John 2:20-22

“The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” ²¹ But He was speaking about the temple of His body. ²² When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”

            In the previous section the Jews, more specifically the religious leaders, were asking for a sign of Jesus’s authority in doing things such as chasing out merchants in the temple. His response to this was that the sign will be the temple destroyed and raised up again three days later. This was a continuation of that conversation where the Jews did not understand what Jesus was talking about and the explanation of the encounter from John. This relates back to what John continues to do in showing how the disciples noticed the significance of things Jesus said, either at that time or when He died, in relation to scriptures and prophecy.

            John first showed the temporal thinking of the leaders at the time. When Jesus mentioned the temple and raising it up, they thought to the physical temple, the one in which they might have been when this conversation happened. Yet what had happened was a refusal to understand Jesus’s meaning because their minds were already made up about what He meant. This was so that they might not have to face another reality—that Jesus might be someone special that they should pay attention to.

            The next verse shows John’s clarification of what Jesus meant by this statement. He was not speaking about the physical temple but the temple of His body. This shows that the temple of the body would have been something that they understood at the time further reinforcing the idea of them being intentionally obtuse.

            Then we have the next verse which brings this whole passage together. John reveals that the disciples did not even understand Jesus’s words at first, but they remembered after Jesus had died and was raised from the dead. The key phrase in the passage is that “they believed the scriptures and the word that Jesus had spoken.” There is a contrast between the Jews who did not believe and the disciples of Jesus who did and it centers on the resurrection of Jesus. The Jews did not want to believe in scriptures Jesus was fulfilling or in His words, so they focused on the physical whereas, in contrast, the disciples did want to believe and they were able to see beyond the physical to what Jesus was actually saying.

            As Christians, we must look beyond the physical to what Jesus is saying to us today. We can often get caught up in the physical—the flesh, earthly things—because that is where sin is that we see every day, but John was showing us there can be a deeper understanding. Why do people do evil things? The answer lies with fundamental problems of not knowing the true temple, Jesus. We need to take this understanding with us as we read scripture so there is deeper meaning that is the cure to societal issues. We must bring this to people and believe it ourselves because only then can we begin to change our lives and others’.

            As a non-Christian, do not get wrapped up with this world. Do not get wrapped up in your sin or what you might think are contradictions. Understand that Jesus sees past the physical to the spiritual. Jesus is the answer to those issues, to your sin that you think you cannot let go of or you think is natural. Jesus can show you a new way of thinking where He is the temple where we come to worship the risen Savior.