For all of redeemed creation in the New Heavens and the New Earth…with perfectly renewed minds and renewed tongues,we will finally have those words to properly praise and thank Him who made our salvation of such infinite importance by dying for us that we may forever live with Him in this glorious world to come.

Have you ever paused to consider what language we will speak in Heaven? There will be, after all, souls and creatures beyond count with which we will engage in conversation and friendship: how is it that we will communicate? If you’re anything like me, doubtless you think of Heaven and believers’ future existence there in terms of what you are already familiar with—that is, your current language, your present culture, and the heritage you most closely identify with. Indeed, these cultural roots—of which language and cuisine and geography and history are but a part—run ever so deep, far deeper than many of us realize.

By way of a somewhat entertaining example, when I was a child there was a brief stretch of time where I was thoroughly convinced that God spoke only Serbian (though, I don’t think I truly held to this belief because, even at its zenith, my grasp of the Serbian language remains mostly infantile). This humorous misunderstanding on my part was owing to the fact that most of my childhood was informed by, and seen through the lens of, Serbian culture: my family, my cousins and friends, the church I grew up in, all the way down to nearly every meal I ate, all of it was painted in some way by the culture of my parents, my father’s side of the family in particular.

In many respects, I do not think this way of thinking about Heaven—one influenced so heavily by culture—to be a bad thing necessarily so long as we recognize we are dealing with echoes and shadows in even the very best of circumstances. I am of the mind that there exists, deep within the heart of most every culture and heritage, some semblance of that which God intended from the very beginning. That mankind, had the Fall never occurred, would have still diverged into a plethora of cultures and ethnicities, each glorifying God in their intricate diversity as they took dominion across the face of the Earth.

By simply surveying the world around you, it immediately becomes clear that our God is a God of immense variety and diversity; a diversity He intended for from the outset. One human race, yet a vast diversity of culture within that one race. Each individual soul made in His glorious image, yet each soul and culture reflecting the infinite bounds of His goodness, creativity, and beauty in a unique way. In the New Heavens and the New Earth, this is doubtless the reality that will take place as redeemed humanity fulfills God’s dominion mandate finally and fully:

“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.”
Revelation 21:23-24

In the final chapters of Revelation, the picture presented to us of the New Heavens and the New Earth is one of unexpected humanness: redeemed humanity in all its cultural diversity exercising dominion across the freshly cleansed cosmos. The glory of the nations is, in no small part, owing to their redeemed diversity. Not the fickle nonsense passing for diversity in our day; but true, God-glorifying variety that exists to put the many facets of His infinite beauty on display. Spreading like an aroma of Christ’s matchless glory throughout the universe, we as His ransomed image-bearers will at long last step into that role for which He created us from the beginning, fulfilling the weighty mandate given to our first parents, Adam and Eve.

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