God the Temple

The Bible is a narrative of architecture and city planning. The Creator is a divine architect and builder. On earth, He is first a landscape architect, designing and planning a garden, then a designer of tents and temples, finally an architect of people who builds a church of living stones.

Revelation 21 contains the last vision of the house of God. It is a city-made-temple, an urban space that resembles the inner sanctuary of the temple. It is full of the glory of God, illumined by the lamp who is the Lamb (21:23).

But verse 22 says something surprising, not that the city is a temple but that the Lord Himself is the temple for His Bride, Jerusalem. Temples are houses for God, and if God and the Lamb are the temple for the city, they form the residence for some god or other. They form the residence for Jerusalem herself, the human “goddess” who dwells within the divine temple.

Temples house “images” of the God, and so does the temple that is God and the Lamb – the image of God that is Adam matured to a Bride from heaven.