The Curse Reversed - 50 Days of Heaven

The Curse Reversed

No longer will there be any curse.

— Revelation 22:3

No more let sins and sorrows grow Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the Curse is found.

— ISAAC WATTS, “JOY TO THE WORLD”

Just as God and mankind are reconciled in Christ, so too the dwellings of God and mankind—Heaven and Earth—will be reconciled in Christ, forever united in a new, physical universe where we will live as resurrected beings. The hymn “This Is My Father’s World” expresses this truth in its final words: “Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and heaven be one.”^a

Jesus Christ, as the God-man, forever links God’s home— Heaven—with ours—Earth. As Ephesians 1:10 demonstrates, the idea of Earth and Heaven becoming one is explicitly biblical. Christ will make Earth into Heaven and Heaven into Earth.

Just as the wall that separates God and mankind is torn down in Jesus, so too the wall that separates Heaven and Earth will be forever demolished. There will be one universe, with all things in Heaven and on Earth together under one head, Jesus Christ.

“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them” (Revelation 21:3). God will live with us on the New Earth. That will “bring all things in heaven and on earth together.” When God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden, Earth was Heaven’s backyard. The New Earth will be even more than that—it will be Heaven itself. And those who know Jesus will have the privilege of living there.

If the Bible said nothing else about life in the eternal Heaven (the New Earth), the words “no longer will there be any curse” would tell us a vast amount. After Adam sinned, God said, “Cursed is the ground [Earth] because of you” (Genesis 3:17). What would our lives be like if the Curse were lifted? One day we will know firsthand—but even now there’s much to anticipate.

When the Curse is reversed, we will no longer engage in “painful toil” (v. 17). No longer will the earth yield “thorns and thistles” (v. 18), defying our dominion and repaying us for corrupting it. No longer will we “return to the ground . . . [from which we] were taken” (v. 19). No longer will we be swallowed up in death as unrighteous stewards who ruined ourselves and the earth.

As a result of the Curse, the first Adam could no longer eat from the tree of life, which presumably would have made him live forever in his sinful state (Genesis 3:22). Death, though a curse in itself, was also the only way out from under the Curse—and only because God had prepared a way to defeat death and restore mankind’s relationship with him.

Christ came to remove the curse of sin and death (Romans 8:2). He is the last Adam, who will undo the damage wrought by the first (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45; Romans 5:15-19). In the Cross and the Resurrection, God made a way not only to restore his original design for mankind but also to expand it. In resurrected bodies, mankind will again dwell on Earth—a New Earth—completely free of the Curse. Unencumbered by sin, human activity will again lead naturally to a prosperous and magnificent culture.

Under the Curse, human culture has not been eliminated, but it has been twisted and severely hampered by sin, death, and decay. Before the Fall, food was readily available with minimal labor. Time was available to pursue thoughtful, aesthetic ideas, to work for the sheer pleasure of it, to please and glorify God by developing skills and abilities. Since the Fall, generations have lived and died after spending most of their productive years eking out an existence in the pursuit of food, shelter, and protection against theft and war. Mankind has been distracted and debilitated by sickness and sin. Our cultural development has likewise been stunted and warped, and sometimes misdirected.

Earth cannot be delivered from the Curse by being destroyed. It can be delivered only by being resurrected. The removal of the Curse will be as thorough and sweeping as the redemptive work of Christ. In bringing us salvation, Christ has already undone some of the damage in our hearts, but in the end he will finally and completely restore his entire creation to what God originally intended (Romans 8:19-21).

Christ’s victory over the Curse will not be partial. Death will not just limp away to lick its wounds. It will be annihilated, utterly destroyed: “[God] will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth” (Isaiah 25:7-8).

Isaac Watts’s magnificent hymn “Joy to the World” is theologically on target when it says that Christ comes to make his blessings flow “far as the curse is found.” God will lift the Curse, not only morally (in terms of sin) and psychologically (in terms of sorrows), but also physically (in terms of thorns in the ground).

If redemption failed to reach the farthest boundaries of the Curse, it would be incomplete. The God who rules the world with truth and grace won’t be satisfied until every sin, every sorrow, and every thorn is reckoned with. Christ’s redemption extends to all that is under the Curse—Earth, plants, animals, everything.

We have never seen the earth as God made it. Our planet as we know it is a shadowy distortion of the original. But it does whet our appetites for the New Earth, doesn’t it? If the present Earth—so damaged and diminished by the Curse—is at times so beautiful and wonderful and if our bodies—so damaged and diminished by the Curse—are at times overcome with a sense of the earth’s beauty and wonder, then how magnificent will the New Earth be?

Are you looking forward to your resurrection? To the earth’s resurrection?

Father, we have never known life on Earth without the Curse. It has come to seem normal and permanent to us. Remind us that it is anything but normal. It is a temporary aberration, a momentary rebellion that will decisively end. Our fallenness, and the earth’s, is something that you have promised you will fix forever. Thank you for the promise that this earth we live on will one day be all you intended it to be. Help us look forward to that time and place when “no longer will there be any curse.”^b