Allison Janae Blog

This is post is Part Three of a series. Swing by next week to read the next installment!

Do you remember what we talked about in last week’s article, how we are created in God’s image, and that means He created us to be alike Him in nature? (If you haven’t read that post yet, do that first here). As we said last week, the way God created the earth is to be a place where we can see His artistry and enjoy Him through it. We saw the love song He has written for us in His creation. We saw that what God has made is good and very beautiful. 

But as you’ll recall, He didn’t just make a planet and a bunch of animals. God also made us. If everything God created is good and was perfect (before sin ¹), that means us too. For me, thinking that I am “created perfect” hits a nerve somewhere deep inside me. It makes me squirm. How can I be perfect? How can I be so beautiful- not solely the physical kind of beauty, but the deeper kind?

God’s Dwelling Place

To understand how we are beautiful, we have to go back to before God took the form of a human body. Back when Jesus hadn’t yet paid for the price of sin, and instead lambs, bulls, and other livestock had to be slaughtered as a temporary blood payment to atone for God’s people ².

In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the book of Exodus, we find an account of God’s chosen people creating something magnificent: It was called the Tabernacle. In Hebrew, the word translated tabernacle here is miškān (say it “mish-kawn”), which means “dwelling place”, specifically a habitation (in the Israelites’ case, a tent) ³. 

“And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.”

– Exodus 25:8-9

 From the fasteners holding together the sections of curtains that made up the walls to the patterns and designs on the gold-plated furnishings to the number of bowls and tongs needed, the instructions to build the tabernacle were extremely specific. And if you read through Exodus 26-28, you will see it was not only a detailed project- it was a BEAUTIFUL work of art. The craftsmanship required was immense. The design was meticulous. The materials used were luxuriously expensive. This structure was where God’s real, visible Spirit resided, and there could be no qualms about its grandeur.

So much human artistry was poured into making the tabernacle perfect- even though it was a tent, a temporary dwelling. The Israelites had to disassemble and pack it up onto their donkeys and camels regularly when they moved their camp. While they moved around as a nomadic people, waiting to take the Promised Land ⁴, the Israelites couldn’t build a permanent structure where they could worship and sacrifice to God. It wasn’t until about 400 years later that King Solomon built the (almost) permanent Temple structure, which was even more magnificent and opulent than the original Tabernacle.

 Both buildings were beautiful, but reading the account of the Jerusalem Temple, we can see that it far surpassed even the Tabernacle in glory and splendor. ⁵

Recall the Hebrew word we mentioned earlier, miškān– “dwelling place”. There is another type of “dwelling place”, another kind of temporary tent if you will, that we are much more familiar with. In fact, each and every one of us has daily interactions with it:

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

– 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

God no longer dwells in a house made by craftsmen (Acts 7:48)- God’s Spirit lives within us; we are the tabernacle. This means His glory, His beauty, and His creative power dwells within us!

Let that sink in. The all-powerful, gloriously beautiful God who created all things in existence, now dwells within us. 

In the Old Testament, the Israelites could not come close to the inner room of the Tabernacle where God’s Spirit rested- only the High Priest could, and only once a year ⁶. But now, we can have full confidence to enter into God’s presence:

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

– Hebrews 10:19-22

The temple could not build itself. That would be silly. The brushstrokes and touch of the master artist are required to make the masterpiece- and so it is with us: the Master Artist had to craft us by hand, sculpting every detail of our bodies and souls, weaving together our whole beings. His fingerprints are all over us, because we are His masterpieces.

Not only that, but God loves the artwork we are so much, He has stamped Himself to us like a potter would His clay- but then He calls out, “See this vessel I created? It represents me. I didn’t only make it to be beautiful, I made it to carry my very essence to others. When you see this clay vessel, you are really seeing me. This vessel carries my entire reputation. Measure the worth of everything else I create, and you will see that none of it compares with the pricelessness of this piece.”

Jesus has given us a new identity, a new name. We are His! Much like a woman takes on her husband’s surname when they are married, so we have taken on Jesus’ name as His Bride ⁷.  

From 2 Corinthians, chapters 3 and 4:

 (3:18) “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(4:7)… “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 

We see ourselves in our current state, and we can’t imagine they are anything comparable in beauty to the beauty of a masterpiece. That’s just it: we aren’t finished. God is not confined to the construct of time, and so He sees us as we were, are and will be all at once. To Him, we are already the fully restored humanity, returned to the perfection we were created with in Eden. God sees us as worthy, holy, and perfect- not because of anything we have done, but because of His work. He has made, and is making, us into His beautiful temples. ⁸

“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”

2 Corinthians 5:1-5

Footnotes

1. Genesis 1:31 ↩︎
2. “What Is Sin.” GotQuestions.org https://www.gotquestions.org/what-is-sin.html ↩︎
3. Lexicon: Strong’s H4908 miškān. BlueLetterBible.org https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h4908/esv/wlc/0-1/ ↩︎
4. Genesis 15:18-21; Numbers 34:1-29 ↩︎
5. 2 Chronicles chapters 2-5 ↩︎
6. Leviticus 16:2-3, 34; Exodus 30:1-10 ↩︎
7. Ephesians 5:22; Revelation 21 ↩︎
8. A great resource to dive deeper into the subject of our bodies as God’s temples: https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/temple/?utm_source=web_social_share&medium=shared_video ↩︎