When the apostle Peter stood before the Sanhedrin, and they were ordering him to stop preaching in the name of Jesus, he replied with one of Christianity’s more famous quotes: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). Continuing, the remainder of what he said is where our interest lies. Peter told them that God raised Jesus, whom they had put to death by crucifixion, and who was now exalted to God’s right hand, of which they were now witnesses as was the Holy Spirit whom God gives to those who obey Him (Acts 5:30-32, emphasis added).

Yes, God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him. That is the key to what we will now say. So we, as believers in Christ, have been given the Holy Spirit, who lives within us. The apostle Paul also said as much, telling the church at Corinth that their body is now the Temple of the Holy Spirit, which God gave (1 Corinthians 6:19, emphasis added).

Remember, at that time, the Jerusalem Temple, with its Most Holy place, while still standing, was soon to be no more as it was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70, within forty years, with no need for another. But when God resurrected Jesus, and then gave the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, our hearts became the most holy place, for it is where Christ dwells in the Person of the Holy Spirit. So we, the Church, are now the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, that magnifies our argument that the physical Temple, which, as we said, still stood when Peter, Paul, and Luke wrote or said those things and was the focal point of the Jewish leaders’ obstruction against Christianity, had to be taken out.

So then, the holy city, New Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven, made ready as a bride, is none other than the Church (Revelation 21:1-3, see also 19:7). The apostle Paul, talking about the relationships between husbands and wives, likens human marriage to that between Christ and the Church, saying,  “I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church” (Ephesians 5:22-33, cf. v. 32). The Old Testament also makes several references to God’s people as His bride (Isaiah 49:18; 54:4-8; 61:10; 62:1-5; Jeremiah 2:32; 3:1, 6-10; 31:31-32; Ezekiel 16). The prophet Hosea, told by God to marry a harlot, is an analogy of God’s people who played the harlot against God, her husband. In other words, God’s relationship to His people is as a husband to His bride.

Also, because heaven is from where Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit come, that is why the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven. Moreover, the angel who showed this to John affirmed our previous point by telling him, “Come here, and I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb,” which was the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven (Revelation 21:9-10). So, the reality is the Church, the bride of Christ, the Lamb, spiritually resides in heaven. But are we to interpret that literally? No. It is a spiritual reality. Dispensationalists get angry at preterists who “spiritualize” things instead of being literalists, but as we maintain, no one method of interpretation can be used for all Scripture.

Since Christ’s Resurrection and Pentecost, when believers were first saved by Grace and the Holy Spirit indwelt them, that is spiritual. We were, from that time, spiritually seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:4-6). Those were the circumstances under which Luke, Peter, Paul, and John wrote. But now that the physical Temple is no more, we live in the state of affairs that John saw, for the New Jerusalem he saw had no Temple. The Lord God and the Lamb are its Temple (Revelation 21:22), and no one shall ever come into it but those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life (21:27). Thus, if one is in Christ, their name is in the Lamb’s book of life and are residents of the New Jerusalem. That is how we are seated with Him and how Paul can say we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Him (Ephesians 1:3).

So the spiritual reality is that we are the bride, the New Jerusalem, and thus we, the Lord God, and the Lamb, are New Jerusalem’s Temple. How is that possible? Understand that from those above passages, if those in Christ, i.e., the Church are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and the Lord God and the Lamb are the Temple of the New Jerusalem, then because the Holy Spirit indwells us, we who are one with the Lamb and the Lord God are that Temple (see Ephesians 2:19-22; 4:15-16; 1 Peter 2:4-8). How awesome is that? That is who we are in Christ! To be continued.