Revelation 21:5

Scripture Explained · Pairs with New Beginnings

“He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He said, “Write, for these words of God are faithful and true.””

Revelation 21:5 · World English Bible

What it meant then

Nowhere else in Revelation does God speak without an angel or a vision carrying the words for him. Every other line in the book arrives secondhand, through a messenger or a scene unfolding in front of John. Here, in the middle of describing the new heaven and new earth, the holy city coming down, every tear wiped away, death itself ending (verses 1-4), the one seated on the throne interrupts and speaks directly.

The verb John records is present tense, “I am making all things new,” describing something already underway. The instruction to write it down matters just as much. John was almost certainly writing from exile, to churches living under real pressure, people for whom a promise this size could easily start to sound like wishful thinking. So he is told to record the exact words, and told in the same breath that they are “faithful and true.”

What Spurgeon wrote

Preaching on this verse under the title “A New Creation,” Spurgeon applied it first to what Christ has already done in a believer's life, tracing the same total reversal this verse describes cosmically: “He was a bond-slave; he is now a freeman… The man is new — new in principles, and new in emotions.”

He described the completeness of that inward change in vivid terms: “It loves what once it hated; it hates what once it loved. It finds blight where once it sought for bliss, and finds bliss where once it found nothing but bitterness.” What God promises to do for all creation, Spurgeon said, He has already begun in everyone who belongs to Christ.

Charles Spurgeon, “A New Creation,” on Revelation 21:5