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| The Temple Which Christ Says He Will Raise Up is the Church. How the Dry Bones Will Be Made to Live Again.
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20. The Temple
Which Christ Says He Will Raise Up is the Church. How the Dry
Bones Will Be Made to Live Again.
“The Jews then answered and said unto Him, What
sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these
things?5085
Jesus
answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I
will raise it up.” Those of the body, and those who incline
to material things, seem to me to be meant by the Jews, who, after
Jesus has driven out those who make God’s house a house of
merchandise, are angry at Him for treating these matters in such a way,
and demand a sign, a sign which will show that the Word, whom they do
not receive, has a right to do such things. The Saviour joins on
to His statement about the temple a statement which is really one with
the former, about His own body, and to the question, What sign doest
Thou, seeing that Thou doest such things? answers, “Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He could
have exhibited a thousand other signs, but to the question,
“Seeing that Thou doest such things,” He could not answer
anything else; He fittingly gave the answer about the sign connected
with the temple, and not about signs unconnected with the temple.
Now, both of these two things, the temple and the body of Jesus, appear
to me, in one interpretation at least, to be types of the Church, and
to signify that it is built of living stones,5086
a
spiritual house for a holy priesthood, built5087
on
the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the
head corner-stone; and it is, therefore, called a temple. Now,
from the text,5088
“Ye are the
body of Christ, and members each in his part,” we see that even
though the harmonious fitting of the stones of the temple appear to be
dissolved and scattered, as it is written in the twenty-second
Psalm5089
that all the bones of Christ are, by the
plots made against it in persecutions and afflictions, on the part of
those who war against the unity of the temple in persecutions, yet the
temple will be raised again, and the body will rise again on the third
day after the day of evil which threatens it,5090
| 5090 2 Peter iii. 3, 10, 13. |
and the day of consummation which follows. For the third day will
rise on the new heaven and the new earth, when these bones, the whole
house of Israel,5091
will rise in the
great Lord’s day, death having been overcome. And thus the
resurrection of the Saviour from
the passion of the cross contains the mystery of the resurrection of
the whole body of Christ. But as that material body of Jesus was
sacrificed for Christ, and was buried, and was afterwards raised, so
the whole body of Christ’s saints is crucified along with Him,
and now lives no longer; for each of them, like Paul, glories5092
in nothing but the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, through which He is crucified to the world, and the world to
Him. Not only, therefore, is it crucified with Christ, and
crucified to the world; it is also buried with Christ, for we were
buried with Christ, Paul says.5093
And then he
says, as if enjoying some earnest of the resurrection, “We rose
with Him,”5094
because He walks in
a certain newness of life, though not yet risen in that blessed and
perfect resurrection which is hoped for. Either, then, he is now
crucified, and afterwards is buried, or he is now buried and taken down
from the cross, and, being now buried, is to rise at some future
time. But to most of us the mystery of the resurrection is a
great one, and difficult of contemplation; it is spoken of in many
other passages of Scripture, and is specially announced in the
following passage of Ezekiel:5095
“And
the hand of the Lord was upon me, and He led me out in the Spirit of
the Lord, and set me in the midst of the plain, and it was full of
human bones. And He led me round about them in a circle, and
behold there were very many on the face of the plain, and behold they
were very dry. And He said to me, Son of man, shall these bones
live? And I said, Lord, Lord, Thou knowest. And He said to
me, Prophesy to these bones, and thou shalt say to them, Hear the word
of the Lord, ye dry bones;” and a little further on, “And
the Lord spake to me, saying, Son of man, these bones are the house of
Israel. And they say, Our bones are become dry, our hope is lost,
we have breathed our last.” For what bones are these which
are addressed, “Hear ye the word of the Lord,” as if they
heard the word of the Lord? They belong to the house of Israel,
or to the body of Christ, of which the Lord says,5096
“All My bones are scattered,”
although the bones of His body were not scattered, and not even one of
them was broken. But when the resurrection itself takes place of
the true and more perfect body of Christ, then those who are now the
members of Christ, for they will then be dry bones, will be brought
together, bone to bone, and fitting to fitting (for none of those who
are destitute of fitting (ἁρμονία) will come to the
perfect man), to the measure5097
of the stature of
the fulness of the body of Christ. And then the many
members5098
will be the one
body, all of them, though many, becoming members of one body. But
it belongs to God alone to make the distinction of foot and hand and
eye and hearing and smelling, which in one sense fill up the head, but
in another the feet and the rest of the members, and the weaker and
humbler ones, the more and the less honourable. God will temper
the body together, and then, rather than now, He will give to that
which lacks the more abundant honour, that there may be, by no means,
any schism in the body, but that the members may have the same care for
one another, and, if any member be well off, all the members may share
in its good things, or if any member be glorified, all the members may
rejoice with it.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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