God All in All

Since there are real men, there must also be a real planting for them — so that they do not vanish away among things that have no existence, but go forward among things that truly are. For neither the substance nor the being of the creation is wiped out, since the one who established it is faithful and true. It is only that “the form of this world is passing away” — that is, those things among which the transgression took place, since man has grown old in them. And that is why this present form of things was made to last only for a time, God knowing all things beforehand. I made this point in an earlier book, and showed there, as far as I could, why this world of passing things was made at all. But when this present form of things passes away, and man has been made new and flourishes in a state that cannot decay, so that he can never grow old again, then there will be the new heaven and the new earth. In them the new man will remain, always in fresh conversation with God. And that these things will go on without end, Isaiah declares: “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make continue in my sight, says the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.” [a]

And the elders say this: those counted worthy of a home in heaven will go there, others will enjoy the delights of paradise, and others will possess the splendor of the city. For everywhere the Savior will be seen, in the measure that those who see him are worthy.

They say, further, that there is this difference between the dwelling of those who bear fruit a hundredfold, and that of those who bear sixtyfold, and that of those who bear thirtyfold: the first will be taken up into the heavens, the second will live in paradise, and the last will occupy the city. That is why the Lord said: “In my Father’s house are many places to stay.” For all things belong to God, who provides everyone with a dwelling to suit him. It is as his Word says: the Father allots a share to each, according to what each is worthy of, or will be. And this is the couch on which the guests recline who have been invited to the wedding.

The elders, the disciples of the apostles, say that this is the order and arrangement of those who are being saved, and that they advance by steps of this kind: they go up through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father, and in due time the Son hands over his work to the Father. As the apostle says: “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” For in the times of the kingdom the righteous man who is on the earth will forget how to die. “But when he says that all things are put under him, it is plain that the one who put all things under him is excepted. And when all things are put under him, then the Son himself will also be subject to the one who put all things under him, so that God may be all in all.”

So John clearly saw beforehand the first “resurrection of the just” and the inheritance in the kingdom on this earth; and what the prophets prophesied about it agrees with what he saw. For the Lord taught these same things when he promised that he would drink the mixed cup new with his disciples in the kingdom. The apostle too has acknowledged that the creation will be set free from its slavery to decay and brought into the freedom of the sons of God. And in all of this, and through all of it, one and the same God the Father is made plain: the God who formed man, who gave the fathers the promise that they would inherit the earth, who brings the creation out at the resurrection of the just, and who makes good his promises for the kingdom of his Son. After that he gives, as a father gives, the things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, and that have never risen up in the heart of man.

For there is one Son, who carried out his Father’s will, and one human race in which the hidden purposes of God are worked out — the things “which angels long to look into.” And they cannot search out the wisdom of God, by which what his hands made is brought to completion, being made firm and taken into his Son: that his offspring, the firstborn Word, should come down to what he had made, that is, to the thing he had molded, and that it should be contained by him; and that, the other way about, what he had made should contain the Word and rise up to him, passing beyond the angels, and be made after the image and likeness of God.