It is impossible to overstate the theological magnitude of Israel’s historic exile.[1] It sits like a gravitational loadstar in the middle of sacred history. Everything prior is drawn towards it, and everything after it is trying to climb out of it. For the exile is not only an expulsion from the land of promise (though that of course is bad enough), but the exile also marks the destruction of Israel’s temple and the toppling of David’s royal line. Insofar as those three theological icons—land, David, and temple—form the emblems that reassure that “God is with us . . .”, the exile amounts to the devastating conclusion (as Hosea 1:9 puts it) that Israel is “Not my People.” Just devastating!
1. Content adapted from Return from Exile and the Renewal of God’s People by Nicholas Piotrowski, ©2025. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, crossway.org.
No wonder Israel’s prophets are obsessed with the exile—what it means, how to endure it, how it will end, and what the world will look like when it does. In so doing, the prophets reach for many metaphors so that readers experience something of the catastrophe that is the exile. It is a prison for the nation (2 Kgs. 24:11–16). It is a reversal of creation (Jer. 4:23–26). It is darkness (Isa. 8:22). It is Egypt all over again (Hos 8:13). In short it is death (Ezek. 37:1–2). Not surprisingly, therefore, the return from exile can be described as nothing less than release (Isa. 42:7; 61:1), new creation (Amos 9:13–15), light (Isa. 9:2), and a new exodus (Hos. 11:11). Indeed, it will be resurrection (Ezek. 37:12–14).
In turning to the Gospels readers should be struck with the kind of return-from-exile language that pervades the evangelists’ descriptions of Jesus’s birth, teachings, and miracles. In him “light is shining upon those who sit in darkness” (Matt. 4:12–17). He himself traverses a new exodus (Matt. 3:13–4:11) and begins to call others to follow him on his road to redemption (Matt. 4:18–25). This essay focuses particularly on that redemption: the cross and resurrection as the necessary exile-ending sacrifice and concomitant end-of-exile resurrection from the dead. In sum, the cross and resurrection were for Jesus a personal exile and return, vicariously accomplished on behalf of his people. He himself enters into the curse of exile in order to lift his people out!
What follows here is a slight revision of a chapter in my book Return from Exile and the Renewal of God’s People (Crossway, 2025). It builds upon several Old Testament ideas that deserve a quick mention here at the outset. First, there is a theological relationship between the function of Eden and the role of the temple in the Old Testament.[2] To come into the Most Holy Place—as the High Priest does every Day of Atonement—is to return liturgically to the Garden of Eden.[3] Second, Israel’s prophets portray the exile as a form of death and the return from exile as a resurrection.[4] Third, the end of the exile is also described in the Old Testament as an ultimate and international new exodus.[5] And fourth, Israel’s exile is theologically nestled within the larger context of all humanity’s exile from the Garden of Eden.[6] The resolution to Israel’s exile, therefore, is the harbinger to all the nations returning to their primordial earthly dwelling with God.
2. Either Eden was a proto-temple (G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God [NSBT 17; Downers Grove: IVP, 2004], 66–80), or subsequent sanctuaries were “miniature Edens” (Daniel I. Block, “Eden: A Temple? A Reassessment of the Biblical Evidence,” in From Creation to New Creation: Biblical Theology and Exegesis [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2013], 3–29).
3. L. Michael Morales, Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption (ESBT; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2020), 91–103.
4. Donald E. Gowan, Theology of the Prophetic Books: The Death & Resurrection of Israel (Louisville: WJK, 1998).
5. Nicholas G. Piotrowski, “Exodus,” in Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023), 235–41.
6. Roy E. Ciampa, “The History of Redemption,” in Central Themes in Biblical Theology: Mapping Unity in Diversity (ed. Scott J. Hafemann and Paul R. House; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 254–308.
With that, we turn our attention to the return from exile theology surrounding the cross and resurrection in the Gospels. While the evangelists portray Jesus’s birth, teachings, and miracles as end-of-exile tremors, each book climaxes in Jesus’s death and resurrection, the sine qua non of return from exile. Jesus’s death is the necessary sacrifice that effects the release from exile foretold in Isaiah 52–53 and constitutes his own personal exile from the presence of God. He himself goes into exile, “cut off from the land of the living . . . for the transgression of [God’s] people” (Isa. 53:8). Equally, Jesus’s literal bodily resurrection marks his own personal return from exile, initiating the new creation wherein one man has reentered the very presence of God. As such, he leads his people on their own return from exile.
The Death of Jesus Christ: The New Passover of the New Exodus
After the prologue, the first half of Matthew focuses on Jesus’s teaching and miracles (Matt. 4:17–16:20). Then, beginning in Matthew 16:21 the focus turns to Jesus’s death and resurrection, and it stays there until the end of the Gospel.[7] Jesus speaks of it three times on the way to Jerusalem (Matt. 16:21; 17:22–23; 20:17–19). Then, right before entering Jerusalem, he says this:
7. Jack Dean Kingsbury has convincingly argued that the repeated phrase “From the that time Jesus began . . .” in Matthew 4:17 and 16:21 divides the Gospel into three parts: Matthew 1:1–4:16 as Jesus’s origins; Matthew 4:17–16:20 as principally Jesus’s “preaching” about the Kingdom of Heaven; Matthew 16:21–28:20 as leadup to and experience of Jesus’s death and resurrection. See his “Structure of Matthew’s Gospel and His Concept of Salvation History,” CBQ 35.4 (1973): 453–66.
“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (20:28).
Jesus’s language is drawn from Isaiah 52–53, where the theology of the Passover is employed to describe the new servant-lamb as the necessary substitutionary sacrifice of the new exodus.[8] In Isaiah 52–53 one called “the servant” of the Lord (Isa 52:13; 53:11) gives his life (Isa 53:5, 8–10a) “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (Isa 53:7; cf. Exod 12:1–28) in order to bear the sins of “many” (Isa 52:15; 53:12). Jesus is clearly drawing upon this climactic moment in Isaiah’s end-of-exile vision so that readers can equally understanding the meaning of the Gospel’s own climactic moment: his own long-predicted death. Jesus is the Passover lamb and the end-times servant-lamb whose death atones for sins and releases his people from exile.[9]
8. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 762–63.
9. Jesus’s language in Matthew 20:28 is also a direct reference to the Passover (cf. also Rev. 5:6–14). In Exodus 6:6 the Lord says, “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.” The word translated there as “redeem” is go’el in Hebrew and lutroō in the LXX. Leon Morris says Exodus 6:6 “pre-eminently” stands behind the term “ransom” in Matthew 20:28 (lutron) as the exodus “furnished the pattern for describing the later deliverance from Babylon as a redemption” (The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross [3d rev. ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965], 21). Jesus “gives his life” to redeem/ransom his people just as the Passover lamb did for Israel in Egypt (cf. also Mark 10:45). It is a substitutionary death (Morris, Apostolic Preaching, 34–38).
Jesus reiterates the same idea the night before his death. In Matthew 26:26–29 Jesus and his disciples are eating a Passover meal (cf. 26:17) when he takes bread, breaks it, and says, “this is my body.” He then takes a cup and says,
“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28).
He then gives this bread and cup to his disciples to eat and drink (cf. Exod 12:8). So much is going on in this moment. For our purposes, we need only to observe that Jesus is applying the meaning of the Passover meal to his coming death, again refracted through the expectations of Isaiah 53:12 where the end-of-exile servant-lamb “poured out his soul to death…[and] bore the sins of many”[10] (note the same bolded words in each passage). Once again, we see that Jesus understands his death as the end-times realization of the Passover meal that Isaiah foretold would commence the release of his people from exile.[11]
Finally in Matthew, the cataclysmic events surrounding Jesus’s death—darkness, torn temple veil, earthquake, splitting rocks, open tombs (Matt. 27:45, 51–54)—are Old Testament images of exile and restoration.[12] Jesus’s death is the most earth-shattering event in all of history! If humanity’s ultimate problem is exile and alienation from God because of sin, it is no surprise to see such cosmic upheaval at the ultimate moment of atonement and release from exile.
10. France, Matthew, 993–95.
11. It is also worth pointing out that Jesus’s instruction to the disciples to eat the bread and wine parallels the instruction to Israel to eat the lamb the night of the Passover. By implication the disciples become the initial members of the end-times priesthood. See e.g. Brant Pitre, “Jesus, the New Temple, and the New Preisthood,” Letter & Spirit 4 (2008): 70–82.
12. See particularly Young S. Chae, Jesus as the Eschatological Davidic Shepherd: Studies in the Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism, and in the Gosspel of Matthew (WUNT 2/216; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 330–40; Daniel M. Gurtner, The Torn Veil: Matthew’s Exposition of the Death of Jesus (SNTSMS 139; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 144–52, 160–69, 159–201.
Luke helpfully adds an additional layer of understanding when he records the same Passover meal (Luke 22:14). There Jesus says, “This cup which is poured for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).[13] The only place in the Old Testament that uses the language of “new covenant” is Jeremiah 31:31, where the Lord promises forgiveness of sins at the end of the exile. Here again we see Jesus’s understanding of his death in the language of another prophet’s end-of-exile expectations.
Luke’s account of the transfiguration also stands out by calling Jesus’s death and resurrection “his exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31; cf. 9:22, 44, 51). Most translations render this as “departure,” but the word is clearly exodon (ἔξοδον), just as in the Greek translation (LXX) of Exodus 19:1. On the calendar of prophetic expectation, the next “exodus” is the end-times return from exile. Thus, the road out of exile passes necessarily through Jesus’s death, followed inexorably by his resurrection.[14]
The fourth Gospel also applies the prophets’ end-of-exile expectations to Jesus’s death. In John 10 Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd” (John 10:11), clearly drawing upon Ezekiel 34, which describes the Lord God as the shepherd who gathers his exile-scattered sheep.[15] And in the very next breath Jesus adds, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11; cf. also 10:15). Thus, Jesus has linked the laying down of his life to Ezekiel 34’s vision for the end of Israel’s exile. Furthermore, in John 10:16 Jesus adds, “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Surely this is a reference to Gentiles.[16] He will gather them too through the same life-giving sacrifice. And just as in the other Gospels, here too Jesus immediately also speaks of his resurrection: “I lay down my life that I may take it up again” (John 10:17–18). Jesus’s death and resurrection are inseparable for his sheep-gathering end-of-exile mission.
13. Matthew and Luke do not disagree here. It is clear that Luke simply records more of what Jesus said that night (Luke 22:14–22) and Matthew records less (Matt. 26:26–29)—only as much as is necessary for his own narratological and theological purposes, equally under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Neither claim to be exhaustive. In fact, John 13–16 records even more (and in some ways less)! See Nicholas Perrin, Lost in Transmission?: What We Can Know about the Words of Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 81–111.
14. Susan R. Garrett rightly adds the ascension to what is “accomplished in Jerusalem,” as a necessary component of Jesus’s exodus in leading his people out of bondage (“Exodus from Bondage: Luke 9:31 and Acts 12:1–24,” CBQ 52.4 [1990]: 656–80). Specifically, Garrett identifies Satan as the particular captor out from whose tyranny Jesus’ people are delivered.
15. Gary T. Manning, Echoes of a Prophet: The Use of Ezekiel in the Gospel of John and in Literature of the Second Temple Period (LNTS 270; London: T&T Clark, 2004), 100–35.
16. Herman Ridderbos, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 362–65.
Moreover, like the other Gospels, John also has a clear new exodus theology (John 1:14–17). Thus, much of the Gospel takes place in the context of Passover celebrations (John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55; 12:1), including the entirety of chapters 13–20 leading up to his death. John absolutely insists, therefore, that we read Jesus’s death against the backdrop of the Passover (cf. esp. John 13:1) and that we theologically align the crucifixion with the ceremonially slaughtered lambs (John 19:14–16).[17] In fact, 13:1 shows how the Passover provides the theological reference point for the very reason Jesus came into the world. When Jesus says, “It is finished” at the moment of his death (John 19:30) he means (among other things) that the telos and culmination of the original exodus is now complete![18] Thus in his death, Jesus has “finished” the exile through a new exodus self-sacrifice.[19]
The Death of Jesus Christ Reconsidered: A Personal Representative Exile
In addition to seeing Jesus’s death as the requisite Passover-like sacrifice to end the exile, we also see that Jesus’s death constitutes his own personal experience of exile on behalf of his people. This aligns with our observations above in how Israel’s prophets described exile as a form of death, and death is a mark of exile. For why were Adam and Eve removed from Eden and sentenced with death? Sin. And why was Israel removed from the land, and the exile portrayed as a national death? Sin. Equally, why is Jesus removed from the land of the living; why does he die? Sin. Not his own sin, but he bears in himself the consequence of the sins of his people (Matt. 1:21; 20:28; 26:26–28).[20] He endures the penalty for his people’s sins: death as an exile from the presence of God (cf. Matt. 27:43, 46). As N. T. Wright puts it, “Jesus went to his death, convinced . . . that Israel’s destiny had devolved on him and that he represented the true Israel in the eyes of God. His death would therefore be the means of drawing to its climax the wrath of God against the nation, forging a way through that wrath and out the other side.”[21] In short, Jesus enters into our deserved experience of exile in order to lift us up out of it.
17. D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (PNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 603–604.
18. Jacob J. Enz, “The Book of Exodus as a Literary Type for the Gospel of John,” JBL 76.3 (1957): 211, 284–86.
19. In the rest of book I also consider the new exodus theme in Paul, Peter and Hebrews.
20. I have argued elsewhere how the language of each of these passages in Matthew is drawn from Old Testament new exodus and end-of-exile contexts. See Nicholas G. Piotrowski, “‘I Will Save My People from their Sins’: The Influence of Ezekiel 26:28b–29a; 37:23b on Matthew 1:21,” Tyndale Bulletin 64.1 (2013): 33–54.
21. N. T. Wright, “Yet the Sun Will Rise Again: Reflections on the Exile and Restoration in Second Temple Judaism, Jesus, Paul, and the Church Today,” in Exile: A Conversation with N.T. Wright (James M. Scott, ed.; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017), 61.
It is worth glancing beyond the Gospels to further establish this point. Galatians 3:9–14 directly links Jesus’s death with the curse of exile.
9 . . . those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. 10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” 11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” 12 But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
Interpreting this passage depends on understanding Paul’s sources for the ideas of “blessing” and “curse.” Moses had promised “blessing” in the land when Israel is faithful (Deut. 28:1–14). But he equally threatened a “curse” if Israel is unfaithful (Deut. 27:9–26; 28:15–68). That “curse” would come specifically in the form of exile—just as Adam and Eve were blessed while in the garden and experienced curse outside the garden.[22] In Galatians 3:10, Paul invokes Moses’s sin and exile prediction by quoting Deuteronomy 27:26 (perhaps refracted through Dan. 9:11) to explain the ongoing condition of Israel under the “curse” of exile.[23]
22. David P. Barry, The Exile of Adam in Romans: The Reversal of the Curse against Adam and Israel in the Substructure of Romans 5 and 8 (Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2021), 41–45.
23. James M. Scott, “Paul’s Use of Deuteronomic Tradition,” JBL 112.4 (1993): 657–59; idem, “Restoration of Israel,” DPL 801–802; Matthew S. Harmon, Galatians (EBTC; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2021), 149–51.
Yet, Moses also promised a restoration from exile (Deut. 30:1–10). Thus, in Galatians 3:13 Paul tells us that Christ provides the solution to this ongoing-exile dilemma. He “redeemed us from the curse of the law.” This does not mean that the law itself is a curse, but the curse of exile (still employing the language of Deuteronomy) that comes from “not abid[ing] by all things written in the Book of the Law” (Gal. 3:10).[24] That would be enough, but Paul goes on specifically to add that Jesus accomplished this “by becoming a curse for us.” If “curse” means exile, then this means Jesus experienced a personal, representative (and therefore substitutionary) exile on behalf of his people.[25] As Matt Harmon concludes, Jesus “takes on himself the curse of exile that Israel (and by extension humanity) deserves for rebellion against God.”[26] The result is that through his own representative-exile Jesus can bring “blessing” (the opposite of exile) to all who have faith like Abraham (Gal. 3:9, 14, 29).[27]
24. C. Marvin Pate, Communities of the Last Days: The Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament & the Story of Israel (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000), 164–65.
25. I argue more extensively in the book regarding the relationship between biblical “cursing” and exile.
26. Matthew S. Harmon, Rebels and Exiles: A Biblical Theology of Sin and Restoration (ESBT; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020), 97. C. Marvin Pate et al. also conclude, “Jesus vicariously bore the Deuteronomic curses for the sins of others” (The Story of Israel: A Biblical Theology [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004], 210). Wright also comments, “In Galatians . . . the curse of exile that had bottled up the promises and prevented them from getting through to the Gentiles, leaving Israel itself under condemnation, is dealt with by the death of Jesus. He takes Israel’s curse on himself . . .” (“Sun Will Rise,” 66).
27. So too Pate et al., Story of Israel, 209.
To summarize, the Gospels understand Jesus’s death within many theological categories. I think it is impossible to exhaust the meaning of the cross. For this essay nonetheless, we have observed that Jesus’s death comprises a personal substitutionary exile, and the Passover-like atoning sacrifice that releases his people from exile. Sin got Adam and Israel expelled from the presence of God and enjoyment of true life; only Jesus’s atonement can forgive and bring sinners back.
Yet we have also seen that Jesus never talks about his death without also emphasizing his resurrection in the same breath.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: One Man’s Return to the Sacred Abode of God
The Old Testament often links return from exile with resurrection hopes (Ezek. 37:12–14; Isa. 25:6–8; 26:19; Dan. 12:1–4; Hos. 5:14–6:3; Hab. 2:2–4). This is not hard to understand since the original Garden of Eden was characterized by life. Outside is the domain of death. Thus, returning from exile will mean passing out of the realms of death back into the place of life.
In turn, Jesus’s resurrection is “the launch of the real return from exile, the ultimate liberation of the people of God, from the exile that lay deeper than the exile of Egypt or Babylon.”[28] We see this particularly in the New Testament’s description of Jesus’s resurrection as the re-enthronement of the House of David and the rebuilding of the temple of God. Again, this is not hard to understand given what we know about the connection between Israel’s temple and the Garden of Eden. Rebuilding the temple, especially by the hands of David’s greatest son, means reconnecting heaven and earth. Thus, in Jesus’s resurrection the dwelling place of God is re-erected. Now sinners can reenter the divine presence through Jesus.
28. Wright, “Sun Will Rise,” 61.
We start briefly with Matthew, Mark, and Luke on this point. These synoptic Gospels theologically relate Jesus’s death to the destruction of the temple of God (Matt. 26:61; 27:40, 50–51; Mark 14:58; 15:37–38; Luke 23:44–46).[29] This is dramatically symbolized when Jesus dies and the temple veil ruptures from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45). Greg Beale and Mitch Kim write, “The tearing of the curtain is a symbolic picture of the destruction of the entire temple and the entire old creation that the temple symbolized, which begins at the crucifixion . . . so his resurrection was the beginning of a new temple and new cosmos, a new creation.”[30] Jesus’s resurrection, therefore, amounts to rebuilding the permanent temple of God that opens the path back to the experience of God’s presence.[31]
29. Nicholas G. Piotrowski, “‘Whatever You Ask’ for the Missionary Purposes of the Eschatological Temple: Quotation and Typology in Mark 11–12,” SBJT 21.1 (2017): 97–121.
30. G. K. Beale and Mitchell Kim, God Dwells Among Us: Expanding Eden to the Ends of the Earth (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2014), 92–93. Part of the evidence in this lies in that “the embroidery on the temple veil represented the starry heavens of the old cosmos. Consequently, the tearing of the curtain suggests symbolically the tearing and the beginning of the destruction of the old world, as the presence of God breaks out of the Holy of Holies and begins to create a new world” (ibid., 84).
31. John Paul Heil, “The Narrative Strategy and Pragmatics of the Temple Theme in Mark,” CBQ 59.1 (1997): 96–100; Piotrowski, “Whatever You Ask,” 97–121.
But it is in John wherein we find the clearest articulation that Jesus’s resurrection amounts to the rebuilding of the true temple of God. In John 2:19 Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, Jesus’s audience did not understand what he meant, but John makes it clear for us in John 2:21–22: “he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this.” Notice the connection between the raising of Jesus and the raising of the temple. When we reflect on the significance of the temple in the OT, John 2 truly comes alive with meaning! That singular divine dwelling place reminiscent of the Garden of Eden is indestructibly rebuilt in Jesus’s resurrection! In such he becomes the lone access point for sinners to enter back into the presence of God.
Related, it is no coincidence that John then tells us that many of the last events of Jesus’s life occur in a garden (John 18:1, 26; 19:41), and that in the first resurrection sighting Mary supposes him “to be the gardener” (John 20:15). In this moment John is pleading with the reader to think with him through the discourse of his Gospel. The work that started “In the beginning…” (John 1:1) now ends with “[a] garden, a tree in the middle, two angelic beings, a gardener, and a woman.”[32] Mary is right, Jesus is the gardener![33] He is the new man in the new garden, of the new world. The resurrection happens, after all, on the “eighth day of creation” (John 20:1).[34] History has run its full cycle insofar as “[t]he resurrection is the first event of God’s promised resolution to the rebellion of the Garden.”[35]
32. Morales, Exodus, 171.
33. See Jeannine K. Brown, “Creation’s Renewal in the Gospel of John,” CBQ 72.2 (2010): 279–81.
34. Brown, “Creation’s Renewal,” 283–84.
35. Michael D. Williams, Far as the Curse is Found: The Covenant Story of Redemption (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2005), 11–16, quote from 13. See as well Morales, Exodus, 169–72.
It is critical to point out that all this is accomplished by the one who is the great Son of David (Matt. 1:1, 17; 12:23; 20:30–31; 21:9; Luke 1:27, 32–33, 68–69). In the exile that House was cut off, but the prophets held out hope for its reemergence (Isa 9:5–7; Jer 23:1–8; 30:8–9; 33:14–26; Ezek 34:1–24; 37:15–28; Hos 3:4–5; Amos 9:9–15; Mic. 5:1–4; Zech. 12–13). This is vital because it was the expectation of the Davidic Messiah to build the house of God, the temple. It is an awesome moment, therefore, that in the resurrection and ascension Jesus is seated on David’s throne to rule the nations forever (Acts 2:29–36; 13:30–37; Rom. 1:4–5). After his resurrection, therefore, Jesus as the Son of David, commences to build the great end-times temple that will fill the globe—that temple being the church (see as well 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:19–22; 1 Pet. 2:4–5).[36] As Ed Clowney puts it, “Precisely because Christ builds the temple in himself he can build it in his disciples.”[37]
36. G. K. Beale, “The Descent of the Eschatological Temple in the Form of the Spirit at Pentecost: Part 1: The Clearest Evidence,” Tyndale Bulletin 56.1 (2005): 73–102.
37. Edmund P. Clowney, “The Final Temple,” Westminster Theological Journal 35.2 (1973): 173.
Again, we can glance forward to the epistles on this point. Ephesians 1:20 tells us that when God “raised [Jesus] from the dead” he also “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.” This could mean the resurrection itself, or more likely Jesus’s ascension 40 days later. Either way, one man has permanently reentered God’s sacred dwelling. One man has fully returned from exile!
And equally shocking, only a few verses later Eph 2:6 says that God also “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places.” Consider the meaning of this! One man has returned to the presence of God through resurrection and ascension. This is described as being “raised” and “seated . . . in the heavenly places” in Ephesians 1:20. And then Paul describes the Christian life in the same language in Ephesians 2:6! Once dead in our sins (Eph. 2:1, 5) Christians are now “made … alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5). As Christians are “in Christ Jesus” and “raised up with him” (Eph. 2:6) there is a very real (though not yet physical) sense that we too are back in heaven with Christ (cf. also Col. 3:1–3)! Though not yet personally present in heaven, Christians “enter into the heavenly Holy of Holies … through their representative high priest, Jesus Christ.”[38] We still wait to have a literal bodily resurrection like Jesus’s, but all the same Paul exhorts us to understand our genuine presence in God’s heavenly abode through our union with Christ. Such “presence” does not need to be physical to be real all the same. Indeed, union with Christ is most certainly real. And Paul would have Christians think deeply on that reality. One man has returned from exile and entered the true abode of God, and we are united to him!
38. Beale and Kim, God Dwells, 130–31; quote from 130.
The Book of Hebrews helps us understand this too. Jesus did not go into an earthly tabernacle to present his sacrifice. For the tabernacle was a shadow and copy of the true sanctuary (Heb. 8:3–5). Instead, Jesus “is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man” (Heb. 8:1–2). Thus, Jesus “entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). Again, “Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (9:24). He represents us and advocates for us in God’s very heavenly abode! And so now Christians “have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever” (Heb. 6:19–20; cf. also 10:20). Through such representation Christians have
come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb. 12:22–24)
Just as Israel’s high priest bore them typologically back into God’s presence in the tabernacle on the Day of Atonement, Christ truly brings us before God in the heavenly realms!
Conclusion
Jesus’s death and resurrection are clearly the climax of all four Gospels. It turns out that Jesus’s death and resurrection are also the climax of all redemptive history. For the Old Testament begs for the ultimate sin-atoning sacrifice and life-giving return to the place of God’s dwelling. It begs for a return from exile. From the very beginning of each Gospel, return-from-exile themes are vividly brought forward and applied to Jesus, and quintessentially in his death and resurrection. On the cross Jesus himself serves the role of Isaiah’s end-of-exile new Passover lamb. In his resurrection and ascension Jesus has reentered the presence of God, the House of David is raised up and reenthroned, and a new temple is built that fills the world—all of which marks the dawn of the prophetically forecasted end-of-exile new creation. Now, “those who have entered into Christ and have participated in his death and resurrection have entered into the inaugural phase of the ultimate restoration of Israel and creation.”[39] In Jesus’s death his people are released from exile, and in his resurrection they representatively return to God’s sacred abode.
39. Roy E. Ciampa, “History of Redemption,” 308.
Thus, Jesus both enters into the human experience of exile and also leads the way out of it—for Israel, for the nations, for the entire creation. “Jesus as a new Adam has reentered the garden of paradise.”[40] He has returned to the presence of God and, in his people, he has reunited heaven and earth! Indeed, this was God’s “will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9–10)!
