Terry’s Take… The Living Stone
As mentioned last week…Jesus is the new and living temple, “for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” (Colossians 2:9) To come into God’s presence, one no longer needs to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and enter the temple. Rather, Jesus is the Word made flesh, and therefore, God now tabernacles among humankind.
Jesus is “the Father’s house” in which his Son now abides. To be in communion with the Father, one must abide in his incarnate Son. The temple is now superfluous.
And…if Jesus, as the incarnate Son of God, is the new and living temple, he must now offer the perfect Passover sacrifice wherein he will establish a new and everlasting covenant. And through this new covenant, Jesus must cleanse the world of sin and cast out death, for only by being cleansed of sin with its curse of death can humankind pass over to a new life of holiness. This Jesus accomplishes by his death on the cross and his resurrection from the tomb!
St. Peter beautifully states the relationship between Jesus as the risen temple and those who abide in him: “Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5)
The risen Jesus is the living stone that was discarded by men but selected by God as the cornerstone of the living and life-giving temple. Those who abide in the risen Jesus also become living stones in the Father’s new spiritual house, for they have become holy priests offering spiritual sacrifices in, through, and with the risen Christ Jesus.
As part of the destruction of Jerusalem, “this temple,” too, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., which was foretold by Jesus. Remember as His disciples pointed out to him the beauty of the temple, Jesus replied: “You see all of these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.” (Matthew 24:1-2) And that happened.
It may have appeared to most that its destruction was a simple historical event… but it could no longer stand because if it remained, it would be an opposing sign to “this temple” that is the risen Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Presently, its very absence remains a sign of the presence of the indestructible living temple.
John the Evangelist, in the Book of Revelation, has a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem. “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.” (Revelation 21:22) In the heavenly Jerusalem, there is no need of a temple, for in Heaven one abides fully, in communion with the ever-living Lamb, in the Father’s house – a house that will never be destroyed.