John 2:20 Commentary and Bible Study

The temple was still being built. It would not be finished until a few weeks before Titus, the future Roman emperor, destroyed it in AD 70. But it had taken 46 years to get where it was. ‘And wilt thou rear it up in three days?’ Their minds were closed to the deeper sense that the Lord intended in his words. They were deliberately, wilfully unseeing. They didn’t at this time see the point, although later on some of them may have done so, when after his resurrection, like his disciples they remembered his words. Even some of the cynics may then have seen the meaning of the riddle.When the Jewish leaders cried out for Christ to be put to death, they did not realise that in his death the temple would also be destroyed. Not only would his body be destroyed, but in crucifying him they were bringing to an end the Jewish priesthood. When Christ suffered and died, he fulfilled all that the temple stood for. The temple was only ever a lesson, a figure, and all that went on in it was a prophecy, a type, a shadow. When by the clamour of the Jewish leaders Christ was put to death, all the prophetic types, and shadows were fulfilled. From the time of his resurrection from the dead, not one sacrifice offered in the temple held any further spiritual significance or validity, because the perfect sacrifice had been made. So from that moment the clock was ticking leading to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. God withdrew his arm of protection over Jerusalem at that time because of the crucifixion of Christ. ‘Destroy this temple’, Christ said, meaning his body, and you destroy this temple as well. And in rising from the dead, a new temple came into being. Christ was the temple, and his church was part of it. So from the resurrection of Christ, there is a new temple but it is not bricks and mortar, or stones and mortar. It is Christ and his truly born-again people. We are now the temple of the living God. So it is a most profound statement: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’