John Piper Quote: "The gospel is the rock of our solid a**urance of the hope of the new heavens and the new earth. We will be raised, our bodies will be redeemed, the gospel of Christ crucified, providing pardon, providing righteousness, vindicating this by resurrection. All of that is true. it's just not the main thing. I'm concerned that we stop the message there and leave people with a sense that what the gospel does for them is get them out of hell, relieve them of their guilt, clothe them with a righteousness that lets them have relief in heaven forever, but they don't crave Christ. The ultimate good of the gospel is God Himself, beheld in the glory of His crucified and risen Son, enjoyed because of his infinite beauty, treasured because of his infinite worth, and reflected because we are being conformed to the image of His son. Christ suffered once, the righteous for the unrighteousness, that he might bring us to God. There is no end after that. The ultimate reason there is a new heavens and a new earth is because the risen Christ will never lay down His human body, but keep it as an everlasting emblem of Calvary where the glory of God's grace was displayed most fully. The whole material universe was created in the first place and then given new form so that the Son of God could be incarnate, could suffer, could be crucified, could rise from the dead, could reign as the God- man, could be surrounded by a countless host of redeemed people with glorified bodies who will sing with these glorified lips, and who will love each other with glorified hands, and will play with glorified bodies, to the glory of God. Because evidentially in God's scheme of things to have created mere-spirits would not display all of His manifold, kaleidoscopic glory as well as if there had been a physical universe where the son of God would physically be slaughtered." We will join with countless saints
And forever gladly repeat this refrain: Praise to the slaughtered Son
Your blood has ransomed us
Worthy of praise forever
Are You, our endless treasure And as far as we can see
There are saints in white robes worshipping Every nation, people, tongue and race
Are represented in the crowd that's on their face And we'll live in a city with no evil, no night
For the glory of God will shine as our light And the Lord and the Lamb will forever be worshipped
And things will be restored to the way they were purposed