C. The Crowning Climax
22 in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Interrogation: What will the completed construction look like? Like the White House? Like 10 Downing St.? Like the Taj Mahal? Certainly not like the Eiffel Tower or the leaning Tower of Pisa?! Ultimately, it's designed to be a dwelling place of God... in the Spirit, i.e., by virtue of the Spirit's indwelling all believers.
Amplification: The idea of the presence of God with His people runs throughout the Scripture. Indeed, it is the very purpose of God in creating a people for Himself. In the OT, the divine presence with His people was shown in many forms and figures. For example, God made several theophanic appearances to Israel in the wilderness in the form of the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night; to Moses in the form of a burning bush that would not be consumed; to the patriarchs and prophets in dreams and visions; etc. In that dispensation, God's symbolic presence among His people was physically and structurally represented by the Tabernacle, (also called the Tent of Meeting, Ex 39: 32,40, etc., or the Tabernacle of Meeting, 40:30, 32, 34, etc.) the place where He met and spoke with Israel, Ex 29: 42, 43, and the Temple, 1 Ki 8:10-11, in the times of promised land occupation and post-exilic restoration.
The NT tells us than God's passion for propinquity with His people was epitomized by and personified in Christ, Immanuel Himself, Mt 1:21, Who became flesh and dwelt or tabernacled among His people, 14. Further, when our Lord shall pull down the curtains on time and history and When He shall roll up the heavens like a scroll, He will return for His people whom He will gather for Himself and take to heaven where they will dwell eternally in the presence of the Lord. This is the consummation of God's divine purpose in salvation, which purpose He has made known to us by His condescension and grace, and which He has liberally shown us to be the single unifying principle of the several thousand years of the recorded history of redemption, the Immanuel Principle- I will be your God and you will be My people.
Meanwhile, on earth the presence of God with His people is pictured in the form of His indwelling them, Jn 14:17; 1 Cor 3:16; 2 Tim 1: 14; etc., by His Spirit, 2 Cor 1:22; 5: 5; Eph 4:30; etc. So, this building represents:
1. The Presence of God with His People
2. The Passion of God to Be with His People
3. The Provision of God to Be with His People
Note that both Gentile and Jew are constituent members of this building. In this building, there is no separation; segregation; or stratification. It is a perfect building, perfectly hewn; perfectly squared; perfectly sanded; perfectly shaped. Its perfect pillars, beams, walls, rafters, ceilings, etc., are all resting on the foundation of the apostles and prophets and all secured in place by the Chief Cornerstone, Jesus Christ Himself.
The Fallacy and Futility of Ecclesiatical Mono-Culturalism
Today, 90% of all congregations in the U.S. are made up of one ethnic group. Homogeneity can be temporarily acceptable as the result of a geographical ordering and for new non-English-speaking immigrants; and so on, but the efficacious power of Christ indwelling the blood-sprinkled hearts of His people constrains us to reach out beyond our narrow vistas with the anointed, bold intentionality to embrace others who are different in the flesh. A stubborn commitment to monocultural church membership for its own sake, elevates cultural priorities and preferences over kingdom principles for church unity. It rejects the biblical teaching that the body of Jesus Christ is one tree made up of several branches. It despises the biblical truth that the church invisible is composed of ".. a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, .." Rev 7:9-10. It defies the principle that the task of the local church is to make the invisible kingdom of Christ visible. It disbelieves the kingdom prayer that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This applies to all the churches – White, African-American, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, etc. Even within these categories, we find churches comprised of specific ethnicities such as Trinidadian, Guyanese, Haitian, Cantonese, Jamaican, and so on!
John Stott, Ephesians, 110-2: "When the church comes together to worship, it actually joins with the Saints in glory, Heb 12:22-24. When we pray "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven", we admit a longing for God's perfect will to be reflected by the church located in the sinful world. In heaven, however, we see the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic gathering in worshipful adoration of the Lamb, Rev 7:9. Since the heavenly things are an eternal reality providing a pattern for things on earth, then it follows that what we do on earth should conform to this heavenly pattern. In worship we come to God through Christ our Mediator, in the power and unity of the Spirit."
When we ".. erect new barriers in place of the old which Christ has demolished, now a colour bar, now racism, nationalism or tribalism, now personal animosities engendered by pride, prejudice, jealousy and the unforgiving spirit, now a divisive system of caste or class, now a clericalism which sunders clergy from laity as if they were separate breeds of human being, and now a denominationalism which turns churches into sects and contradicts the unity and universality of Christ's Church.. we fail to reflect and promote the rich multi-cultural composition and unity of God's new society and in so doing we offend Christ and in a different way, the world- we hinder it from believing in Jesus. Only by confessing the sins of the church and by taking them to heart; only as we are under a huge burden to take them to God with tears and contrition; only as we confess our imperfections by taking them to Him and by turning from them, will be able to model the new society of reconciled brothers and sisters loving their Father and one another, indwelt by the Father by His Spirit, and glorifying Him. Only then will the world believe in Christ, the Peacemaker. Only then will we be able to glorify God as He requires. Only then will God receive the glory due to his name."
This is The House That God Builds. It is identified by The Drastic Change In Its Condition; The Different Category Of His Creation; and The Dynamic Community Under His Care. Does your church look like His?
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