What do you imagine when you think of the temple in the Bible? You might ponder an ornate tent in the wilderness, held together by beautiful tapestries with golden poles framing a sacred space. Or perhaps you may imagine an enormous structure with cherubim guarding the entrance to the Most Holy Place, with pomegranate trees engraved on the gold-embossed walls. You may even think of grand carved stones carefully fixed high, towering above Jerusalem as a Herodian wonder of the ancient world. All these images are accurate depictions of various instances of the temple in the Bible. What may be surprising, however, is that Scripture tells us that when we think of the temple, we should think of Jesus. Everything else is a shadow that points to Him.
The first temple to appear in Scripture is the garden of Eden. Like the tabernacle and the temple later, God created Eden to be His holy place, the abode where He would be with His people. Before the fall, Eden was supposed to be that sanctuary. For this reason, God walked in Eden as He later did in the tabernacle (Gen. 3:8; Lev. 26:12; Deut. 23:14; see also 2 Sam. 7:6–7). Eden and the tabernacle were entered from the east (Gen. 3:24; Ex. 26:18–22), Eden and Solomon’s temple were guarded by cherubim (Gen. 3:24; Ex. 26:31; 1 Kings 6:23–29) and were filled with trees (Gen. 2:16; 1 Kings 6:20–36). Adam and the priests were “to work and keep” their sanctuaries (Gen. 2:15; Num. 3:8; 8:26; 18:5–6). Eden was a temple.
Because Adam fell into sin, he was cast out of the sanctuary. When God rescued His people from Egypt, He graciously reestablished a holy sanctuary where sinners could approach Him in repentance and worship through the repeated offering of sacrifices (Heb. 10:1). God established this “Tent of Meeting,” the tabernacle, to be with His people (Ex. 29:45–46). But once the tabernacle was completed, Israel beheld that the holy cloud of God’s presence demanded the holiness of all who would come close. So, no one could enter, not even Moses (Ex. 40:35). A grander version of the tabernacle was erected by King Solomon, and that same cloud overshadowed this temple, signaling that the priests too could not enter the presence of the Holy One (1 Kings 8:10–11).
After Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Solomon’s temple and took Israel into exile, the later Persian king, Cyrus the Great, allowed Israel to return to their homeland and set up a new temple (Ezra 1; 2 Chron. 36:22–23). Yet when the older men who had previously seen Solomon’s temple saw this new construction, they wept with sorrow, for they knew that this second temple would never fulfill what the prophets foretold (Ezra 3:12). The Old Testament prophets expected that many nations—Jew and gentile—would come to Jerusalem and worship at the temple (see Isa. 2:1–5). Yet they understood that this temple would be far greater than Solomon’s; this new temple would shake the heavens and the earth, becoming glory and salvation for all people (Hag. 2:5–9), the very event where God says, “I will be with you” (Hag. 2:4).
The temple that the Old Testament saints longed for arrived in the incarnate Son of God. It is Jesus of Nazareth who has come to dwell, or “tabernacle,” among us (John 1:14). He is the true presence of God, where all deity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9–10). Jesus Himself said as much when He told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). While the Jews thought His words were to be understood literally, Jesus was talking spiritually about Himself, the true temple of God (John 2:20–21). Indeed, as a priest, He offered Himself through His perfect life and sacrificial death, so that sinners would obtain access through His sacrifice to the temple presence of the Holy God (Heb. 9:11–14; 10:19–20). Jesus is the priest, the sacrifice, and the temple, all at the same time.
But the New Testament also describes the temple in another way. In 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, Paul states:
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
When Paul writes that “you are God’s temple,” the “you” is not singular, but plural, which means that Paul is addressing the people of God collectively as the church. In other words, the church of Jesus Christ is the temple as well. After all, believers are being conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29), for His Spirit dwells in us. God’s presence and power is in His church, anointing her with the Spirit for the work of blessing the nations with the gospel (Matt. 28:18–20; 2 Cor. 4:1–6). We, the body of Christ, are the temple in Him, because He makes us like Himself. Thus, the church is the visible manifestation of the holiness of God as we represent Christ in this world. In Christ, we are a city on a hill (Matt. 5:14) and a light to the nations (Isa. 49:6 with Acts 13:47), such that the world may see the true temple through us.
While Scripture describes temples of ornate tapestry, golden walls, and wondrous construction, these were all shadows pointing forward to the good things that have come (Heb. 9–10). We are not looking for another temple. We have Him.
Ligonier Ministries