The redeeming God will also be the temple of the holy city for the believers’ eternal dwelling with God as His serving ones (Rev. 21:22; 22:3c). Actually the holy city is the tabernacle, and the tabernacle is the temple. Here we have three things: the holy city, the tabernacle, and the temple. The term “holy city” signifies the believers together being constituted as God’s dwelling place. The word “tabernacle” denotes God’s habitation, and the word “temple” indicates that the redeeming God will be the place in which we dwell and serve Him. Therefore, the holy city denotes the constitution, the tabernacle denotes God’s habitation, and the temple denotes our dwelling place in which we serve God. The holy city is the tabernacle, and in the tabernacle the redeeming God will be the temple. This means that the city is the constitution, the building up of the entity, which is the New Jerusalem. This entity is the tabernacle for God’s dwelling place, and within this tabernacle is God Himself as the temple to be our dwelling place. The holy city, therefore, is a mutual dwelling place. As the tabernacle it is God’s habitation, and as the temple it is our dwelling place. This means that God dwells in us as the tabernacle and we dwell in God as the temple. This is not only a mutual dwelling, a mutual abiding, but also a mingling of God and His chosen, redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people.
Revelation 21:22 says that the Apostle John saw no temple in the New Jerusalem, for the temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. Since God and the Lamb are the temple, They cannot dwell in it, and it is not Their dwelling place. It is the dwelling place of all the believers, who serve the Triune God by dwelling in Him. On the one hand, the New Jerusalem, which is composed of all the redeemed saints as the habitation of God, is the tabernacle; on the other hand, the New Jerusalem, which is constituted of the processed Triune God as the dwelling place of all the redeemed saints, is the temple. Thus, the New Jerusalem is the mutual dwelling of both the redeeming God and His redeemed. It is both the tabernacle and the temple; the tabernacle is the redeemed, and the temple is the redeeming God. This indicates strongly that the redeeming God is mingled with His redeemed, through the processes He has gone through and the procedures in which they have shared, for His expression in His eternal manifestation.
The Lamb-God will also be the light of life in the lamp shining through the holy city. Revelation 22:5a says, “Night shall be no more; and they have no need of the light of a lamp and the light of the sun, for the Lord God shall illumine them.” Revelation 21:23 says, “The city has no need of the sun nor of the moon that they should shine in it, for the glory of God illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.” Revelation 21:11 tells us that the New Jerusalem has the glory of God and her light is like a most precious stone, as a jasper stone, clear as crystal. In the millennium the light of the sun and the moon will be intensified (Isa. 30:26). But in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and the new earth there will be no need of the sun nor of the moon, for there God, the divine light, will shine much more brightly. The Lamb as the lamp will shine with God as the light to illumine the city with the glory of God, the expression of the divine light. Because such a divine light will illumine the holy city, it will have no need of any other light, whether created by God or made by man.
In Revelation 21:23 we see that God is the light and Christ is the lamp. This indicates that God and the Lamb are one light. God is the content, and the Lamb, Christ, is the light-bearer, the expression. The glory of God, with God as its substance, essence, and element, will be the light of the New Jerusalem shining in the Lamb as its lamp. This means that God who is the light will shine in Christ as the lamp throughout the city. This also is a matter of the divine dispensing, for shining is a kind of dispensing. The shining of the divine light is actually the dispensing of the processed Triune God into the believers.
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