The Sanctuary of God

The New Testament applies temple language from the Hebrew Bible to the Body of Christ, the habitation of the Living God.

Except for contacts between Jesus and the early church with the priestly authorities, the New Testament shows little interest in the Jerusalem Temple. Instead, we find that terminology and imagery from the Temple are applied to the New Covenant community of Jesus. What the Temple and earlier Tabernacle foreshowed has come to fruition in Christ and his Church.

The Apostle Paul, for example, uses the Greek term translated as the “Sanctuary” for the Church of Corinth, and he employs related terms when describing other congregations – (e.g., ‘naos theou’, ναος θεου, “We are the sanctuary of the Living God, even as God said, I will dwell in them…” - 2 Corinthians 6:16, 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4).

[Photo by Sigurdur Fjalar Jonsson on Unsplash]

Similar terms in the New Testament for the Church are derived from the Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible’s description of the Tabernacle and the later Temple complex in Jerusalem.

The employment of this language illustrates the identity of God’s people under the New Covenant. In Paul’s epistles, the English term “Sanctuary of God” translates the Greek clause ‘ton naon tou theou’ and the noun ‘naos’, the latter meaning “sanctuary.” In the Septuagint, ‘naos’ refers to the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle and the Temple, the sanctuary proper, or the “Holy of Holies.”

Paul applies the term to the local congregation four times in his two letters to the Corinthians. Once he uses the noun 'naos' by itself in Ephesians for the Church that consists of Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus - (1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 6:19, 2 Corinthians 6:16):

• (Ephesians 2:19-22) - “No longer are you strangers and sojourners but fellow citizens of the saints, and members of the household of God, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, there being for chief cornerstone Jesus Christ himself in whom an entire building is in the process of being fitly joined together and growing into a holy sanctuary (‘naos’) in the Lord; in whom you also are being built together into a habitation of God in the Spirit.”

In Ephesians, Paul mixes his metaphors. The Assembly does not consist of men made of stones or goatskins. Tents and stone structures do not “grow.” The Church is not a building but the assembly of the saints of God wherever they come together for prayer and worship.

The local assembly is God’s “Sanctuary” because, like the ancient Tabernacle and Temple, His presence dwells in it (the “habitation of God in the Spirit”). Moreover, the Divine presence makes it “holy.” Therefore, it must not be violated, sullied, disrespected, or desecrated:

• “If anyone defiles the sanctuary of God, God will defile him, for the sanctuary of God is holy, and such are you” - 1 Corinthians 3:17).

THE SANCTUARY IS HOLY

Language about preserving the Temple’s holiness and the punishment that awaits those who “defile” God's sanctuary reflects the purity regulations of the Tabernacle from the Torah. For example, the passage in Numbers 19:20 reads:

• “But the man that will be unclean, and will not purify himself, that soul will be cut off from the midst of the assembly because he has defiled the sanctuary of Yahweh.”

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul is explicit:

• “And what concord has Christ with Belial, or what portion has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the sanctuary of God with idols? For we are a sanctuary of the living God, even as God said, I will dwell in them…” – (2 Corinthians 6:15-17).

The Apostle to the Gentiles summoned Jewish and Gentile believers to live holy lives by learning to remain “separate” from sin and idolatry. He identified the local congregation as the “Sanctuary of God,” the place inhabited by Yahweh, the God of Israel. To fortify his point, he cited two passages from the Hebrew Bible:

• (Leviticus 26:11-12) - “And I will set my habitation in your midst, and my soul will not abhor you, But I will walk to and fro in your midst, and will be unto you a God, and you will be to me a people.”

• (Jeremiah 31:33) - “For this is the covenant which I will solemnize with the house of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh, I will put my law within them, Yea, on their heart will I write it. Thus, I will become their God, and they will become my people.”

Paul previously linked the “Spirit” to the presence of God that now dwells in the Assembly. The Gift of the Spirit possessed by believers demonstrates that God dwells among His people. Collectively, they constitute the “Sanctuary of God” in each city where they reside.

Paul identifies the local assembly of believers as the “Sanctuary of God.” That identification is built on promises of the New Covenant from the Hebrew Bible. As the Apostle teaches elsewhere, the institutions of the “former covenant” were “types,” “shadows,” and “glimpses” of the true realities that Jesus inaugurated and now maintains in his New Covenant community:

• “Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day, which are a shadow of the things to come, but the body is of Christ” - (Colossians 2:16-17).

• “But Christ, having become a high priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands…” – (Hebrews 9:11. Compare Hebrews 8:13).

• “For the law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, complete those who draw near” – (Hebrews 10:1).

The Tabernacle and the Temple were “shadows” of God’s greater reality that indwells His people. Whenever and wherever we as Christ’s followers are gathered for worship, the Spirit is present and working among us in the True and Greater “Sanctuary of God.”

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SEE ALSO:

• The True Tabernacle - (Jesus is the True and Greater Tabernacle in whom the presence and glory of God reside and manifest for all men to behold – John 1:14)

• Ekklesia, the Assembly - (The Christian use of the term church or ekklésia is derived from the assembly of Yahweh gathered for worship in the Hebrew Bible)

• Living Water, True Worship - (To a woman in Samaria, Jesus revealed that the presence of God no longer is limited to geographic locations or man-made structures)

• God's One Household - (The promises, types, and shadows of the Hebrew Bible are fulfilled by the Son of God and Messiah of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth)