The country is sighing and suffering. Many recognize the serious consequences of climate change, such as rising sea levels and more extreme weather events. As a result, reducing our carbon footprint regularly emerges as a key theme at this time. Countries want to reduce their negative impact on the environment and help combat climate change. At the same time, they realize that sustainability can also drive their economic growth. Investment in new technologies can create business opportunities and generate jobs.
Earth as a temporary backdrop
Paul already wrote "that the whole creation still sighs and suffers as in travail" (Rom. 8:22). Anyone who looks around this world discovers unprecedented suffering alongside heavy rains, turbulent hurricanes and other storms. All this misery makes one aware that God's radical intervention is needed to redeem this globe.
This redemption has often involved the destruction of the earth. In this perspective, no room was made for the future redemption of the physical. As a result, creation was torn away from God and seen only as a temporary backdrop. This approach caused rich nations to choose to exploit the earth. The earth was going to perish anyway, so why not grab what there was to grab? A belief grew in society that this was a bad way to treat the earth.
Paul joins those critical comments and speaks of the future liberation and glorification of creation (Rom. 8:12-17). Creation is the work of God's hands, and even matter does not disappear from the picture in God's plan of salvation. Heaven does not mean the end of earth. We see in salvation history that God has an unprecedented love for this creation and does not leave it Godless or destroy it.
God will not let go of the earth
Creation yearns for her "rebirth" (Rom. 8:22). She lies in travail on the childbed and not in agony on the deathbed. Just as she was drawn into ruin by the bankruptcy of Adam, she is delivered from all death and misery by the triumph of Christ. A foretaste of this we see in Christ's service. His promise is that the meek will possess the land and God's will will also be done on earth. The miracles and signs show that God is not letting go of this world. It is these physical signs that bear witness to the coming age.
In the world in which the apostles proclaimed this, these testimonies were sensitive. For many, the physical was merely a secondary issue. What mattered was the spiritual and rational. The soul and thought were at the center of the human universe. The optimum for the future was a spirit soul, without a body.
Jesus' crucified body did not perish and be replaced by another new body.
Radically, the NT opposes this idea by witnessing God becoming physically human, physically dying on the cross and physically rising from the dead. The resurrection testified to what God had in mind for his creation. Death and suffering did not have the last word over the earth. The serpent's wiles to kill creation would not take place. Prophets proclaimed the hope of a glorified new heaven and earth.
New body?
Those who read through the resurrection stories discover that they are connected to the lives of
the Messiah before it. Jesus eats a fish, is identifiable by his wounds, walks with the Emmaus disciples (whose eyes God obscured), talks with Mary (whom the gardener suspects is in the tomb garden in the morning). The testimony of the resurrection narratives is a testimony of continuity. Jesus' crucified body has not perished and been replaced by another new body. At the same time, the resurrection body is of a different quality than the crucified body. The resurrection body is the crucified body, but in a glorified state. In this respect, the resurrection is characterized from the beginning by continuity and discontinuity.
Renewal deeper than recycling
This is also the hallmark of God's future renewal. Renewal is more than recycling, resuscitation, renovation and at the same time less than a total demolition. It is a transformation of life; a radical glorification from resurrection life. This is in line with prophetic talk of the new heavens and the new earth. After the call "I saw a new heaven and a new earth" (Rev. 21:1), the prophet exults: 'God's dwelling place is among men; He will dwell with them. They will 
his peoples are, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no mourning, no lamentation, no pain, for what was before is past" (Rev. 21:3b-4). To that moment of the glorious reception of God's full presence on this planet, all creation looks forward eagerly. Then the Father, the Son and the Spirit will find a home on earth forever.
Dr. Raymond R. Hausoul earned his doctorate on the topic of the new heaven and earth and published the books The new heaven and new earth (2018) and God's future for animals (2019) on this.
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