The Temple in the Bible

Jesus and the Temple: My Father's House and the Temple of His Body

Jesus called the temple His Father's house and cleansed it of those who made it a house of merchandise. When His authority was challenged, He said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, and John explains that He spake of the temple of his body. In these words Jesus quietly announced the greatest shift in the story of the temple: that the true dwelling of God on earth was no longer a building but Himself, and that His death and resurrection would open the way to God that the temple had only pictured.

Challenged for cleansing the temple, Jesus answered with a saying about a greater temple:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.John 2:19 (KJV)

My Father's house

Jesus' relationship to the temple was one of deep love and rightful authority. He called it His Father's house, a claim no ordinary teacher would make. As a boy of twelve He was found there and said He must be about His Father's business. Throughout His ministry He went up to it for the feasts, taught in its courts, and treated it as the place where God had put His name. He honoured the temple as His Father's house even as He revealed that its purpose was being fulfilled in Himself.

This is why His actions in the temple carried such weight. When He acted there, He was not a stranger interfering but the Son in His Father's house, with every right to set it in order.

The cleansing of the temple

John records that near the beginning of His ministry Jesus went up to Jerusalem at Passover and found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers at their tables, filling the Court of the Gentiles with the noise of trade. He made a scourge of small cords and drove them out, poured out the changers' money, and overturned the tables, saying to those who sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

The other Gospels record a similar cleansing near the end of His ministry, when He quoted the prophets: My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. His zeal was for the true purpose of the house. The place meant to draw the nations to God had been turned into a market, and Jesus, the Son, cleared it in the name of His Father. It was both an act of righteous anger and a sign that the true worship of God was about to be relocated to Himself.

Destroy this temple

When the authorities demanded a sign to justify what He had done, Jesus gave them a saying they could not understand: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. They took Him to mean the building and scoffed, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But John tells us plainly what He meant: But he spake of the temple of his body.

This is one of the most important sayings in the Gospels. Jesus was declaring that His own body was the true temple, the real dwelling of God among men, of which the building was only a shadow. The temple was where God met His people, where sacrifice was made, where the glory dwelt. All of that was now present in a person. And He foretold His death and resurrection in the same breath: the temple of His body would be destroyed on the cross and raised on the third day, and John notes that after He rose, the disciples remembered these words and believed.

Greater than the temple

Jesus said openly that in this place is one greater than the temple. Everything the temple was for, He was and did. It was the place of God's presence; He was God with us. It was the place of sacrifice; He was the Lamb of God. It was the house of prayer; He drew all who thirst to Himself. It was the meeting place of God and man; He was the one mediator between them. The temple had always pointed forward, and now the reality had come and was standing in its courts.

This did not mean the temple had been worthless. It had faithfully done its work of teaching and picturing for a thousand years. But a picture gives way to the person it portrays. Jesus honoured the temple and then fulfilled it, gathering all its meaning into Himself.

Worship in spirit and in truth

The clearest sign of the coming change is a conversation Jesus had far from Jerusalem, at a well in Samaria. The woman raised the old dividing question: her people worshiped on Mount Gerizim, the Jews said Jerusalem was the place where men ought to worship. Jesus answered that the whole question was about to be overtaken: Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. The single holy place, the fixed location of true worship, was about to give way.

But the hour cometh, and now is, He went on, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. Worship would no longer be bound to a building on a hill, because the meeting place of God and man was now a person, and soon His Spirit would be poured out on His people everywhere. This is the quiet revolution running underneath the whole Gospel. Jesus was not merely cleansing a temple or reforming a religion; He was moving the centre of worship from a place to Himself, and then, through His Spirit, into the hearts of worshipers in every land. The Samaritan woman, an outsider to the temple, was told the good news first: the day was dawning when nearness to God would not depend on being able to reach Jerusalem at all.

How it points to Christ

Here the whole story of the temple turns. From Solomon's day it had been a building; from the moment Jesus called His body the temple, the dwelling of God on earth was a person. His death would tear the veil and open the way in; His resurrection would raise the true temple never to fall; His Spirit would make His people into a temple; and the new Jerusalem would need no temple at all, for the Lamb is its temple.

So when Jesus cleansed the temple and spoke of raising it in three days, He was not merely reforming an institution. He was announcing that He Himself was the meeting place of God and man, and inviting everyone who had ever sought God in a holy place to come now and find God in Him. Destroy this temple, He said, and in three days I will raise it up, and He was speaking of the temple of His body, in which all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell.

For all who have ever felt that God was far away, kept behind a barrier they could not cross, this is the heart of the good news. You do not have to climb to a holy mountain or reach a distant sanctuary to find God. The temple has come to you in Jesus, who stood in the crowded courts and cried, if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. The way to the Father does not run through a building at all, but through the Son, who was destroyed and raised so that the meeting place of God and man might be a person you can know, love, and follow. To come to Christ is to come home to the temple God always meant you to have.

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: Herod's temple in Jesus' time · The torn veil · Christ our temple · The Temple in the Bible