“If we must avoid and flee the world that now lies in wickedness, to the extent that it lies in wickedness, then for God’s sake we must love and honour this very same world in its core and essence, as the artistic work of the almighty power of our God. We must not want it to go away and be destroyed so that our spiritual one-sidedness can be satisfied, but we must long for the moment when it will cast off its blemishes and will radiate in new form as the perfected artistic work of our God. So the world will not be lost. What will pass away is the present form of the world; but what remains is God’s creation, and that creation of God will ascend to still higher glory than it displayed at the time of its creation. As it was created, it was destined to develop to a still richer splendour. This was impeded by the curse. Rather than becoming richer, it became impoverished and parched. But this diminishing of the gold’s lustre is curbed, and then all the beauty hidden in it comes out again, even as it is simultaneously guided to its ultimate climax. Jesus himself calls this the regeneration of the creation (Matt 19:28).”
“In that coming of Jesus to the restored world, in that gathering of the exalted Christ before whom every knee will bow, together with the creation redeemed from the curse and renewed, therein lies the connection of the endpoint of common grace with the situation that abides for eternity. At that point all common grace comes to an end. It can restrain nothing anymore, because there is nothing to restrain. It will disappear. It will cease. It will have served God’s counsel. There will be no place for it to exist. But even so, it will not have been pointless. Through common grace alone it was possible for what existed to continue existing, and the manifold wisdom of God came forth in the fruit of its activity as well.”