John’s Gospel is a literary trek through the new Tabernacle or Temple that is Jesus’ body. His allusions to Jesus as the new Temple are evident from the beginning. “The Word” calls up the construction of Solomon’s Temple in 1 Kings. What is translated as “the inner sanctuary” by the ESV is a Hebrew word that seems to be associated with the word “to speak” or its noun form, “word” (1 Kg 6:5, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 31; 7:49). This is another name for the Holy of Holies. In John 1:14, the Word becomes flesh and “dwells” among us. The verb “dwells” speaks of pitching a tent or dwelling in a tent. Some have translated it, “tabernacled.” Seeing his glory, the glory that dwells in the Holy of Holies, only fortifies the image.
If these images aren’t clear enough, when Jesus cleanses the Temple in chapter 2, he tells the Jews, “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19). He was speaking about the Temple that is his body (Jn 2:21).
Jesus is the incarnation of the Temple with all its meaning and services. He is God’s palace, the place where heaven and earth are joined, the place where sins are forgiven, and we draw near to God.
John takes us on a journey through the Temple as it is fulfilled in Jesus. As you enter John’s Gospel, you step into the Outer Court. There, you see a bronze altar that is always burning, along with a bronze laver used for baptisms of priests and animals. When Jesus steps on the scene to be baptized by John the Baptizer, he is proclaimed “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29, 36). He is the sin or purification offering that will be offered up on the bronze altar. He is presented as the Lamb of God in the context of baptism, and water is poured all over the first five chapters of John. Jesus is baptized. The stone water jars in which the water was turned into wine were used for purification (2:1-11). To be born again is to be born of water and the Spirit (3:1-21). Jesus is the source of living water that gives eternal life (4:1-45). Instead of baptizing the man at the Pool of Bethesda in the water stirred by the angel, Jesus moves the man from death to life directly (Jn 5). Baptized into Christ, we die and are raised again. He is the laver of regeneration.
Moving through the Outer Court to the Temple proper, you walk through a door into the Holy Place. On your left is a lampstand (or ten in Solomon’s Temple). On your right is the Table of Showbread/Facebread. Directly in front of you before the veil or olivewood doors is a golden altar with four horns and burning incense. In chapters 6—17, Jesus feeds 5,000 and proclaims himself to be heavenly bread. At the Feast of Tabernacles or Ingathering, the time of the grape harvest, Jesus bids all who are thirsty to come and drink the water of life, the water that he turns to wine. On the Table of Showbread are twelve loaves and bowls of wine and beer for drink offerings.
Jesus then focuses on light. In chapter 8, he is the light of the world. In chapter 9, the light drives back the darkness of blindness in the man born blind. In chapter 10, Jesus is the Good Shepherd like his father, David, who was a lamp (2 Sm 21:17). Jesus moves Lazarus from darkness to light and speaks about the day and night in chapter 11. In chapter 12, he makes his royal entry into Jerusalem, riding on tops of palm branches like the ones carved into the walls of Solomon’s Temple. In chapters 13—17, like the high priest on the Day of Atonement, he puts on linen to prepare for the great work. He washes the disciples’ feet, preparing them to be a sacrifice with him, their head. He takes them to the golden altar of incense as he teaches them to pray and then intercedes for them.
In chapters 18—20, we come to the apex of the Temple, the Holy of Holies or the Word. This is the place where God’s glory dwells on his throne and the place where blood is sprinkled on that throne once per year. That throne is made of wood overlayed in gold. But the ark is wooden. From the time of the Garden of Eden, God meets with and judges men at trees. It is the place of life or death, the place of vindication and condemnation. Behind the veil is a tree, artfully reshaped, but a tree nevertheless with two cherubim on either side.
As we pull back the veil or open those doors, to our amazement, we see the Word made bloody flesh on that tree with two brigands on either side of him. This horror is also his glory. The glory hidden behind the veil all those years is revealed: Yahweh is the sacrifice for his people.
After death, Jesus is wrapped in linen clothes, the clothes of the high priest at work. But on the third day, he leaves those clothes in the tomb where two angels sit, one at the head and the other at the feet of where he had lain. The Holy of Holies, a place of death, has become the fount of life. No more repeated blood-shedding. The old Temple services have ended. They have been fulfilled in the Word made dead-and-resurrected flesh.
