The Pearly Gates

Revelation 21:21 (ESV) And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.


They are often the baseline for a joke. But they are far more than a joke. They are the gates of the City of God! And they will be beautiful.

The story of a pearl is a clue to this beautiful picture John gives us. A Pearl is made from a mollusk in a very ordinary oyster. A piece of sand gets under the membrane and causes the oyster pain. Eventually the mollusk secrets a nacre that rounds off the piercing edges of that foreign object and over time a pearl is produced.

Is this not a picture of heaven? Our lives are filled with foreign objects that invade us. Yet we have the Holy Spirit in us rounding off the rough spots in our lives to produce something beautiful. Eventually, in the sanctification process we have beauty from our pains.

Earlier in the chapter, John records this reality in the new city:
Revelation 21:3–4 (ESV) And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Those gates are pure representations of what God is accomplishing in our lives here on Earth. He is taking our pains and wiping them away. He is shaping us and forming us into something we could not imagine. Our pains will pass because of His goodness and grace. 

And soon enough, we are formed for the City of God.