God could have picked any name for his new future city here on earth. He chose new Jerusalem, see Revelation 3:12 and chapters 21 & 22. Why that particular name? The history of the current earthly city of Jerusalem is not the point of this article. What follows is much more profound.
Man’s Future
The reason for that naming may be found in Ephesians 3:14-19. Paul prays for something extraordinary to happen to all of us, culminating in the climax “that you may be filled with all fullness of God.”
What does “that you may be filled with all fullness of God” mean?
Filled with all Fullness
“You may be filled” means to be complete, whole, to be satisfied.1 To experience perfect joy.2
“With all fullness of God” means the full contents of God.1 What are those contents?
Paul says in 3:8 he will preach “the unsearchable riches of Christ” and in 3:10 Paul describes those riches as “the manifold wisdom of God.” The contents that God will fill us with is the manifold wisdom of God.
Digging deeper…
Manifold Wisdom
“Manifold” means various, variegated, intricate.1 I view it as “many-folded.” Picture a fan. It has many visible and known parts—the outer folds of a fan; and many parts hidden or unknown—the inner folds of a fan. It can expand and contract, open and close.
“Wisdom” is defined as the right application of knowledge which resides in the mind.1 In this case it would be the full contents in God’s mind—known and unknown—which the Bible calls “the fullness of God.”
Our Future with God
Summarizing Paul’s statement “that you may be filled with all fullness of God” from what we learned above, I restate it as:
We shall experience the joy of feeling complete and satisfied when God fills us with all his wisdom.
We will be the living embodiment of that statement, each and every one of us in Christ. We will be filled with God’s wisdom. His wisdom will enter our minds. We will have God’s mind in our mind!
That is the pinnacle of the Gospel of God which Paul preaches. That is the endpoint where our faith in Jesus is taking us. God will fill believer’s in Jesus with his wisdom. That experience will give us great joy and satisfaction. We shall be complete as human beings when we are filled with this fullness, the wisdom of God.
It is hard to wrap our minds around that kind of a future waiting for us, but that’s what Paul says is going to take place. The Bible says we will experience that kind of a life in a place called new Jerusalem.
With that in mind, onto the name Jerusalem.
What “Jerusalem” Means
Jerusalem is Yerushalayim in Hebrew. It is composed of two words, “yeru” and “shalayim or sha-lem.”3
The core word in this name is, “sha-lem,” which means completeness and wholeness. The word “shalom” meaning peace, comes from this word, because any peace depends on both completeness and wholeness.4
The first part of the name Jerusalem “yeru,” pronounced “yir-oo,” can mean either “[they] will see or [they] will feel the awe.” When you put these parts together, you fully understand the name Jerusalem: “[they] will see the Wholeness or ‘[they] will feel the awe of the Completeness.”4
What?
That is exactly what Paul says in Ephesians 3:19, “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” We will experience the joy of feeling complete and satisfied when God fills us with all his wisdom.
Jerusalem means “They will feel the awe of Completeness.” A state where one is so in touch with God as to be in constant rapture.3
New Jerusalem
In the new Jerusalem, we will experience knowing the wisdom of God, fully and completely. It will be nothing short of a rapturous bliss. Something so far beyond any earthly experience we have here. We will live that experience in a city whose name means exactly what that experience of our lives will be like then. God names things he creates for what they are. New Jerusalem will be just that, the place where we live with the wisdom of God inside us. Forever! — vkw
1. Bullinger, E.W. A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament, 1999, Kregel Publications
2. Kittel, G. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume, 1985, Eerdmans
3. https://www.chabad.org/
4. https://hebrew.jerusalemprayerteam.org/jerusalem/
