Last time, we gave a glimpse of the spiritual blessings the Church has attained by being in Christ. In this final article, we will detail who we are in Christ, and why we, as the bride of Christ, we are the New Jerusalem John saw in the Apocalypse.

Jesus confirmed that concept when He prayed His High Priestly Prayer to His Father. He prayed thus, “That they (His disciples) may be one even as We (He and the Father) are one” (John 17:11; 10:30). Then continuing, He said, ”I do not ask on behalf of these alone (His disciples), but for those also who believe in Me through their word (those to whom His disciples preach); that they (all those to whom His disciples preach and are saved) may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they may also be in Us…. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity…” (17:20-23, emphasis added). That elaborates on what Jesus said when Philip questioned Him, who told him, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me” (14:10-11, 20).

Think about that, and the fact that we are in Christ, and what that means. Jesus also brought up the concept of abiding in Him when He told the disciples His Father would send a Helper – the Holy Spirit who would abide with them and be in them (John 14:16-17; see also 15:1-11). That occurred on Pentecost. That is an incredible reality, yet it is spiritual; therefore, if only we would appreciate what we have and who we are in Christ.

In summary, because (a) we, as believers, are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and because (b) the Lamb and the Lord God are the New Jerusalem’s Temple, and because (c) He is in us and we are in Him, and because (d) we are one with Him as He is one with the Father, (e) that is how we, the Church, as the bride of the Lamb, are the New Jerusalem that came down from heaven.[1]

That is a spiritual concept, intended to be spiritual, not literal. The New Jerusalem is not a fifteen-hundred-mile cube with walls of seventy-two yards that orbits the earth as some say because some English Bibles dismayingly translate its measurements that way (Revelation 21:16-17, NASB, my preferred version, and the NLT). That translation is sadly misleading. Instead, according to the original Greek the New Jerusalem is a twelve thousand stadia cube with walls of one hundred forty-four cubits (21:16-17, ESV, KJV, NKJV, NIV, MESSAGE).

Miles and yards are American measures; a cubit was an Egyptian unit of measure used by the Hebrews, and a stadia is a Greek unit. John wrote the Apocalypse in Greek and employed the words σταδιων (stadia) and πῆχων (cubits). Twelve is one of God’s numbers; 144 is twelve times twelve; 1000, as a large round number, is ten times ten times ten. That is highly symbolic – spiritual. We must study to show ourselves approved to rightly divide the word of truth.

Furthermore, the city had twelve gates, and at the gates were twelve angels, and on the gates were the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. The city’s wall had twelve foundations; on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb; finally, the twelve gates were twelve pearls (Revelation 21:12-14, 22).

Every number given in the original Greek is divisible by twelve. It is a spiritual depiction but could be a picture of the world if the Church only realized who and what it is and what it has in Christ and stopped looking up in anticipation of Jesus cracking the sky to rescue them but instead studied the Scriptures in the hope of sharing the Gospel and winning more souls to Christ.

God is spirit, and we must worship Him in spirit and truth (John 4:24). Putting the measurement of the New Jerusalem in human terms takes away its spiritual meaning.

This depiction of the body of the believer as the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the Church as the New Jerusalem is the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy of the anointing of the Most Holy Place, the last entity of the six in Daniel 9:24, every one of which was fulfilled by what Jesus accomplished at the cross.

[1] The word church, in the New Testament, translated from the Greek εκκλησια, is really a misnomer and, in all probability, is why many mistakenly accuse certain Christians of promoting Replacement Theology, or Supersessionism (the Church replacing national Israel). Εκκλησια (an assembly of people) is a word that the Septuagint translates from the Hebrew word meaning the same. That means the first-century Jews were familiar with the word and would not have adopted the modern errant definition. That faulty characterization is one more erroneous arrow in the dispensational quiver.