Oh, You Mean That Temple
So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
John 2:18-22 ESV Read More
Everything written in the Law was important to the Pharisees. They were the keepers of the Torah handed down from God to Moses, so it was important that they get it right. Instead of training young men the way we do by giving them facts and then encouraging innovation and creative challenges to those facts, they learned by memorization. It’s not bad, it’s just different than how we do education today. Their point was that whatever God told Moses needed to be preserved. Generation after generation of human library would carry on the teachings of Moses and the commands of God.
Jesus wasn’t replacing that, but He was fulfilling the point of all of it. The point of not murdering was that you wouldn’t harbor such aggressive hate against your brother. It wasn’t just about ending someone’s life. In the same way, the temple wasn’t just about having a shelter to hold all of the religious activities. There was a setup to the arrangement that was an instruction about how people would interact with God. That interaction symbolized the dreadful and wonderful ways that God would be among His people.
In its fulfillment, the practices, lifestyle, and architecture that the Law required was no longer needed. There is a new temple that is better than the building that Moses, Solomon, Ezra, or Herod would build. As much as they have revered and loved the temple, it was time to transfer that love and devotion over to Jesus. Jesus is saying much more about His resurrection than the disciples would realize. He is contrasting the temple of the Law with the temple of Grace.
The temple that Herod built for the Jews in Jerusalem was where God met with His people under law. Jesus Christ is where God meets with His people through grace. The temple was a shadow of the eternal kingdom to come. Jesus is the light of the eternal kingdom.
Eventually the disciples and even some of the Jewish leaders believed the scriptures about Jesus. How much better it was for those that believed it while He was still walking around among them!
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