By Jonathan Allen, Friday 31^st May 2019 at 2:21pm

Francis Chan tells us that one of his favourite scenes in Scripture is the dedication of Solomon’s Temple in ” 2 Chronicles 7.  He wishes he could have been there to see it!  The priests could not enter the house of Adonai because the glory  of Adonai filled Adonai’s house (2 Chronicles 7:2). The Temple, he notes, “was the place where heaven intersected with earth.”

Then he switches to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, where his readers are told that they are being built into a holy temple in the Lord.  In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22).

Can you see where he is going with this?

I would give anything to stand outside the Temple and watch God’s glory descend.  But I get something so much better: I am literally a part of the temple itself.  Somehow by the blood of Jesus, I became worthy of joining with others to form a dwelling place for God!

Not just a transition from strangers and aliens to fellow citizens, but also a transition from spectators to participants, to essential components.  Chan goes on:

Peter describes us as living stones (1 Peter 2:5).  You are a stone in the same structure in which the apostles and prophets are the foundations and Jesus Himself is the cornerstone!  When Paul talked about this concept, he used the plural form of you and the singular form of temple.  We are all joined together to form one house for God.  Somehow I am a block of a temple that transcends time and space. And because the structure is a temple, this means that God makes His home among us!

Chan has got all excited about this, but he does have a point.  Do we do church/congregation with that vision in mind or do we see multiple points of worship and lots of rooms of study and learning?  What is our vision for unity?

What is your vision for unity?  And how do you work it out in practice?