John 2:20-21 - Exposition

The immediate reference of the words to the building before them was only one of a thousand misapplications of the words of Jesus. The seeds of truth which his words contain would take root in after days. Meanwhile the Jews answered and said— taking the obvious and literal sense of the words, and treating them with an ill-concealed irony, if not scoff, to which our Lord made no reply— In forty and six years was this temple built as we see it today. This is one of the most important chronological data for the life of our Lord. Herod the Great, according to Josephus ('Ant.,' John 15:11 1), commenced the rebuilding of the second temple in the autumn of the eighteenth year of his reign. We find that his first year reckoned from Nisan, A.U.C. 717-718. Consequently, the eighteenth year must have commenced between Nisan, A.U.C. 734-735 and 735-736. The forty-sixth year after this would make the. Passover at which this speech was delivered—the spring of A.U.C. 781, which, if we compare with the other hints, is a fixed point from which to reckon the birth year and death year of our Lord. The "about thirty years old" of the Lord at his baptism throws us to about A.U.C. 751, B.C. 2, for the year of his birth, and if there be only one Passover mentioned in John's Gospel between this and the last Passover, it gives A.U.C. 783 for the year of his death. This date is at least coincident with the date derived from the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, as that of the commencement of the mission of John (see my examination of these dates in appendix to 'John the Baptist'). The temple which Herod began to repair in the eighteenth year of his reign was not completed until A.D. 64, under Herod Agrippa II ., a very short period before its utter destruction. The irony and scorn are manifest: Wilt thou raise it up in three days? John shows, in verse 21, that, in the deep sense in which our Lord used the words, he abundantly justified his promise. But he — ἐκεῖνος , the Lord, not the people, not the disciples— spake of the temple of his body. This is the reflection which was made upon the word of Jesus by the evangelists in after days. Even Mark ( Mark 14:58 ) reveals the presence of a spiritual interpretation of the words by some of his unsympathetic listeners. It must not be forgotten that, in the synoptists, we find the presence of the idea that his service was a temple service, and that he was greater than the temple ( Matthew 12:6 ; cf. also Hebrews 3:6 ; 1 Corinthians 12:12 , 1 Corinthians 12:27 ; 1 Corinthians 6:15 ; Romans 12:5 ; Ephesians 4:12 ; Ephesians 1:22 , Ephesians 1:23 ; with Ephesians 2:19-22 ). Nor must it be forgotten that the Logos itself was, in the figurative language of Philo, spoken of as the house, or temple, of God. Later rabbinical representations also describe "the body of man as the temple in which the Shechinah operates" (Wunsche). A difficulty arises from the Lord's having claimed in these words to be on the point of raising himself from the dead, whereas elsewhere his resurrection is referred to the mighty power of God, as in verse 22; Acts 2:24 ; Acts 3:15 ; Acts 4:10 ; Romans 4:24 ; Romans 8:11 ; Galatians 1:1 ; Ephesians 1:20 , etc. Without doubt, God and the Father, the Supreme Power, was thus seen in living activity; but the Divine nature of Christ not infrequently so steps forward into his consciousness that he can say, "I and the Father are one;" and (ch. 10:17, 18) "I will lay down my life that I may take it again" (cf. Ephesians 4:8-10 ).