Why We Must Understand the Temple in God’s Plan Today

Interview by D. A. Carson Topic: Biblical Studies Series: Ask Pastor John

Audio Transcript

Yesterday, Dr. Don Carson joined us to explain that there are 20 big themes in the Bible that develop
from Genesis to Revelation, and he said there are another 50–70 smaller themes there as well. We are
back with Don Carson again today, who edited the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which releases in a
month. Instead of talking about what biblical theology is, which we talked about yesterday, I want you
to show us how biblical theology works. Particularly, I want you to focus on one big theme for us today.
For people who are wondering what biblical theology is about, show us how the theme of the temple
develops from Genesis to Revelation in God’s plan.

If we think of the temple as the meeting place between God and people, then there is a sense in which
the garden of Eden is a kind of proto-temple. And many people have drawn parallels between themes in
Genesis 1 and 2, understanding something of what a temple is in later Scriptural writings. But the
temple is also a place of sacrifice. And there are sacrifices that are developing, for example, when
Abraham is being called out of Ur of the Chaldeans and so forth.

The first time that there is a structure is in the tent of meeting before the tabernacle is built. And then
the tabernacle is built and many, many chapters of Scripture are devoted to discussing its proportions,
the Most Holy Place, who can approach the holy God in the Most Holy Place, and when; namely, on Yom
Kippurim, the Day of Atonements, once a year — only with the prescribed blood of the prescribed
sacrifices, a bull and a goat, covering both the sins of the priest and his family and the sins of all the
people — and sprinkling that blood on the ark of the covenant behind the veil — only the high priest
being allowed to do it and even then only once a year, and so forth. And so this theme is tied to the
years of the wilderness wandering, the glory of God coming upon the tabernacle, the detailed
prescriptions of how the tabernacle works, the role of the priests, and the glory of God manifesting
himself there, and so forth.

The story goes on, of course. Once the people get into the Promised Land, the tabernacle is the central
point where God meets with his people. The priests are connected to the tabernacle but are supposed
to also be teaching people the law of God, the way of God. But sadly there are cycles of degeneration
and decay and degeneration and decay so that parts of the story actually find the Philistines stealing the
Ark of the Covenant from the tabernacle thinking that somehow they have managed to capture Israel’s
God. God does not wipe them out, but has his own way of guaranteeing that the tabernacle is
reconstituted with the Ark of the Covenant in it.

Eventually you get to the remarkable chapters in 2 Samuel 6 and 7 which are hugely formative for the
rest of this biblical theology. David has been king at this juncture for seven years, but only over the
southern two tribes. After seven years he becomes king over the entire country — all 12 tribes — and
takes Jerusalem and makes it his capital. And the Davidic dynasty is promised by God in 2 Samuel 7. The
ark of the covenant is brought there in 2 Samuel 6. So now you have three huge themes coming
together that control a great deal of typology for the rest of the Bible: Jerusalem, the kingdom dynasty
of David, and finally the tabernacle that eventually becomes the temple under Solomon in the next
generation.

So now you have a firm place with, again, the dimensions being laid out — the plans are according to
God’s design. Much of it is designed to teach that the only approach to God for sinful human beings —
his covenant people — are by the means that God himself has ordained, by the sacrifices that God
himself has commanded in the terms that God himself lays out, by the priest that God himself ordains,
by the shed blood that God himself prescribes. And all of these means get hammered into the nation
and begin to point forward to the need for a sacrifice that will actually and finally deal with sin, proving
to be more transformational than the blood of bulls and goats. But, nevertheless, here is the center for
the Passover. Here is the center for the Day of Atonement and for the morning and evening sacrifices
and so on.

This story then runs eventually to the degeneration of the entire nation. The northern tribes are taken
off into captivity by the Assyrians in 722 BC. And then the southern kingdom is broken up and taken off
in a succession of raids and finally the destruction of the city and of the temple in 586 BC under the Neo-
Babylonians. And for many people this captivity is unthinkable, because it is threatening the Davidic
dynasty which God promised would be perpetual and it is threatening Jerusalem which is now destroyed
and it is threatening the temple. It destroys the temple. How can that be? It is the meeting place
between God and his people.

And perhaps one of the most insightful passages is Ezekiel 8–11 where God himself shows in a vision
how the city will be destroyed. It is not that Nebuchadnezzar is so strong that God doesn’t have a
chance, poor chap, but rather that God judicially abandons the city because of its sin, even though the
exiles find it difficult to imagine that God could do so. In particular, it is interesting that God says to the
exiles by the banks of the Kebar River through the mouth of Ezekiel that even though they are far away,
“I will be a sanctuary to them” (Ezekiel 11:16). That is temple language.
So, in other words, the real sanctuary is where God is. It is not where the masonry is. It is not in a
geographical location. God is not restricted to Jerusalem. God is not restricted to a box. God is not
restricted to a cubical room behind a veil. “And I will be a sanctuary to them” becomes very strong.
Nevertheless, in God’s covenant mercy he calls the people back to Jerusalem. Some come back first in a
wave of 50,000 under the ministry of Haggai and Zechariah. The small temple is rebuilt again under the
ministry of Nehemiah. There is the rebuilding of the city — the repopulation of the city — and great
celebrations of covenantal renewal that focus again on the temple. There is chapter after chapter on
covenantal renewal in Nehemiah and very, very little on, let’s say, what we would call moral law
precisely because what you must have is reconciliation with God. And under the terms of the old
covenant, that was done through the temple and the sacrifices that God ordained.

So that really brings us close to the end of the Old Testament storyline. And when you come to the New
Testament, it is not long before Jesus himself says in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I
will raise it up.” And neither his opponents nor his disciples had a clue what he was talking about. But
John quietly comments, “After he was raised from the dead, then his disciples remembered his words
and they believed the Scriptures” (verse 22).

That means Jesus becomes the crucial temple, that is, the real, the ultimate meeting place between God
and sinful people so that the typological lines, the trajectories of the old covenant come together in him.
He is the ultimate priest. He is the ultimate sacrifice. His flesh is the veil, and his shattered, broken body
is the shattered, broken temple that rises on the third day to become the real meeting place between
God and sinful people.

So in the New Testament the antitype of these strands regarding the temple emerge in three ways —
two big ones and one small one. The first big one is Jesus himself as the ultimate temple. The second big
one is the church of Jesus Christ as the temple; that is, it is the meeting place between God and sinners.
Here is where God speaks through his temple to the surrounding nations. Being constituted as the
church, it becomes the meeting place between God and sinners and, thus, becomes a temple as well.
And then in one or two passages only our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. That language is used
further there.

And you could track out various further emphases until you come to the book of Revelation. There are
temple themes throughout the book that are really quite remarkable. But for lack of time, let me just
skip to the last two chapters where you have the final vision of a new heaven and a new earth or again,
the vision changes and it is now a vision of the New Jerusalem, and yet this Jerusalem is also a bride.
One of the things that apocalyptic literature does is mingle its metaphors. It mixes them together. But
what is interesting is that, in the vision of the new Jerusalem, John the seer says, “I saw no temple in the
city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22).

So once again, you don’t need the edifice because you have God. You have now complete reconciliation.
You don’t need a mediating priest. Christ is there. And the new Jerusalem itself is depicted symbolically
as perfectly cubical. It is a perfect cube. And there is only one cube in the Old Testament; namely, the
Most Holy Place. So you can’t have a temple in the Most Holy Place. All the people of God are in the
Most Holy Place. They are in the temple. They are in the presence of the living God. And so now you
have really come to something like the garden of Eden, only much better. And so all of these pieces
together form a whole tapestry of biblical, theological unpacking that is one of the strands that ties the
entire Bible together.

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D. A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield,
Illinois. He is a founding member and currently president of The Gospel Coalition.