Mankind as the New Temple
+ Jesus inaugurated humanity as the location of God’s temple on earth, the place where God chooses to reveal His revelatory Presence to mankind.
Our God is a God of relationship. One of His primary concerns and goals for His children is that we enjoy intimate relationship with Him not only in this life, but forevermore. Long before Eden, God had an intricate plan to heal and completely restore our relationship with Him brought about by the Fall. He Himself would come in the person of Jesus to free mankind from the delusion of sin and inaugurate a humanity restored to communion with their heavenly Father.
A seemingly enigmatic statement made by Jesus in the Gospels reveals God’s ultimate intention for humanity:
John 2:19 (NKJV): “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Jesus had just zealously driven the money changers and businessmen from the outer court of the Temple. The Jews asked him, “What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?” (John 2:18). Jesus baffles them by responding with His statement about the temple. After the resurrection, the disciples realized He had been talking about His physical body (John 2:21-22).
As the incarnate logos of God, one element of Jesus’ work on earth was the unveiling of humanity as the new temple of the Lord, the place where God chooses to personally abide and reveal His Presence. The revelation of man as the new temple of the Lord is one of the most significant elements of our spiritual inheritance in Christ, and has ramifications for our supernatural identity as believers today.
Physical or natural examples in the Old Testament flesh out our understanding of New Testament spiritual realities. Examining the Old Testament temple precedent helps us best understand the glorious Truth about the indwelling Presence of God.
Running throughout the Bible is the motif of God’s personal Presence dwelling amongst His people. God’s intention was to use the Law and Prophets to prepare humanity for the revelation of the new temple revealed by Jesus Christ. We see the prominent examples of the Presence motif in Eden (Gen 3:8), at Sinai (Ex 24:12), in and around the tabernacle (Ex 25:8), and in Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8:12-13). All are relevant for our spiritual understanding, but we will focus on the temple, first constructed by King Solomon.
Before proceeding it is important to understand that Yahweh, unlike other deities worshipped by ancient peoples, fills the whole earth and is not bound to a specific time or place (Isa 66:1-2). Because He is a God of relationship eager to see His followers kept from the worship of idols, He graciously allows the people an experience of His Presence to reveal His desire for intimacy and fellowship with His children. Although God is everywhere, He chose the temple and tabernacle to be a place where he would manifest His revelatory Presence to His people. Revelatory implies both spiritual and natural manifestations of God’s glorious Person.
As Eden would foreshadow the tabernacle and the tabernacle would foreshadow the temple, Solomon’s “house for the Lord” would foreshadow the temple of Christ’s body, which would inaugurate all of humanity as the temple. Christ’s body is representative of all humanity. To begin understanding, let’s gain an overview of the components of the temple and their symbolism.
• Outer Court: the outer court surrounded the whole temple. It is where people would gather to offer worship.
• Inner Court: contained the altar for sacrifices, Molten Sea washbasin for priestly purification, as well as other washbasins (“lavers”). The altar represented earth, and the Molten Sea the sea, cosmic symbols to represent the whole of humanity’s dwelling.
• Holy Place: contained the tables for shewbread (“Bread of Presence”), golden lampstands, and the altar of incense. The bread reminds us that God pursues fellowship with His children. In the tabernacle, Aaron and his sons would enter to eat from the tables in God’s presence. The golden lampstands represent the light of the visible heavens but also the Edenic tree of life and the Presence of God shining outward into the world. The altar of incense represented the priestly prayer. Such incense would be burned regularly as an offering and was taken into the Most Holy Place on the day of Atonement. God’s manifest Presence would appear in the cloud of incense.
• Most Holy Place: separated by a veil, contained the Ark of the Covenant, which in turn contained the Ten Commandments (the Law), Aaron’s rod (representative of manifest prophetic power), and the jar of manna (God’s supernatural food that fed the Israelites in the wilderness). The Ark was representative of God’s Presence with mankind in Eden. The Ark is the symbolic extension of God’s heavenly throne room, and as such, his footstool. To ancient cultures, a temple represented the place from which deity would command rule and reign over the earth. When God gave revelation to the priests in the cloud over the Ark, heaven broke into the earthly realm.
When Solomon finished the temple and dedicated it to the Lord with priestly sacrifices and praise and worship, the Lord’s manifest Presence filled the temple so intensely that the priests could not not minister (2 Chron 5:6-14). The Lord chose to tangibly approve of the temple’s construction by manifesting His Presence to the people.
During the Israelites exile in Babylon, the prophets, by the Spirit, were able to glimpse into the future to envision a spiritual temple for the living God that would be built not with physical materials, but human hearts.
Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NKJV): “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law in their minds; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Ezekiel 11:19 (NKJV): “Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”
All of this information provides context for a first-century Hebraic understanding that Jesus, as the Word of God, inaugurated humanity as God’s new locus for His revelatory Presence. The gospel writers understood humanity as the new conduit for God’s manifest glory and power. Humanity as the new temple is a theme that runs throughout the New Testament.
1 Corinthians 3:16 (NKJV): “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.”
1 Peter 2:5 (NKJV): “you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
Revelation 21:3 (NKJV): “And I [John] heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.”
Christ’s body was representative of all humanity. We are not simple vessels filled through meaningless religious talk and ritual, but the very dwelling place of the Lord’s dynamic, living power. Every Old Testament temple antecedent portrays a current spiritual reality inaugurated and realized through Jesus Christ. He is the beginning of this spiritual temple, the “cornerstone”. He was rejected in the natural by his own people, but has become the spiritual building block of God’s kingdom on earth for those who believe. The Church, as the spiritual body of Christ, is the building of God’s temple (Eph 2:19-22).
Christ opened humanity to this understanding by acting in the role of high priest during his time on earth. Jesus, as a representative of all humanity, made provision with His body (the outer court), on the Cross (the altar), to restore humanity to connection with heaven (the Holy of Holies). As such, the tearing of the veil in the temple at Christ’s death symbolized mankind’s spiritual reunion with God, the destruction of sin’s delusion and the old creation order, and the disarmament of antagonistic spiritual forces (Col 2:14-15).
Humanity is the new temple of the Lord’s Presence.We are spiritual Israel, the New Jerusalem, a people bound in faith, without physical or ethnic borders (Col 3:11). God has welcomed his people back as priests in the new temple who will serve in holiness and obedience, offering spiritual sacrifices with our bodies (Rom 12:1-2, 1 Pet 3:9). In light of this revelation enabled by the person and work of Christ, we can grasp the prophetic symbolism of the temple complex to better understand current spiritual realities.
• The outer court surrounded the whole temple, and is where people would gather to worship. The outer court represents the physical body of man. We offer worship with our bodies, not only in the action of praise, but by choosing, in love, to abide in holiness and purity. As we abide in relationship with the Lord, we experience a progressive awareness of His Presence in our lives.
• The Molten Sea laver evokes the cleansing flow of spiritual life from God’s throne (Rev 22:1). Our conscience has been purified through Christ’s blood and we are spiritually cleansed in this water (Heb 10:22). These waters of the New Jerusalem now flow through us into others by means of the Holy Spirit (Joel 3:18; Zech 14:8).
• As the Lord purifies our heart, He constantly brings to our awareness the idols of our hearts that we unknowingly worship, including incorrect ideas about our identity in Christ. He asks us to lay down material or spiritual idols as a sacrifice in order to fill us with more of Himself. This altar is symbolic of the human heart, the center of our identity and being. The temple altar is also symbolic of the Cross, in that the Cross the most significant revelation of God’s inner heart and mind. Christ laid Himself down as a sacrifice, offending man’s mind to reveal God’s heart.
• The golden lampstands represent the radiant witness of God through his believers on earth. Mankind is God’s glory, made in His image to act as His representatives in the natural realm. When John sees the resurrected, glorified Christ in his heavenly vision, the Lord’s eyes are like a flame of fire (Rev 1:14). Like Christ, we channel the inner light of Truth and the pure fire of God’s love.
• The lampstands also evoke the Edenic tree of life. This tree of life is also a key element in the New Jerusalem (Rev 22:1-2). We have a restored access to this tree of life through a relationship with Jesus Christ, the Second Adam (1 Cor 15:45). The Tree of Life yields fruit and leaves through us for the healing of the nations (Rev 22:2).
• The tables of shewbread remind us that the Lord pursues fellowship with his people. Jesus calls himself the bread of life (John 6:35). As we abide in relationship with Him, we enjoy His fellowship in our lives. Communion reminds us of not only Christ’s sacrifice, but our current inclusion in the feast of the God’s kingdom.
• Our prayers continually rise as incense before God’s throne (Rev 5:8, 8:4). As believers, we diffuse the fragrance of Christ through a lifestyle dedicated to Him (2 Cor 2:14-15). These continual incense offerings also foreshadowed Christ’s eternal mediation on behalf of humanity. These are spiritual realities foreshadowed by the altar of incense in the Holy Place.
• Through Christ’s blood, we have confidence to enter in to the spiritual Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies is the human mind and heart. It is here that we directly encounter God with unveiled faces and hear from heaven. It is here that we learn the language of the Spirit and experience revelation, words of knowledge, words of wisdom, and enlightenment (Eph 1:18). Our mind is the connector to heaven. It is where we interface with spirits, engage in spiritual battle, and take spiritual territory (Eph 6:12).
• In the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant, where the Israelites had placed the Ten Commandments (the law), Aaron’s rod, and a jar of manna. Since the Holy of Holies was foreshadowing God’s Presence manifest among men, the Lord was revealing that He would later inscribe His law on men’s hearts so they could walk as lovers of the Law, not slaves of it, through communion with Christ (Heb 10:14-17). Aaron’s rod that had budded is symbolic of the miraculous power and authority inherent in every believer. This authority manifests and bears fruit as we continue to abide in the Presence of the Lord (Num 17:8). The jar of manna reminds us that God feeds us spiritually and provides our provision as we choose to walk in communion with His Word.
As God’s family, the church is much more than a simple building. We are a group of people who carry God’s glorious Presence and manifest His love and power. We are the very footstool of God, the place from which heavenly glory breaks into the earthly realm. God’s presence already fills all of heaven and earth, but He chooses humanity to expand the awareness of His presence and glory. As we become the people He has called us to be and reveal the Gospel, the delusion of sin is broken and spiritual territory is taken. Our mission on earth is God’s desire: that all nations come to realize their glorious inheritance in Christ Jesus and experience His fullness of life (Jer 3:17).
A revelation of being, who we already are in Christ Jesus, is key for living an empowered, victorious life as a believer. We are priests, prophets, and kings in the kingdom of God and the temple is the place from which we synergize with the Holy Spirit to fulfill these roles. Our body, mind, and heart is conduit for God’s revelatory presence. As we meditate on this revelation and continue to abide in Christ, we will experience a progressive invasion of heaven into the earthly realm. God is advancing His kingdom on earth, let us not be afraid to boldly assume our heavenly call (Matt 11:12).
