Jeremiah sat the name of God alongside the word for temple and called this construction a lie. Jesus knew, all temples will either fall to time or to the political whims of empire and war. Jesus sat about to build a different kind of edifice, a living, moving, speaking, body. A body nourished on bread from heaven, not manna, but through the Spirit who dwells in the living and cannot truly inhabit a house made of hands.
Our heavenly father can dwell within us because we bear the relational, redeeming, creative, promise keeping, ethically moral, love governed image of God and like God we can create reality with our freedom. Unlike God, we can mar both image and likeness when we violate the image of God with our freedom.
The entrance of God into humanity, the joining of God and the creation, attests to both the love of God for humanity and the desire of God to experience the freedom of the creature and enter the great adventure of life under the sun. God is a spirit and desires to live in an inviolable relationship of love.
Jesus was not impressed by the temple but saw it as lifeless; in fact, Jesus viewed his body, his person as the true temple of God; as a living temple that will rise indestructible. The living humanity of Jesus enfleshed in a little bit of skin is indicative of God’s desire to be manifest in the lives of each one of us.
We need buildings, God needs us. Buildings are not to be loved or considered as the dwelling place of God.
