The new heaven and new earth will be the new universe as the realm of God’s ruling in eternity. Hence, it will be the realm for God to administrate His government for eternity, and this divine administration is considered the eternal kingdom of God in which righteousness dwells forever with the New Jerusalem (the composition of all the redeemed of God) as the center.
The new heaven and new earth will be the issue of God’s work of the new creation in the old creation and God’s work of restoration in the old creation. Here we see that God has two kinds of work in relation to the new heaven and new earth. First, His work is the work of the new creation within the old creation. This is God’s work upon His chosen ones, the believers in Christ. This work involves redemption, calling, regeneration, sanctification, transformation, and conformation. Once we were the old creation, but God is working on us, making us a new creation. This is God’s work of the new creation in the old creation.
God’s other kind of work related to the new heaven and new earth is His work of restoration in the old creation. This is God’s work to restore the natural nations to be the people, the nations, in the new universe.
Through these two kinds of work, God will have two kinds of peoples. The first kind will be the saints, the regenerated and transformed ones. The second kind, who will not be regenerated and transformed, will be the restored nations, those who are restored to the original state of God’s creation.
God’s work of the new creation in the old creation is to produce the regenerated, transformed, and perfected saints to be the kings and priests in the center—the New Jerusalem—of the new heaven and new earth. There is a basic difference between the new creation and the old creation. God’s life and nature are not wrought into the old creation, but the new creation does possess the divine life and the divine nature. Although the old creation came into being through the mighty work of God, He Himself does not reside in it. For this reason, the first creation, the old creation, has no divine content. The divine nature does not dwell in the old creation, and that is why it has become old. Adam did not have the life of God or the nature of God. We can receive the divine life and nature only by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and being regenerated by the Spirit. When we believed in Christ, entering into an organic union with Him, God’s life and nature were imparted to us and caused us to become a new creation. Therefore, 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”
God’s work in this age, the age of grace, is not the work of creation nor the work of restoration; it is the work of producing the new creation in the old creation. Through redemption, justification, regeneration, sanctification, transformation, conformation, and glorification God is making the new creation out of the old creation. The age of grace is the age of the new creation. The old creation is merely the creation without God in it. The new creation is the old creation born of God with God as its new element. The old creation, because of the addition of God to it, becomes the new creation. As believers in Christ, who have been born again of God, we have the divine life and the divine nature. Hence, we are a new creation (Gal. 6:15), not according to the old nature of the flesh but according to the new nature of the divine life.
The work of God in the age of grace is to produce the new creation. In the coming age, in the millennium, God will neither create nor produce the new creation. Instead, He will restore the old, fallen creation. The work of restoration will not include us, because by that time we shall have already become the new creation. As God’s new creation, in the new heaven and new earth we shall be the kings and priests. We shall serve God as priests and we shall reign as kings over the nations.