NOTES for Rev 21:4
The end of time today appears to many people as some final catastrophe, after which, even if anything remains, it will certainly be unfit for any kind of life. The word "apocalypse" itself has come to mean the beginning of something terrible and at the same time endless and hopeless. But John, meanwhile, speaks of something else.
He speaks of a new age and of a world renewed by God's breath. Of a new heaven and a new earth. And this new world appears not somewhere in the cosmic distances, on another planet or in another dimension, but here, on our earth, beside us and around us. Nature does not disappear; it changes, acquires a new quality, and begins to function according to different laws.
One of the consequences of this changed functioning is the fact that neither illness nor death will have any place in the renewed world. This is not surprising: human nature is also changing. It is being renewed. And the main meaning of the changes taking place is that this renewed nature is no longer subject to evil. In spiritual life, evil manifests itself as sin; in natural life, as entropy. There is no place for either one in the renewed world. But if this is so, then there can be no place in it for sickness or death. Both are precisely typical examples of the triumph of entropy, disintegration, and degradation.
Of course, when the matter concerns a human being, one must speak not only of nature, but also of spirit. The human being is the only creature in nature whose life is determined not by the natural component, but by the spiritual one. Even in his present state, the human being as a natural creature depends strongly on his spiritual state. And in the new quality, after the transformation of human nature, this dependence becomes even stronger.
Now a person's physical state is completely determined by his spiritual state. And the spiritual state of a person living in the Kingdom is by definition full and whole. In other words, he lives a full life. The life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. This means that the physical life of such a person on the new earth under the new heaven will also, by definition, be full and whole. Without illness and death. In all fullness.