One Dwelling: God Among His People

Why build a house at all? Surely not merely to admire its architecture, and not merely as a shelter for people to gather in occasionally. A house is built to be lived in. This is the climax of Paul’s picture in Ephesians 2, and it arrives in v. 22: “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

Everything Paul has pictured to this point—one household, one foundation, one temple—has been building toward this single purpose. God is not simply laying a foundation or joining stones together as an end in itself. God is building a house because he intends to live in it.

Notice again the phrase “built together.” Paul does not allow room here for a private, individualised faith—the idea that Christianity is simply a matter of “Jesus and me.” The dwelling place he describes is corporate. It is a we, not merely a collection of Is who happen to occupy the same building. And the purpose of that corporate dwelling is nothing less than a dwelling place for God himself.

This is not a new idea introduced out of nowhere. It is, in fact, one of the great threads running through the whole of Scripture.

The Bible begins in Eden with humanity enjoying God’s presence directly. Sin then drove humanity out of that presence. But God did not abandon his intention to dwell among his people. In Exodus, he instructs Israel, “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst” (Exodus 25:8). When the tabernacle was completed, God’s glory filled it. Later still, God’s glory filled Solomon’s temple, and his covenant promise to his people remained constant: I will make my dwelling among you.

Then comes the incarnation. John 1:14 tells us “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God comes to dwell among humanity personally, in the person of his Son, and Jesus himself identifies his own body as the true temple. Now, in Ephesians 2:22, Paul takes the next step in this unfolding story: Those united to Christ by faith become, together, God’s temple.

Follow the movement across redemptive history: Eden—God with humanity. The tabernacle—God among Israel. The temple—God’s glory among his people. Christ—God dwelling among us in the flesh. The church—God dwelling among his people by his Spirit.

There is something worth pausing over here. Under the old covenant, even the Jewish people could not approach the holy of holies. Only the high priest could enter, once a year, and only with blood. Gentiles could not draw near at all. Yet because of union with Christ, those who were once excluded are now, in a real sense, made the holy of holies themselves—a dwelling place for God, “by the Spirit.”

There is a simple picture worth holding onto here. In rural settings, where homes are scattered across the landscape, you can often tell from a distance whether a house is occupied simply by watching for smoke rising from the kitchen. No smoke, and the house is likely empty—perhaps even unsafe to approach. Smoke rising tells you plainly: Someone lives here.

The question worth asking of any church, and any fellowship of churches, is this: What tells the watching world that someone lives in this house? Jesus gives the answer directly in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” When former enemies become brothers; when people from different nations worship side by side; when stronger congregations strengthen weaker ones, and weaker congregations pray earnestly for stronger ones; when older believers pour into younger ones, and pastors pray for one another across denominational and national lines, that is smoke rising from the house. The watching world is meant to look at the church and rightly conclude: Someone lives here. And the one who lives there is God himself, by his Spirit.

This has real implications for how churches relate to one another beyond the walls of any single congregation. Fellowship between churches cannot simply mean an annual conference—three days of warm handshakes and good fellowship, followed by a return home and a slow forgetting of one another until the next gathering rolls around. If heaven truly is the shared destination of God’s people, something of heaven’s fellowship ought to characterise the relationships between churches now: pastors praying for one another by name, resources moving from where God has supplied abundance to where genuine need exists, churches in one country helping train and support believers in another—not to build an impressive network, but because Christ himself is building his church, and that building project does not stop at any congregation’s front door.

None of this—the household, the foundation, the temple, the dwelling—ultimately matters if a person remains outside of Christ. It is entirely possible to attend church regularly, to know sound theology well, even to affirm every right doctrine, and still be a stranger to God. The real question was never simply, are you near Christians? It is, are you in Christ?

Ephesians 2:13 remains the hinge on which everything else turns: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Sin made us strangers to God, unable to find our own way home. So Christ came for us—living the life we failed to live, bearing the judgement we deserved, and rising again on the third day exactly as he promised, calling sinners home.

One day, the scaffolding will finally come down. The building will be complete. People from every tribe, tongue, and language will worship together, face to face, with nothing left to divide them. Until that day, the invitation remains the same as it has always been: Come home.