The Temple in the Bible

Christ Our Temple: The True Meeting Place of God and Man

Christ is the true temple, the real dwelling of God among men that every earthly temple only pictured. John writes that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, using a word that means He tabernacled among us, and Jesus called His own body the temple. In Him the glory that filled Solomon's house came to dwell in a person, the sacrifice was offered, the veil was opened, and God and man met and were reconciled. He is the meeting place all the temples were built to foreshadow.

John opens his Gospel by declaring where God has come to dwell:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.John 1:14 (KJV)

The Word tabernacled among us

The Gospel of John begins in eternity and then makes an astonishing announcement: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The word John uses for dwelt means literally to pitch a tent, to tabernacle. He is deliberately recalling the tabernacle and the temple, where God dwelt among Israel in a tent and then a house. Now, John says, God has come to dwell among us in flesh.

And with the dwelling came the glory. We beheld his glory, John writes, the same glory that had filled the tabernacle and Solomon's temple as a cloud of light. That glory now shone from a face and lived a human life. What the temple had housed as a cloud, Christ embodied as a person. He is the dwelling of God with man, not made with hands.

Greater than the temple

Jesus said it Himself: in this place is one greater than the temple. He was not exaggerating. Everything the temple was, He is in truth. The temple was where God's presence dwelt; in Christ dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The temple was the house of prayer; He is the one to whom all who thirst are told to come. The temple was where sacrifice was offered; He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The temple was the meeting place of God and man; He is the one mediator between God and men.

When the Samaritan woman raised the old question of where God should be worshiped, on this mountain or at Jerusalem, Jesus told her the hour was coming when true worshipers would worship the Father in spirit and in truth, no longer bound to a single holy place. The reason is that the meeting place of God and man was now standing before her. In Christ, worship is no longer located in a building but in a person.

Where God and man are reconciled

The temple existed to bring a holy God and a sinful people together, and it did so through sacrifice and mediation. Christ is that meeting made perfect. On the cross He offered Himself as the sacrifice that the temple altars had only foreshadowed, and by His blood He opened the way that the veil had guarded. In Him the distance is closed, not by lowering God's holiness but by bearing the sin that caused the distance.

This is why Paul can say that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. The whole purpose of the temple, reconciliation between God and man, is accomplished in the person of Jesus. He is the true holy of holies, where God and humanity are joined; He is the true altar, where the offering is made; He is the true and great High Priest, who both offers the sacrifice and is the sacrifice.

The honest shape of the fulfilment

It is worth being clear about how the New Testament grounds this. Jesus explicitly called His body the temple. John explicitly says the Word tabernacled among us and that we beheld His glory. Hebrews explicitly reads His flesh as the veil and His death as the one perfect sacrifice. These are not fanciful readings imposed on the text; they are the plain claims of the New Testament writers, who understood the temple's whole purpose to be gathered up and completed in Christ.

Where the connection is one of reflection rather than direct statement, honesty says so. But the core claim is direct and repeated: the true temple, the real dwelling of God with man, is Jesus. Everything before Him pointed forward to Him, and everything after Him flows from Him.

Immanuel, God with us

At the heart of this is a single name the Gospel gives Jesus at His birth: Immanuel, which means God with us. That name is the whole meaning of the temple in one word. The tabernacle and the temple existed so that God might be with His people; in Jesus, God is with us not in a cloud over a mercy seat but in a human life, a face, a voice, a pair of hands that healed and were pierced. The distance the temple both bridged and confessed is closed in a person who could be seen and heard and touched.

This is why John insists that in Jesus we beheld the glory. The glory that filled Solomon's house and that no one could look upon now looked back at those who met Him, full of grace and truth. Paul says the same thing in another way: in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The infinite God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain was pleased to dwell fully in the man Jesus. He is the true and final answer to Solomon's question of whether God would dwell on the earth. Not a house, however glorious, but a Son; and through that Son, God draws near to everyone who comes to Him. To have Christ is to have the temple, the presence, and the glory, because to have Christ is to have God with us.

How it points to Christ

To call Christ our temple is to say that the search for God, which the temple both awakened and could never fully satisfy, comes to rest in Him. No building can hold God, as Solomon knew; but God was pleased to dwell in Christ, and through Christ to make His home in His people. He is the door into the presence of God and the presence of God Himself, the meeting place and the God who is met.

So the whole sweep of the temple leads here. From the cloud that filled Solomon's house, to the Word made flesh, to the Spirit who fills the church, to the city where God dwells with His people face to face, the story is one story: God coming to dwell with us. And its centre, its turning point, and its fulfilment is Jesus Christ, in whom God and man meet for ever.

This is why no building, however beautiful, and no place, however holy, is finally where you must go to find God. You must go to a person. The search that drove pilgrims up to Jerusalem, that filled the psalms with longing for the courts of the LORD, that built temples of gold and cedar, comes to rest in Jesus. He is the house not made with hands, the presence no army can burn, the meeting place open to every nation and every hour. To know Him is to have found what every temple was pointing to all along, and to belong to Him is to become, yourself, part of the dwelling place of God.

A note for all traditions: the history above (the temples, their building, their destruction, and the rebuilding) is told as Scripture and the record present it. Where the New Testament states plainly that the temple is fulfilled in Christ, that is named as fulfilment; where a connection is a reflection rather than a direct statement, it is offered as such. The one Lord of the whole story, from Solomon to the new Jerusalem, is Jesus Christ, and every believer is called to draw near to God through him.

Read on: Jesus and the temple · The church as God's temple · The new Jerusalem has no temple · The Temple in the Bible