What does it mean that God will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:4)?

Rev. 21:4. — “And He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall not exist any more, nor grief, nor cry, nor distress shall exist any more, for the former things have passed away,” It is only in the eternal state that the effects of sin, physical and moral, are completely removed. The millennial era is not, as we have seen, a perfect condition, and hence even under the beneficent sway of the Lord tears will be shed on earth. The words, “He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes,” is verbally repeated in Revelation 7:17. There, however, it is a millennial scene; here it is in the everlasting state. The wiping away of tears is not an action ascribed to the Lamb either here or in the earlier scene. God does this. If He wipes away every tear, then He removes every cause and occasion of sorrow. The tear-drop will never again glisten in the eye. The eye is said to be “the fountain of sorrow,” but God shall wipe it dry.

"Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." The language is figurative, no doubt; but there is this full and complete effect of God's own dealing and working in the removal of everything that can create a pang. But there is more in this than that tears are wiped away: God shall do it. There is the compassion that has caused the removal of the sorrow, and this is more than that the sorrow is gone. It is God who has removed all. If the evil is gone and the sense of pain, it is God who has put them away from the heart. "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." Not only has He taken away the evil, but it is never to be any more. That is, there is now full and perfect security and blessedness. All the evil is gone, and all those things too through which; man was exercised to bring him to a point where he could really meet God. The love of God takes the place of everything, and, filling all things with Himself, precludes the possibility of evil ever coming in again the contrast of man's paradise of old, as we all know.

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." (Ver. 4.) God rests at last, when there was fully come the declared and precious object of the manifestation of the Son; "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." It was clean gone now. No trail of the serpent defiled the new creation. God had gone to the source of all that brought in sorrow, and swept it away in the judgment of the Cross. The former things were passed away. The God who had had to drive out the man and woman in tears from the Eden He had made for unfallen creatures, is able to meet us on the threshold of a new heaven and a new earth as the wiper away of all tears from our eyes.

Next we have the blessedness of the inhabitants of the scene. But how is it described? In the very way that appeals the most powerfully to hearts that have known the sorrows and tribulations of the wilderness. There will be the absence of everything that had caused us grief or anguish here. First, "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;" not a trace of former sorrow shall remain, and God Himself will remove it. What infinite tenderness in the expression that God Himself shall do this! Even as a mother will tenderly wipe away the tears of her child, so God Himself will delight to wipe away all tears from the eyes of His saints. And once wiped away they can never return; for "there shall be no more death" (how many tears has death wrung from bereaved ones in this scene!), "neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." All these, the former, things will have for ever passed away — these dark clouds — before the perpetual sunlight and joy of the eternal presence of God.

But it is impossible to pass over the beauty of the language employed, and as we ponder upon it for a moment let it sink deeply into our hearts in the power of the Holy Ghost. The very first words, "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes," are full of profound, yea, infinite tenderness. It is God Himself, taking each one, as it were, into His everlasting arms, and in His great love wiping away every trace of the sorrows of our earthly pilgrimage. Then — "and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. But ere this time on which we are meditating shall have come, the Lamb of God will have taken away the sin of the world, and death and hades will have been cast into the lake of fire. Death, the last enemy, has thus been destroyed, and, together with death, all the woes, the sorrow, the crying and the pain will disappear, so that nevermore will a single cloud rest upon any heart of all the redeemed. God's rest has thus been reached and His people will share in it for ever through His unspeakable grace, blessed be His name! And He reveals all this to us now, that we may live in the light of it through faith, and find in it, not only an antidote to present trials, but also a blessed encouragement to have our minds upon things above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.

In the next place John describes the eternal consolations of the redeemed: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death., neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." (v. 4.) Speaking exactly, this language applies to the "men" of verse 3. The church forming the tabernacle is not in view save as the dwelling-place of God, but as such in the enjoyment of her own special blessedness. Two things may be noted in this description. It is God who wipes away all tears from the eyes of His people. The tears recall the sorrows of the pilgrim life; and now God Himself, in His infinite grace and tenderness, wipes them away from their eyes — a figure of the eternal consolation ministered to them by God Himself. Then, secondly, death, and all the trials, pains, and griefs associated with human life in this world are gone, for ever abolished. Sin has now been taken away (John 1:29, Heb. 9:26) — the final result of the death of Christ on the cross; and hence death, together with all the other bitter fruits of sin, is removed from the scene, swallowed up in the victorious scene of life. It is not the positive side of eternal blessedness, but the negative. But where is the heart which is not relieved at the glorious prospect of freedom for ever, in the immediate enjoyment of the presence of God, from all the burdens that often bow us to the dust while treading the sands of the wilderness?

Men's eyes have oft been, and often are, and will be, down here, bedimmed with tears, for sin is in the world; but God will remove sin, and remove His own people to the place where there shall be no sin. And, as showing how He enters into all the marks of their present distress, He here puts their then exemption from the presence of evil in this way, "of Himself wiping every tear from every eye;" and so, too, as to the grand proof of sin, namely, death; and as to the present causes and expressions, within and without, of what leads to the tear, all is done away as a part of the first things.

It almost seems as if the joys of that day cannot be conveyed to us in positive terms, but there will be the absence of all that has distressed the human heart in the present conditions of this world. Not only will there be the absence of tears, but "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." How very touching that God should take away every trace of the sorrows connected with the first creation that man has brought into ruin.

In Eden God visited man unfallen, walked and talked with Him. Then sin severed this fellowship. He dwelt in the midst of Israel in the holiest of the tabernacle. In this age the Church is His habitation by the Spirit, but the blessed consummation in the eternal state will result in God dwelling with His redeemed creatures. What holy, glorious, never-ending intimacy that will be! It is the time when God is all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). When that time has come all the former things are passed away. "And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." Tears, death, sorrow, crying, pain and suffering, these came into existence through sin. And all these things, the effects of sin, are now gone. What relief and what joy!

The scene therefore in Rev. 21 is the consummation of God's eternal purposes of grace, and hence the full result of the efficacy of the precious blood of Christ. John the Baptist had announced our Lord as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; and here we find that the work is done. Hence we read, "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Sin having been put away, death, its bitter fruit, with all its sorrows, has also disappeared; and thus God has for ever wiped away the tears of His people. A further consequence, moreover, is that He can now dwell in this perfect way in the midst of the redeemed. He is now all in all; He Himself in all that He is, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, fills the scene, the eternal source of the eternal happiness of His glorified saints.