Jesus is the Meeting Place - by Ric Pointer

JOHN 2:20 “This temple took forty-six years to build,” the Jews replied, “and You are going to raise it up in three days?”

21 But Jesus was speaking about the temple of His body.

22 After He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this. Then they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.…


The point is that under the terms of the old covenant, the temple was the great meeting-place between a holy God and his sinful people. This was the place of sacrifice, the place of atonement for sin. But this side of the cross, where Jesus by his sacrifice pays for our sin, Jesus himself becomes the great meeting-place between a holy God and his sinful people; thus he becomes the temple, the meeting-place between God and his people. It is not as if Jesus in his incarnation adequately serves as the temple of God. That is a huge mistake. Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It is in Jesus’ death, in his destruction, and in his resurrection three days later, that Jesus meets our needs and reconciles us to God, becoming the temple, the supreme meeting-place between God and sinners. To use Paul’s language, we do not simply preach Christ; rather, we preach Christ crucified.