Are There Really No Laws or Institutions in the New Creation?

For Jewish readers and new believers | A few key terms (optional)

Tanakh (תנ״ך) is the Jewish name for the Hebrew Bible, corresponding to what Christians call the Old Testament. It comprises the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings.

The New Creation is the world after God’s final renewal described in Revelation 21–22. The New Jerusalem, the river and tree of life, the nations, and the throne of God and the Lamb all appear in this final vision.

The millennium is the thousand-year period in Revelation 20 during which Christ and the saints reign. Christians understand it in different ways; this article follows Xiaoyang’s model and treats it as an important transition before the New Creation.

‘Overcomers’ is a recurring expression in Revelation. Xiaoyang mainly uses it for people whose lives have become exceptionally mature, who remain absolutely loyal to Jesus through testing and can bear responsibility for the government of God’s kingdom.

John the Baptist was the Jewish prophet who, before Jesus’ public ministry, called the people to repentance at the Jordan, baptised them and announced the Messiah’s coming. Paul was a Jew deeply versed in the Tanakh and zealous for ancestral tradition. He once persecuted Christians, but later became a leading apostle, founded many local churches and wrote numerous New Testament letters.

1. The strangest feature of the New Creation: where did the institutions go?

Revelation 21–22 does not portray an anarchic world. It contains the throne of God and the Lamb, the holy city, nations, kings, gates, God’s servants, the river and tree of life, worship, service and government. Revelation 22:5 even says that they will reign for ever and ever.

Yet Scripture does not portray the final world as a society filled with courts, police, denominations, church constitutions, senior pastors, elders’ meetings, membership systems, tithing rules, Sunday-attendance requirements and religious bureaucracies. Even temples, synagogues and church buildings disappear: Revelation 21:22 says that there is no temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

The tabernacle, temple and priestly system that were so important from the time of Moses are not ultimately upgraded into a larger, final temple. God and the Lamb themselves become the temple.

2. This does not mean that the New Creation has no rules at all

The Bible never explicitly says that no law of any kind exists in the New Creation. Good and evil, holiness, authority, government and order remain. The real question is whether the final, mature world will still depend on the extensive external regulations, institutions and supervision familiar to us today in order to sustain right living.

A person who no longer needs to read a ‘Do not murder’ sign every day has not decided that murder is right; that person may simply have matured to the point of having no desire to murder.

3. In the end, the law may not be ‘defeated’ but embodied in life

The Ten Commandments prohibit murder, adultery, theft, false witness and coveting. If, in eternity, God must still remind mature members of his family every day not to murder, steal or break covenant, the problem is not that the law is insufficiently refined; the family is still immature.

Xiaoyang proposes that the Bible’s final direction may not be an ever-growing number of rules, but an ever-deeper inscription of God’s intention into life. Good and evil do not disappear; what disappears is the need for a mass of external institutions to compel people to choose the good.

4. Truly mature order is not the absence of order

Fewer institutions need not mean chaos. The less mature a community is, the more it usually needs rules, supervision, penalties, approvals, hierarchies and external restraints. The more mature it is, the more it can live together through trust, responsibility, discernment, love and shared inward values.

A two-year-old needs rules about not touching electrical sockets, running into the road or handling knives. If a thirty-five-year-old still needs daily notices from his parents saying not to hit his mother or steal his father’s money, nobody praises the family’s excellent system; people ask what has happened to the adult.

5. Why, then, did the Mosaic Law contain so many regulations?

Eden had none of the extensive law and religious institutions associated with Moses. God gave Adam the task of governing, cultivating and guarding, while the core prohibition was only one command: do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam failed even to keep that one command. What this may reveal first is not that humanity needs endlessly more laws, but that the first human beings were not yet mature.

If extensive external law were God’s highest and eternal intention for humanity, the original creation that God called very good should already have contained a complete legal code. It did not. The Mosaic Law truly consisted of God’s commands to Israel through Moses, but that does not mean every institution within it is the final form of the eternal world.

When Jesus discussed divorce, he said that Moses permitted certain arrangements because of hard hearts, but that it was not so from the beginning. Thus, a system that God permits, regulates or even commands at one stage need not be the ultimate creation ideal. Some institutions are necessary precisely because people are not yet mature.

6. The law is like a primary school

In Galatians Paul describes the law as a guardian or tutor that leads people until Christ comes. Xiaoyang understands the whole biblical story as a path of gradual maturation: Genesis resembles kindergarten, the Mosaic Law primary school, the New Testament or Church age secondary school, the millennium overseas study and an internship, and the New Creation mature life after graduation.

Kindergarten, primary school and secondary school are not wrong. The problem is being thirty-five years old and still insisting that primary-school rules are the highest form of life.

7. Why does the millennium still require government?

During the millennium Christ and the overcomers still reign, and nations and government remain. After the thousand years Satan is released and again deceives the nations, showing that the millennium is not yet the story’s final, completed state. In Xiaoyang’s model, it is more like the final major period of transition.

8. For most of God’s people, the millennium is like ‘studying abroad’

The Jewish people possess the Tanakh and Christians possess the Old and New Testaments; nevertheless, the same Bible still gives rise to different denominations, theologies, eschatologies, church systems and conflicting interpretations. Possessing Scripture does not mean understanding God completely.

If Jesus reigns openly, many people will for the first time relearn under his government rather than through denominations, seminaries, pulpits, church traditions and second-hand interpretations. In this sense, the millennium may resemble overseas study or a preparatory course.

9. For mature overcomers, the millennium is more like an ‘internship’

Revelation connects overcoming with reigning alongside Christ. For those who are exceptionally mature, the millennium is not only a classroom; it is the beginning of bearing authority. Knowing justice differs from actually governing, just as knowing that one should love differs from remaining fair amid nations, cultures, interests and conflict. The millennium can therefore have the character of both study and internship.

10. The New Creation is the true ‘graduation’

By Revelation 21–22, Satan no longer appears, death and the curse are gone, God dwells with humanity, his servants see his face, his name is on their foreheads, and they reign for ever and ever. This does not resemble a world that needs more rules to control everyone, but a people mature enough to bear eternal freedom and government.

The New Creation also resembles a return to Eden. The Bible begins with the tree of life, a river and God with humanity; it ends again with the tree of life, the river of life and God dwelling with humanity. Eden was not a defective product. The problem was that its first heirs were still immature. The greatest difference between Eden and the New Creation is not that God invents a better system, but that those who inherit the world have finally matured.

Nor does the New Jerusalem resemble an ultimate technological metropolis. The text focuses on gold, precious stones, pearls, twelve gates, twelve foundations, and the names of the apostles and the twelve tribes. It is more like an eternal memorial trophy, bearing witness that through freedom, history, testing and choice God has gained mature family members who remain loyal to him. The New Creation is not the world with the most perfected institutions, but the world with the most mature life.

11. If the goal is mature life, the Church’s role must be reconsidered

The Church may have institutions: gatherings need times, finances need administration, children need protection, and teaching and leadership need organisation. The problem is not institutions themselves, but whether they are tools that help people mature or masters that keep people permanently dependent.

Does today’s Church place new believers, believers of five or twenty years, and people already able to discern, bear responsibility and shepherd others under the same fixed gatherings, pulpit, answers, procedures and centre of authority—as if all adults remained in one children’s Sunday school? If mature believers are still treated as students waiting every week for a teacher’s answers, the Church may be preserving a single student identity for administrative convenience rather than nurturing maturity.

A healthy church should recognise that different degrees of maturity require different levels of protection, teaching, freedom and responsibility. What is easiest to manage is not necessarily what best produces maturity.

12. The Church may merely replace ‘Mosaic Law’ with ‘church law’

Christians may say they are not under the Mosaic Law while creating new regulations about compulsory Sunday attendance, how much to give, who may baptise, preach or preside at Communion, which leader must receive reports, and which activities must be attended.

Stone tablets from Sinai are replaced by church constitutions, a priestly class by modern clergy, and Sabbath rules by Sunday rules. If the logic of government remains unchanged, have people truly entered New Covenant maturity?

13. ‘Useful’ does not mean ‘God’s eternal command’

Sunday gatherings, regular giving, senior pastors, baptism by designated ministers and Christmas observance may all have value, efficiency or order. That does not make them a new Sabbath law, a commanded fixed percentage, an indispensable eternal office, a qualification restricted to clergy, or the core of the faith.

The basic distinction is this: something useful is not therefore truth itself; something that maintains order is not therefore required by God in every age.

14. Paul knew that ‘the Lord’s command’ and ‘an apostle’s judgement’ were not identical

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul sometimes says explicitly that the Lord commands something and elsewhere says that he has no direct command from the Lord but offers a judgement. This does not deny apostolic authority; it shows that even Paul did not collapse Jesus’ direct command, apostolic gospel judgement and practical arrangements for local churches into one level.

He circumcised Timothy for a Jewish setting but refused to have Titus circumcised under pressure. In 1 Corinthians 9 he also adapted himself to different audiences while remaining under the law of Christ. The truth did not change, but particular practices were not identical with the truth itself.

Paul’s rules were like crutches that helped immature believers walk. Crutches matter when legs are weak, but their purpose is not to make people afraid to walk independently for life. What cannot change is the Christ, love, holiness, truth and mutual edification those practices serve—not every operational method.

15. The churches Paul addressed were profoundly immature

The Corinthian church suffered factions, jealousy, lawsuits, sexual immorality, disorder at the Lord’s Supper, rivalry over gifts and chaotic meetings. Paul said plainly that they were still infants. Such a community naturally needed order in meetings, guidance for gifts, qualifications for leaders, care, financial arrangements and discipline.

Whether the crutches Paul supplied to heal an immature church should all be recast by later generations as eternal stone tablets is another question.

16. The purpose of institutions should be to make less dependence possible one day

If a school’s most successful student still asks the teacher for permission every day forty years after graduation, the school can hardly be called successful. Normal education recognises differences of age, ability, background and maturity and uses different forms of instruction.

If a church places new believers, believers of ten or thirty years, beginning Bible readers and people already able to teach into the same Sunday pulpit, fixed procedures, answers and pastoral model, it must ask whether this is for edification or administrative convenience.

The proof that an institution succeeds should not be that believers become increasingly unable to live without it, but that they become increasingly able to discern, bear responsibility, love, serve and live in Christ. When the legs can walk, the institution should also be willing to let people set down the crutch.

17. John the Baptist did what many leaders find very difficult: he let people leave him

John the Baptist had disciples and influence, and some wondered whether he was the Messiah. In modern organisational terms, this looked like a rapidly growing ministry. Yet when Jesus appeared, John did not hold on to his audience and disciples. He pointed to Jesus and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God,’ and the disciples began following Jesus.

18. For John the Baptist, disciples leaving was not ‘ministry failure’

When people nurtured by a modern leader go elsewhere, it is often viewed as the ministry shrinking. John the Baptist was concerned not with how many continued to follow him, but with whether they had found the one they truly ought to follow. He said, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ Mature leaders do not panic when others increasingly need them less.

19. Paul did not turn local churches into his private property

Paul founded many churches but generally did not remain permanently in one place as an irreplaceable centre. He stayed in Corinth for about a year and a half and in Ephesus for about two or three years. He wrote letters, sent co-workers, appointed leaders, exhorted, corrected and wept, but in the end he still left. The churches were not Paul’s private property; they belonged to Jesus Christ.

20. Paul’s true success was not making every church need Paul forever

If Paul had needed to remain for forty years after founding the Corinthian church because it would collapse as soon as he left, would that show how important Paul was—or that the church had never grown up? An apostle teaches, corrects and leaves principles, but must eventually let go. The aim is not to produce lifelong dependants but to build the Church that belongs to Jesus.

21. Finally, consider Jesus himself

Jesus was not a modern senior pastor, and his identity cannot be equated with that of an ordinary pastor. Yet he led his disciples publicly for about three to three and a half years; he did not spend forty years making the apostles unable to act without his physical presence. He taught, corrected, sent them out, allowed failure, taught again and finally ascended.

22. Jesus was even willing to leave

If anyone had the right to say, ‘You cannot leave my direct management,’ it was God’s only Son. Yet Jesus did not remain bodily in Jerusalem to chair the disciples’ meetings forever. He left and sent the invisible Holy Spirit, allowing the disciples to judge, bear responsibility, preach the gospel, build communities, address conflicts and face persecution.

After this, God also ceased to guide every step as frequently in visible ways as in early Genesis. This does not mean God became more distant. It may mean that humanity had moved from spiritual kindergarten, through the primary school of Mosaic Law, into the secondary school of the New Covenant: learning to understand God’s intention, discern in the Spirit, bear responsibility for choices, and remain loyal to Christ even when God was not visibly standing beside them.

Jesus did not abandon the disciples, but neither did he define maturity as permanent dependence on his bodily presence to make every decision for them. Jesus’ ascension and the Spirit’s coming mean that God began requiring his people truly to grow up.

23. What is the problem when a pastor serves the same church for decades?

A pastor serving the same community for a long time is not itself sinful; it may arise from faithfulness, need or calling. The issue is not that staying longer than three and a half years is wrong, but whether the pastor can let go. If after decades of ministry a pastor still believes the church will be finished if he leaves, we must ask whether the church truly cannot live without him—or whether he never nurtured it to the point where it could.

24. ‘The church will collapse if I leave’ is not necessarily a reason for pride

A leader may regard ‘Nothing works without me’ as a sense of responsibility, but it may also be a deeply troubling report card. If after thirty years of pastoral care the community still cannot discern, bear responsibility, teach or face God for itself, and collapses as soon as the leader leaves, what exactly did those thirty years produce?

25. What if it really does collapse?

If a church really collapses after its pastor leaves, this may reveal that its structure was excessively built on one person’s charisma, preaching, relationships, control and reputation. A healthy pastor hopes not that ‘Without me you are finished,’ but that ‘Even when I am absent, you still know how to follow Jesus.’

26. Truly successful parents do not want their children to remain unable to leave them

When children are young, parents make decisions, set boundaries, organise life and handle dangers for them. The normal goal, however, is not to raise a forty-year-old who still cannot live without the parents, but an adult able to work, choose, bear consequences, care for others and form a family. Love remains, but the relationship moves from control and care into mature love and trust.

27. Spiritual life can also produce ‘adult babies’

A person may have believed for decades and be familiar with when to stand or sit, how to pray and give, titles for pastors and Christian terminology. Yet when real judgement is needed, the only questions may still be, ‘Does the pastor say it is allowed? Does the church permit it? What does the leader think?’ Is this maturity, or merely great skill at being managed?

28. Obedience itself can also be misunderstood

Maturity does not mean rebellion or refusing to listen to anyone. Mature people may still respect pastors, receive counsel, gather, serve and observe reasonable order. The difference is that when the institution is removed, they still know how to follow Jesus.

Mature people can listen to leaders without treating them as Christ, use institutions without treating them as life, and remain in a church without losing all sense of where God is if they leave a building, denomination or pastor.

29. Hebrews already warns about ‘believing for a long time without growing up’

Hebrews rebukes people who, by that time, ought to have been able to teach others but still needed to relearn elementary truths, and it uses milk and solid food to describe differences in maturity. Time since conversion is not the same as maturity. Used wrongly, institutions may even allow people never to grow up.

30. This is the Church institution’s greatest temptation

An institution begins by serving life, but life may later be made to serve the institution. Pastors begin by helping believers follow Jesus, but believers may later exist to sustain a pastor’s ministry. Gatherings begin by building up life, but spirituality may later be measured by attendance. Giving begins as love and freedom, but may later serve organisational finances. Leaders begin as servants, but the community may later exist to preserve their position.

This is why institutions must not be made sacred.

31. The best institution knows that one day it will matter less

A successful school aims for students to graduate; a successful hospital does not hope patients remain admitted forever; successful parents do not hope their children can never leave home. A healthy church likewise should not make ‘believers always need us’ its highest measure.

It should form people who can discern, serve, bear responsibility, lead others and remain loyal to Jesus even when no institution is watching them.

32. What, then, is the goal of ‘maturity’?

Maturity is not becoming incapable of sin, losing freedom or becoming a machine that can only select the correct answer. It means choosing love while still free, remaining honest when no one watches, not harming people without a legal threat, serving while holding authority, and remaining loyal when betrayal is possible. These are the people truly suited to the eternal world.

33. This also explains why ‘more law’ is not the highest answer to eternal safety

If eternity is safe only because everyone is locked down, choice is removed and the possibility of error is deleted by programming, that is mechanical safety. Yet Scripture portrays relationships as Father and children, Bridegroom and bride, King and faithful servants, and God and his people. The value of all these relationships involves genuine love, loyalty and choice.

34. The New Creation is a ‘mature extended family’

God dwells among humanity and wipes away tears. The water of life flows from the throne of God and the Lamb; the tree of life supplies life. His servants serve him, see his face, bear his name on their foreheads and reign for ever. This is not the strictest prison or the church with the most regulations. It resembles God finally gaining a mature family.

35. A mature family is not a family without a Father

That the New Creation does not depend on extensive institutions does not mean God ceases to reign. The throne of God and the Lamb remains. Authority has not disappeared; what is no longer needed is an enormous external system to preserve loyalty. Mature children do not reject their Father; because they truly understand him, they freely love him.

36. Nor does everyone become completely identical

The New Creation still contains nations, kings, servants, the holy city and the life of the nations outside it. At least on the text’s surface, not every difference disappears. Maturity is not the loss of distinctiveness, roles, responsibility and government; it is having differences without conflict to preserve them, authority without control to prove it, and freedom without sin to demonstrate it.

37. The millennium therefore becomes the last important bridge before the New Creation

Humanity today is accustomed to states, law, capital, religion, denominations, corporations, classes, administration and centres of power. Christians can likewise imagine God’s kingdom as merely a more perfect institution. The millennium may be a stage of relearning: not the construction of a stronger religious empire, but learning under Christ’s reign how mature life operates.

38. The Church age should not treat itself as the final version of God’s kingdom

Two thousand years of Christian seminaries, denominations, rules, liturgies, theology and institutions have produced much that is valuable, but they are not yet the completed kingdom of God. If Moses could not treat the Sinai system as the eternal destination, the Church should not treat denominations, senior-pastor systems, meeting patterns, theological frameworks and worship forms as eternal templates.

39. The Church is not the destination

The Church is important, but important does not mean ultimate. The Mosaic Law, tabernacle and temple were all important, yet Revelation ultimately says that there is no temple in the city. If even the temple has a day when its mission is complete, today’s church institutions have no reason to assume that they must exist forever.

40. In the end, only one person remains at the true centre

The Ten Commandments, pastors and church institutions may all be important and useful, but none is the centre. Moses, institutions, the Church, pastors, denominations and even the city of New Jerusalem itself are not the centre. At the centre of Revelation’s final vision are still God and the Lamb.

41. Jesus Christ alone

This article is not establishing a new slogan that only life without institutions is spiritual. Use institutions when they are needed and lay them down when they are not. When churches, pastors and traditions help people, use, respect and learn from them.

But they are crutches and tools that help people walk towards Jesus; Jesus does not exist to endorse institutions.

Conclusion | God ultimately perfects life, not institutions

From Genesis to Moses, from Moses to Jesus, from the Church age to the millennium and onward to the New Creation, the biblical story is not merely God issuing better institutions. It is more like God continually leading humanity towards maturity. Infants need protection, primary-school children need rules, adolescents learn judgement, and adults bear responsibility. Mature family members do not need parents to supervise them daily with a rulebook just to know not to harm the family.

What God ultimately desires is not a group of spiritual adult babies skilled at observing religious systems, but mature family members who know him, freely love him, willingly love others, can bear authority and remain loyal when no one is watching.

John the Baptist was willing to let his disciples leave him; Paul was willing to leave after founding churches; after leading his disciples for several years, Jesus too allowed them to bear the mission. A godly leader does not prove that ‘You can never live without me,’ but can one day say with confidence, ‘Even when I am not beside you, you still know how to follow Jesus.’

Revelation’s final world is peaceful and free, yet ordered—not because God has written the universe’s thickest rulebook, but because God has finally gained a mature family. The New Creation is not the world with the most perfected institutions but the world with the most mature life. Its centre is not law, institutions, the Church or pastors, but Jesus Christ alone.