What does heaven look like according to the Bible?
The Bible does describe heaven — but the pictures it gives are of a city, a house, and a light, and they are set down in words that stretch human language to its limit. The question worth asking is not only what heaven looks like, but whether its beauty is the point at all.
Why imagination cannot get there first
Left to ourselves, we build heaven out of the best material we know, which is earth. One writer warns that this method fails at the start:
H Forbes WitherbyMan's thoughts about heaven are too often shaped from earthly moulds. We take the things around us, put what we have gathered through a process of mental purifying, cast it into a shape our imagination has formed out of the clay of this sin-stained earth, and then we call what we have made heavenly! Such thoughts are empty… Heaven is the dwelling place of God, and can only be grasped as God Himself is known.
The city John was shown
The fullest description in the Bible comes in Revelation 21, where the apostle John sees a city of gold, gates of pearl and foundations set with jewels. Commentators read the details as pictures of moral realities rather than as building materials:
Frederick W GrantThe wall is built of jasper, or diamond. The divine glory is itself the safeguard of the eternal city. What can touch what God has ordained for His own praise? The city itself is pure transparent gold — pure, permanent, radiant… The foundations of the wall are adorned with every precious stone — all the attributes of God displayed in that on which the salvation of the people of God rests. The stones, in their separate meanings, are again a mystery.
Even the paving carries meaning. A street is normally where you must watch yourself; here it is gold, clear as glass:
Hamilton SmithThe street of an earthly city is the place of public resort where men come into contact with one another, where we have to be on our guard, speak with reserve and walk as it were with our clothes gathered up for fear of defilement. In the heavenly City there will be no need for that. There will be nothing to defile: the street is pure gold. There will be no need for reserve, for there will be nothing to hide from one another. All will be transparent.
Much of it is described by what is missing
A striking feature of the account is how many of its lines are negatives. One writer points this out directly:
A J PollockThere are two accounts of the glory of that place. We read of a new heaven and a new earth. The Apostle John in a vision saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven. And what is the description of this place, God's dwelling place with men? It is largely described in negatives. We are told in Revelation 21 of the things that are not there — no tears, no death, no sorrow, no crying, no pain. The unhappy things that go with a world into which sin has entered will have no place there.
No temple, no sun
Two familiar things are absent, and both absences say the same thing — God is directly present. The city needs no building for worship and no light in the sky:
C StanleyNo going into the temple and out again; no change from worship to carelessness, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. No need of created helps — of the sun or the moon to shine in it; for the glory of God will light it, and the Lamb is the light of it.
Commentators differ on how much of the vision applies to the age of Christ's reign on earth and how much to the eternal state, and some read the city as a symbol of the church rather than as architecture.
The scenery is not the substance
Ask what makes heaven heaven, and the writers push past the jewels every time:
Samuel RidoutThis settles the great question of what heaven's occupation is. What is heaven? Is it the street of gold? the river of the water of life? the magnificence of the place? These are the outward display, the outward accompaniments of heaven. What is it that actually makes heaven what it is? In one word, it is that "God and the Lamb" are there. It is access to God visibly, which now is only by faith.
Home, not just a destination
Alongside the city stands a quieter image — Jesus told His followers He was going to prepare a place in His Father's house.
Hamilton SmithHere the Lord tells us that He has gone to prepare a place for us in the Father's house, and that when He comes again it will be to receive us to Himself… Having received us to Himself, He will bring us into the Father's house, as He so blessedly says, "that where I am you may be also."
Summary
- Revealed, not imagined. Heaven cannot be built out of polished earthly material; it is God's dwelling place, and it is known only as He makes it known.
- Gold. The city itself, its street and its walls picture a place where purity is the very substance — nothing to defile, nothing to hide.
- Gone. Tears, death, sorrow, crying and pain are named as absent; much of what Scripture tells us is what will never be there again.
- Light. No temple and no sun, because God's glory lights the city and the Lamb is its lamp.
- Him. The gold and the jewels are the setting; the presence of God and of the Lamb is what makes heaven heaven — the Father's house, where He is.