knows who are and forgives you; God identifies you as spotless in his eyes." Then Jesus empowers the man to walk. In this story, Jesus transforms both the spiritual and the physical.
             This is how I envision Jesus approaching the city. He is the transformer of the city-and the way in which he transforms her is by identifying her as pure and spotless through His blood and declaring her as capable to stand in confidence. In Revelation, John describes the Holy City, the new Jerusalem as the picture of what cities should look like. Robert C. Linthicum describes the city as such,
             "This will be a city fully under God, a religious environment where all will be in relationship with God and thus in shalom with each other...God's city will be one practicing an economics of plenty, equitable distribution, and security...It will include a transformation of the inside so that illness, grief, and pain will be gone. It will also include an outer transformation in such that the city will have a political order which is centered in God with room for everyone, a city whose political life will be completely just and in which everyone will play a part in the city's governance" (Linthicum 289).
             God began transforming Jerusalem's inner and outer parts long ago and he continues to transform the city today. It is a process similar to personal sanctification. He slowly shapes her to become more like the ultimate city, which he will finish on the day that he returns. I am confident that just as Paul s
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