The author of Hebrews tells Christians that they’ve come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God (12:22-24). What strikes me about this passage is that it speaks in the past tense. Christians “have come” to the heavenly Jerusalem. On the other hand, the book of Revelation envisions the New Jerusalem as a future reality. “Then,” John says, “the first heaven and first earth…passed away.”1 Only after the old has gone does he see the new city coming down from heaven to earth (Rev 21:1).
If nothing else, mashing up Hebrews 12 and Revelation 21 suggests that our sense of time as Christians isn’t straightforward. We’ve already come to Mount Zion (Hebrews), and God has not yet made his dwelling place with man (Revelation). It’s good to keep that in mind during the Advent season when we are reliving the Old Testament’s anticipation of the coming of the Christ even as we actively live our anticipation of his second coming.
The mash up tells us something else, which is that what is signified by the proper noun “Jerusalem” also isn’t so straightforward in the Bible. There are at least three ways of understanding it:
The geographical city located east of the Mediterranean and west of the Jordan river,
The place that Christians gather in the here and now to feast with angels (Heb 12:22), and, finally,
The New Jerusalem which will come down from heaven (Rev 21).
It’s not easy to disentangle which one is signified by the word “Jerusalem” in the any given Bible passage. And, I would submit, it’s likely that, as Christians, we can sometimes see all three of them signified. They’re all related, after all, because they all have a common history as the City of David.
The reason I bring this up is because some Christians have vigorously, and perhaps rightly, maintained the historical meaning of the word “Jerusalem” when it comes to applying particular passages to Christian practice. Psalm 122:6 urges the reader to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” In my own church experience, I’ve only ever heard Psalm 122:6 quoted as an imperative to pray for the earthly city of Jerusalem (the one to which Donald Trump moved the US embassy in his first term). But I want to suggest that interpreting Psalm 122:6 in a way that compliments how New Testament passages like Hebrews and Revelation understand the meaning of “Jerusalem” might produce a more faithful Christian reading of the Psalm as a whole.
Consider Psalm 122 with me:
I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
2 Our feet have been standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem!3 Jerusalem—built as a city
that is bound firmly together,
4 to which the tribes go up,
the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
5 There thrones for judgment were set,
the thrones of the house of David.6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
“May they be secure who love you!
7 Peace be within your walls
and security within your towers!”
8 For my brothers and companions' sake
I will say, “Peace be within you!”
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your good.
Rather than reading “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” as “pray for the peace of the earthly city of Jerusalem,” I suggest that we read it as “pray that the peace that is inherently and permanently in the heavenly Jerusalem” would come to us. We can read it that second way because we know from Rev 21 that there is a heavenly Jerusalem that is yet to come, and that that city is the place of peace since it is the city in which God himself dwells with man.
The latter meaning is, I think, the only way we can read the entire Psalm in a way that still applies to the contemporary church. Psalm 122:2 says, “our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!” Christians who live across the world only rarely have their feet in the gates of capital city of the Israel founded in 1948—and that only if they're privileged enough to be able to travel there. But according to Hebrews 12, all Christians do stand in the gates of Jerusalem, that is, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. Hebrews 12 speaks of us “coming to” Mount Zion, which is another way of saying with David in Psalm 122 that “our feet have been standing in your gates” (v.2). To come to a place is to set one’s feet at the gate of that place, to anticipate entry, and to say that one is already there while not yet having entered.
Having set our feet at her gates, we can marvel at the city’s beauty. As David says, “Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together!” John of Patmos’s elaborate architectural appraisal of the New Jerusalem in Rev 21 (remarking on its height, width, breadth, the number of its gates, and the beauty of the gems and pearls that adorn it all) is nothing less than a prolonged and detailed way of saying “this is built as a city that is bound firmly together.”
Psalm 122:5 also speaks of the thrones of judgment being set in Jerusalem. That’s exactly what we hope for and are promised in the New Jerusalem when it descends from heaven to earth in Revelation. As John of Patmos says, “I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne” (20:12).
The Psalm concludes by saying to the city, “I will seek your good” (v. 9). Understood in continuity with all I’ve said thus far, we can read this as the invitation, the challenge, and the calling of all Christians. We’re asked to seek the good of the heavenly Jerusalem. Seek—and the promise is that we will find. God’s final purpose to bring heaven to earth will not be thwarted.
Let me restate all of this from a slightly different angle to explain what I’m talking about. Imagine that Psalm 122 is a portrayal of what happens as often as Christians gather together as the church: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘let us go to the house of the Lord!’” (v.1). As often as we go up to the house of the Lord, which is the church, we are coming to Mount Zion, the city of the living God (Heb 12:22). There, our feet stand in the gates of New Jerusalem, where we marvel at its beauty and anticipate the Great White Throne Judgment. We “seek the good” of that city by adoring the church even as we seek the city which comes down from heaven (Psalm 122:9//Rev 21:2).
There’s nothing wrong with praying for the peace of the earthly city of Jerusalem. The ongoing war there should ignite the fire of compassion in each one of our hearts. But we shouldn’t pray for the peace of Jerusalem while neglecting to pray for the peace of all other earthly cities (or worse, praying for their violence). And, above all else, we shouldn’t pray for the end of conflict in the Middle East to the neglect of praying for the end of the cosmic conflict between heaven and earth that only the New Jerusalem can reconcile.
For your listening pleasure, start at about the one-minute mark:
I rely on the ESV for most of the Scripture quotations in this piece.
Yes, i am always thinking about the New Jerusalem, but also praying for peace throughout the whole earth.