Previous chapters have treated the development of the temple of God across the changing epochs of redemptive history. In what follows, Jesus is shown to be the new temple. The sanctuaries of old served as types of Christ and find their fulfillment in him.
In his Gospel, the apostle John records a rather shocking statement from Jesus regarding Israel’s temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). Taken aback by the statement, the Jews did not comprehend, first, that Jesus came to replace “the temple as the location where God’s presence must be sought and found, and second, [that] Jesus fulfills the temple’s sacrifices for atonement.”
40Jesus, the temple, and God’s special presence. When John wrote that Jesus,
“the Word,” “became flesh and tabernacled (ἐσκήνωσεν) among us” (John 1:14), he reminded his readers of how God’s presence dwelt among the people of God throughout their history, but particularly in the tabernacle (Exod 35:1-40:38).
41That Jesus now
39 In response to the insufficiency of the old covenant, God initiated a new and better covenant that brought about internal transformation among his people, making it so that his law is written on their minds and hearts (Heb 8:10; cf. Jer 31:31-34; Ezek 36:24-28), which gives them power to obey.
40 James M. Hamilton Jr., God’s Indwelling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Academic, 2006), 147.
41 Susan Booth traces the reality of God’s tabernacling presence throughout the biblical
tabernacled with his people signified that Jesus himself was God’s “unique place on earth where God’s revelatory presence is located.”
42With the incarnation of Christ, it would no longer be necessary for God’s people to visit the temple building in Jerusalem to
encounter the special presence of God; now, in the bodily presence of Jesus (John 2:21), his divine presence was available to them.
Supporting his case that Jesus’ divine presence tabernacled with God’s people as the new temple, John further draws a connection between the glory of God
experienced by old covenant believers as it was manifested in his sanctuaries and the divine glory of the Son of God now manifested in Christ (John 1:14).
43No longer would God’s manifest presence be associated with previous sanctuaries but would now be exclusively linked to the physical body and location of Jesus Christ, the new temple.
44narrative. She does so while keying in on the theme of mission. Susan Maxwell Booth, The Tabernacling Presence of God: Mission and Gospel Witness (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015).
42 G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, NSBT 17 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 178.
43 John associates seeing Christ with seeing God’s glory: “the Word became flesh and
tabernacled among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The divine glory of the Son of God was among men. Similarly, Moses spoke with God at the tent of meeting (Exod 33:9), longed for God’s presence to go with him (Exod 33:14-15), and requested that God’s glory be shown to him (Exod 33:18). Moreover, upon completion of the construction of the tabernacle, it is written that a “cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exod 40:34; cf. 1 Kgs 8:10-11). Thus, John makes the connection between God’s tabernacling presence and the glory of God in the person of Jesus. Craig Koester, The Dwelling Presence of God: The Tabernacle in the Old Testament, Intertestamental Jewish Literature, and the New Testament, CBQMS 22 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1989), 102.
44 Hamilton explains the nature of what has occurred: “The locus of God’s presence has shifted from a particular house, in a particular city, in a particular land, to a particular person, Jesus.” Hamilton, God’s Indwelling Presence, 149. Jesus explained that God’s special presence was now associated with his own person rather than the temples of old. Referencing Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending from heaven to earth to “Bethel,” the “house of God” (Gen 28:12-19), Jesus explains to Nathanael that while God’s special presence was once associated with Bethel, it is now associated with where he is specifically (John 1:42-51). See D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: W. B.
Eerdmans, 1991), 164.
In Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman, he indicates that the era in which worship should take place in the Jerusalem temple had come to a conclusion (John 4:1-26). Jesus identifies himself as the one who would bring about this change (John 4:26), thus communicating to the Samaritan woman that he was ushering in a new age in which God’s people no longer would need to travel to a physical building to worship. Köstenberger communicates this idea when he writes, “Jesus’ point here is that since God is spirit, proper worship of him is also a matter of spirit rather than physical location (Jerusalem versus Mount Gerizim).” Andreas J. Köstenberger, John (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 157. To
accentuate this reality further, Jesus points to himself as the very presence of God when he employs the “I am” (ἐγώ εἰμι) statement and suggests that, by standing in his presence, the woman was in fact standing in
Jesus, the temple, and sacrifice. Not only does Jesus’ replacement of the old temple have to do with the new location for God’s special presence, but it also concerns God’s design for a new and consummating sacrifice. Jesus’ attack on the money-changers in the temple (John 2:13-17; cf. Matt 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-18; Luke 19:45-47) should probably be understood as an attack against the old temple itself, since shutting down the temple for a time would have caused the animal sacrifices to have ceased, indicating that the forgiveness of sin that the temple and its animal sacrifices once offered was now passing away and that the current temple was awaiting judgment.
45After Jesus cleared the temple, the Jews requested a sign from him to signify his authority to do such things. His response was, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it.” (John 2:19).
46John explains that Jesus had been “speaking concerning the temple of his body” (John 2:21), a reference to his death on the cross and his resurrection three days later. Referring to his own body as the new temple, he was indicating that all the events that were once subsumed under the ministry of the temple would now be carried out in his own body
47and that his body would become the new sacrifice for sin.
48the presence of God. For an explanation of Jesus’ use of the “I am” (ἐγώ εἰμι) statement, see Gerald L.
Borchert, John 1-11, NAC, vol. 25A (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), 209-10.
45 Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 179.
46 The Jews were bewildered by this statement, remembering that it had previously taken forty- six years to build the current temple (John 2:20). Writing of the time that had surpassed from the time of the original construction of the temple and the time of the conversation between Jesus and the Jews, Gangel says, “That magnificent building had been started by Herod in 20 B.C., and this conversation took place in approximately A.D. 26.” Kenneth O. Gangel, John, HNTC, vol. 4 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000) 34.
47 Carson writes, “[It] is the human body of Jesus that uniquely manifests the Father, and becomes the focal point of the manifestation of God to man, the living abode of God on earth, the
fulfillment of all the temple meant, and the centre of all true worship (over against all other claims of ‘holy space’, 4:20-24). In this ‘temple’ the ultimate sacrifice would take place; within three days of death and burial, Jesus Christ, the true temple, would rise from the dead.” Carson, The Gospel according to John, 182.
48 Christ’s body would become the new sacrifice for sin. In making this statement, Jesus evidenced his priestly role and his personal replacement of the temple in the fact that he, who would willingly give himself up as a sin offering, can forgive sin (Matt 9:2-6; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:18-26; 7:49- 50). The temple was the place where sacrifices were offered in order to forgive sin. Now, Jesus who was the incarnate temple of God had the authority to forgive sins in and of himself.