John tells us there is no temple in New Jerusalem, because the Lord God, Almighty, even the Lamb is the Temple of the city (Revelation 21:22). The Greek verb is singular. Therefore, the phrase “the Lord God, Almighty, even the Lamb” describe the glorified Jesus. He is the Temple of New Jerusalem or put another way, we, the New Jerusalem, dwell **in** Christ, our Temple (cp. John 17:21).
Those of us who are in Christ are part of a new creation (2Corinthians 5:17), created in him (Ephesians 2:10). The word of God is spoken for the edification of all who dwell before God (i.e. in his Presence), in Christ (2Corinthians 12:19). Every spiritual blessing that we have has been given to us by God, because we are in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). Once we dwelt far away from God, but we have been given new life in Christ (Ephesians 2:6), and have been brought near by the blood of Jesus, and we have been given access in Christ to the Father (Ephesians 2:13-18). We may physically live in Africa, Europe, Asia, one of the Americas, Australia or on an island in one of the oceans. Yet, we dwell in the Temple of God, which is Christ, in New Jerusalem! Neither the Temple nor the city is a physical matter.
The New Jerusalem has no need of physical light, because it is a spiritual place. One cannot find it on a map (cp. Luke 17:21), nor could one walk up to it and touch it (Hebrews 12:18). Neither does the New Jerusalem need the light of men, because the wisdom of men has been made foolish by God (1Corinthians 1:20), in that the natural “man does not accept the things that the Spirit of God teaches, for they are nonsense to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are appreciated by spiritual insight” (2Corinthians 2:14). Rather, the light of New Jerusalem comes from Christ (Revelation 21:23), whom God has made to be our Wisdom, even our Righteousness, Sanctification and our Redemption (1Corinthians 1:20). He is all the light we need to understand spiritual matters, which the eye has never seen, nor the ear heard, nor have they even occurred to man (1Corinthians 2:9). Christ unveils these things to us. Just as a man’s natural spirit helps him to understand the world he is able see, hear, touch, smell and taste, so the Spirit of Christ helps his elect to understand the heavenly realms, which are thoughts and plans of God expressed in his word (1Corinthians 2:10-11).
The nations will walk by the light of the city (Revelation 21:24). In other words, they will learn correct behavior and understand its value through our behavior. Consider how the world views life today, and contrast this with how it understood life before Christianity:
When a child was born, the father, the “paterfamilias” of the family determined whether the child was acceptable and could be kept or was not acceptable and would be abandoned at the cesspools or outside the city on the garbage dumps… Juvenal mentions children “abandoned by cesspools” and a first century letter from a man to his pregnant wife says: “If it is a boy, keep it. If it is a girl, discard it.” …Even the so-called refined and educated Cicero (106-43 BC) in his On the Laws, 3.8 states: “Deformed infants shall be killed.” The “deformity” could be an unwanted child (Latin exposti), a sickly child, a deformed child or simply a wrong sex child. The Stoic philosopher, Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD), comments casually in On Anger, 1.15: “…mad dogs we knock on the head… unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children at birth who are weakly and abnormal.”[1]
When the nations brought this type of behavior into the Light of Christ, as that light radiated from his people through word and deed, the nations judged their own behavior and changed. What we see today in the world’s efforts toward peace, justice and care for the weak has occurred through the effect of the witness of Christianity in the world. Even kings are judged by the Light of Christ, as to whether their glory is good or evil (cp. Revelation 21:24-26).
Finally, John tells us that nothing unworthy will be allowed to enter New Jerusalem, and no one who is unclean or is given to lying will be there (Revelation 21:27), which implies, as mentioned above, that there will be folks like this who dwell outside the city, and their behavior will be judged by the light of New Jerusalem. This is quite unlike what the futurists tell us about the new heavens and the new earth! Nevertheless, entry is subject to the Lamb’s Book of Life (Revelation 21:27; cp. 3:5; 13:8; 20:15 and Daniel 12:1), which has to do with who is a citizen of the city. In Luke 10:20 Jesus told his disciple not to rejoice over the power they had over the demons of this world (subjecting them to the Light of Christ via the Gospel), but, rather to rejoice in the fact that their names were written in heaven (i.e. they are citizens of the Kingdom, according to the Lamb’s Book of Life).
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[1] Footprints in Parchment: Rome Versus Christianity 30-313 AD; by Sandra Sweeny Silver; page 73.
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