Our Permanent Home

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God” (Psalm 84:1–2).

Our hearts yearn to be home with God, but how do we get there? How do we dwell with God? The Psalmists were looking at the physical temple and taking comfort in its reality and what it represented. What do we turn to? Remember that the temple was the dwelling place of God with his people in a finite and temporary way and pointed to the permanent, established glorious reality–Jesus is the fulfillment of what the temple symbolized.. Jesus is the dwelling place of God with and for us forever all time, and he offers unhindered access to God. In Christ, our hearts find a home in the courts of the Lord. See how the New Testament describes this:

John 1:14

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Colossians 1:19–20

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Revelation 21:3

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

Jesus brought the presence, the fullness of God to us. He took up residence, he dwelt with humanity in order to reconcile us to God. He did all that the earthly temple could not do and was never designed to do–making a permanent home for God’s people in himself. In Christ we find a spiritual home, a relocation of our souls from lost to found, from wandering to settled, from homesick to at peace.