Peter Roselle: I Am the Dwelling Place of God’s Presence (Ephesians 2:22) The Apostle Paul received and released the revelation that God chose each Christian believer to be a living, breathing temple of His presence. Ephesians 2:22 in The Passion Translation says, “This means that God is transforming each one of you into the Holy of Holies, His dwelling place, through the power of the Holy Spirit living in you!”
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Zechariah 7 (NLT)
9 Judge fairly and show mercy and kindness to one another.
10 Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor.
And do not scheme against each other.
11 “Your ancestors refused to listen to this message.
They stubbornly turned away and put their fingers
in their ears to keep from hearing.
12 They made their hearts as hard as stone,
so they could not hear the instructions or the messages
that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies had sent them by his
Spirit through the earlier prophets.
13 “Since they refused to listen when I called to them,
I would not listen when they called to me, says the
Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
14 As with a whirlwind, I scattered them among the
distant nations, where they lived as strangers.
Their land became so desolate that no one even traveled
through it. They turned their pleasant land into a desert.”
The ultimate sign of acceptance for an asylum seeker is to receive
citizenship in the country they have adopted as their own.
That is the position, Paul declares, in which Gentile Christians
now find themselves in Ephesians.”
“A refugee wants to be accepted in the new community to
rebuild a semblance of the life that was stolen by war.”
Deuteronomy 10:19 “So you, too, must show love to foreigners,
for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.”
EPHESIANS 2
Unveiling the New Temple
17 So the Messiah came and gave the good news. Peace had come!
Peace, that is, for those of you who were a long way away, and peace,
too, for those who were close at hand.
18 Through Him, you see, we both have access to the Father in the one Spirit.
19 This is the result. You are no longer foreigners or strangers.
No: you are fellow-citizens with God's holy people.
You are members of God's household.
“Once they were 'foreigners' and 'strangers' in relation to Israel,
the family of the one true God. But now they are full members –
not because they have accepted the Jewish law or circumcision,
but simply because of what Jesus Himself has accomplished.
What Jesus has done is to make, and declare, peace.
Peace is one of the best-loved words in the world, especially i
f you're a refugee or an asylum-seeker. It is a wonderful thing
to discover that peace has been declared.”
“Gentiles and Jews alike are now to be at home in the same family.
This must have sounded as extraordinary and revolutionary to
traditional Jews - and Paul himself had of course been a traditional Jew –
as it was wonderful and exhilarating for Gentiles who had looked
at Judaism from the outside and felt drawn to the God of
whom the Jewish scriptures had spoken.”
“The closing verses of the chapter take one of the central
symbols of Judaism and turn it inside out.”
Ephesians 2
20 You are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
with King Jesus himself as the cornerstone.
21 In Him the whole building is fitted together and
grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
22 You, too, are being built up together, in Him,
into a place where God will live by the Spirit.
The Temple in Jerusalem was not only the religious heart
of the nation, and the place of pilgrimage of Jews throughout
the world. It was also the political, social, musical and cultural
heart of Jerusalem - as well as the place of celebration and feasting.
The reason for all this was, of course, that Israel's God,
YHWH, had promised to live there. It was, many believed,
the place where earth and heaven met.
But now Paul is declaring that the living God is constructing
a new Temple. It consists, not of stones, arches, pillars and
altars, but of human beings. Until Paul nobody had said
anything quite like this.
One might almost say that God Himself has, in a sense,
become a stranger and asylum-seeker within His own world.
The living God was now seeking to make His home in the
hearts and lives, and particularly the communities (ecclesia),
that had declared their loyalty to Jesus, and were determined
to live by the gospel.
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