for 'new' tells a different story. He had two words to choose from, and the one he picked changes everything about how you imagine eternity.
Word study: new
- Greek
- καινός
- Pronounced
- kainos
- Strong's
- G2537
- Definition
- New in quality or character. Not neos, which means new in time or recently made.
Greek has two words for 'new.' Neos means new in time. Something that did not exist before. You just bought a neos coat. Kainos means new in quality. Something renewed, restored, upgraded. Your old coat, made better than it was originally.
John writes kainos.
He is describing transformation. This heaven and this earth, set free from everything that has corrupted them, restored past their original glory.
Paul says the same thing in Romans 8:21. Creation itself 'will be liberated from its bondage to decay.' The creation is groaning, he says, because it is waiting to be set free.
Historical context · First century AD
Two Completely Different Futures
Greek philosophy said the material world was garbage. Plato taught the body was a prison. The Stoics believed the cosmos would periodically burn up and restart in an endless loop. For most Greeks, the physical world had no permanent value.
Jewish hope pointed in the opposite direction. The prophets talked about wolves lying down with lambs (Isaiah 11:6), deserts exploding with flowers (Isaiah 35:1), death itself being swallowed (Isaiah 25:8). The healing of creation.
John lands firmly on the Jewish side. The kainos earth is Plan A fully realized. God redeems what he made. The creation that started in Genesis 1:1 reaches its final form in Revelation 21:1. Glorified.
For reflection
If God's plan is to renew this world, how should that change the way you treat your body, your work, and the physical world around you today?
Consider that what you do with physical things may have eternal significance.
Sources: Thayer's Lexicon; Beale, 'Revelation' (NIGTC); Wright, 'Surprised by Hope'