When the God of all creation chose to take on our humanity and
“move into the neighborhood,” as Eugene Peterson put it, he was
creating a new kind of temple—one not made with wood, stone, sil-
ver, and gold, but a temple of flesh and bone and spirit.
By choosing to join the human family and becoming our once-for-
all sacrifice (Rom. 6:10), Jesus was rendering the temple of
Solomon’s day unnecessary. He was becoming the first human tem-
ple created to contain the Holy Spirit of his Father, God Almighty.
And what’s more, he was inviting us to do the same.
By his perfect sacrifice he tore down the walls of sin and death be-
tween us and God and he built up a holy meeting place where God
could “tabernacle” within his people—no buildings, no sacrifices, no
mediators required. We need only a willingness to be with him and
pray to him and hear from him.
As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have
received from God? You are not your own.”
The temples of our bodies in which God has chosen to dwell are
works of art we could never have created on our own. We can only
welcome our living God to meet us within.
Oh, Father, I echo David’s desire, saying, “My soul yearns, even
faints / for the courts of the LORD.” I long to know you more and
more. And yet I know that many times I am an unfit dwelling place
for you. Come and clean the tabernacle of my spirit so that you may
be at home here. Forgive my sin so that you may say of me, “How
lovely is my dwelling place within this, my child.” Amen.204 CLAIRECLONINGER