The New Heavens and Earth

This is from an article Resurrection and Restoration by Mark Johnston

"It is hugely important to appreciate what kind of future existence Paul is anticipating, because too many Christians have had misguided notions about heaven and what it will be like. The most widespread idea being of some kind of ethereal existence in the form of disembodied spirits. Such a view of the future life is at best unnatural and at worst subhuman, since our bodies are an essential part of our humanness, and carries overtones of the Gnostic heresies that did such damage to the church in the late First and early Second centuries AD.

"Paul's hope for the future is bound up inextricably with the hope of a resurrected body. He has alluded to it already when he speaks of somehow attaining to the resurrection of the dead (3.11), but at the end of the chapter he spells it out categorically, saying that when Jesus returns, he 'will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body' (3.21). The key to understanding what lies behind this is seen in the previous verse where he says of Jesus that he has the 'power that enables him to bring everything under his control' (3.20). In other words, the resurrection of the bodies of individual believers who have died will be part of the renewal of all things when Jesus comes again.

"It is crucial to see those two things side by side and in relation to one another. There is no use having a perfect body for an existence in an imperfect world. Just as a pristine Lamborghini sports car could never be 'at home' in a ghetto, neither would a perfect resurrected body in a world still spoiled by sin. The apostle looks forward to a totally transformed existence in a totally transformed environment - a perfect life in a perfect place. ...

"The clue to understanding the kind of perfection envisaged in these words is Christ himself. It was he who proclaimed himself to be 'the resurrection and the life' (Jn 11.25) and he of whom Paul says, 'in him all things hold together' (Col 1.17). Or, even more explicitly, writing to the Corinthians, 'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, New Creation!' (2Co 5.17) [Lit]. The essence of God's New Creation will be a world and universe in which Christ is consciously acknowledged as the One upon whom all things depend and to whose lordship all will submit."