JESUS IN THE TEMPLE
John 2:12-22
For the zeal of Thy house has
consumed me,
And the reproaches of those who
reproach Thee have fallen on me. (Psalm 69:9).
Passover. It was
sometimes described as the “Festival of Freedom.” It looked back to the time when God had freed the Jews from their
slavery in Egypt. It was a time of
remembrance and of celebration. It was
to Israel what to Americans is the 4th of July, Christmas and Thanksgiving, all
rolled up into one. From all over the
ancient world. Jews would gather to the temple at Jerusalem to celebrate this
happy occasion. It was to be on such a
time that Jesus would make His first public presentation of Himself and His
ministry.
SOJOURN AT CAPERNAUM
After
this He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother, and His brothers, and His
disciples; and there they stayed a few days. (John 2:12).
The name “Capernaum” is from the Hebrew Kaphar Nachum,
meaning “the village of Nahum” or “Village of Comfort.” This ancient village was located on the
northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee on the frontier between the domains of
Antipas and Philip. There was a Roman
garrison in the village (Luke 7:1-10 and Matthew 8:5-13), indicating it to be
one of the more important towns of Galilee.
This passage tells us that Jesus and His disciples came here
to Capernaum and there they stayed a few days. I can only imagine what the disciples would have been thinking:
“Wow, that miracle at Cana was really something else! If this is a sample of what the ministry of Jesus is going to be
like, then we are in for an exciting time.”
They are full of anticipation. But then, as they travel down to this quiet village by the Sea of
Galilee, no miracles follow. There is
no repetition of the sign that took place at the wedding feast of Cana. Instead, the days are spent in quiet
meditation and calm discussion. I can
visualize the disciples growing impatient as they wonder what Jesus is waiting
for: “Why isn’t He out in the village streets or in the synagogue proclaiming
the fact that He has come? Why isn’t He
announcing that the kingdom is at hand?”
If it is true that the disciples had such questions, I think
that there may have been at least one who did not. It was Mary, the mother of Jesus. She had received her answer back in Cana of Galilee. The words of Jesus would still echo in her
heart.
“My hour is not
yet come...”
With this phrase, Jesus had indicated that His ministry and
His entire life had been ordained according to a divine timetable. Why did He not proceed directly to Jerusalem
to present Himself to the religious leaders?
It was because His hour was not yet come. It was not time for Him to go.
He would await the proper time.
There is a principle here for you. It is that God has His own plan for your life. This often creates a problem when God’s plan
comes into conflict with our own plans and goals. You need to realize that God does have a plan. His timing for His plan is perfect. We sometimes get to thinking that our own
timing would be better than God’s timing.
It is especially true when we are in Capernaum.
If you have been a Christian for any length of time, then
you have probably been in Capernaum. It
is that quiet place where the Lord brings you to be with Him. When you first go there, you are expecting
great things. You are ready to see
miracles and answered prayer and mighty teaching. Instead it is quiet.
After a while, you begin to fidget and to look for things to occupy your
time. You feel as though you ought to
be doing something for the Lord. What
you have not yet come to realize is that Capernaum is that place where the Lord
is doing something for you and in you.
It is that quiet place where you sit in the presence of the Lord and get
to know Him?
Have you been to Capernaum lately? Jesus is there, and He is waiting there for you. He invites you to come and to spend some
quiet time with Him.
THE MESSIAH IN THE TEMPLE
13 And the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and
Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And
He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the
moneychangers seated.
15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove
them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the
coins of the moneychangers, and overturned their tables; 16 and to those who were selling the doves He
said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father's house a house of
merchandise.”
17 His disciples remembered that it was written,
“Zeal for Thy house will consume me.” (John 2:13-17).
The first thing we ought to notice is that this incident of
Jesus cleansing the Temple and driving out the moneychangers and those who were
buying and selling is echoed in the other three Synoptic Gospels. There is an important difference. The other three accounts describe this
incident as having taken place at the END of the ministry of Jesus. They describe it taking place as Jesus comes
to Jerusalem during His final week of life on earth. By contrast, John places this at the beginning of the ministry of
Jesus.
There are some who hold that these are one and the same
event. To maintain this is not a
violation of the inerrancy of Scripture, for we understand that it is the
nature of such an account to place the events into a topical rather than a
chronological order and the Synoptics can understandably be seen to keep all
references to Jesus in Jerusalem to the close of their accounts.
On the other hand, I think it entirely possible that Jesus
cleansed the temple on two different occasions. There ARE instances in which Jesus performed similar actions on
different occasions. Matthew tells us
that there was an instance in which He fed 5,000 and that, on another occasion,
He fed 4,000. Matthew was aware of both
instances, but if he had recorded only one while another writer had recorded
the other, we might have been tempted to hold that they were one and the same
event. The same situation faces us
here.
|
The Synoptic Gospels |
The Gospel of John |
|
Jesus and His disciples cleanse the temple |
Jesus is the only one seen cleansing the temple |
|
Takes place at the end of the ministry of Jesus |
Takes place at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus |
|
No mention made of a scourge or whip |
Jesus utilized a scourge of cords |
|
No mention made of Jesus and His zeal of the Lord |
The disciples remember a prophecy of the Messiah’s zeal
for the house of God |
This is the second Passover recorded in the gospel
accounts. The first is recorded in the book
of Luke and took place when Jesus was twelve years old. At that time, Jesus was approaching His Bar
Mitzvah, the time when He would become a “son of the covenant.” Now, as He comes to the temple again, He
stands at the threshold of His public ministry.
Why did Jesus wait until the Passover to come to Jerusalem
and publicly present Himself before the Jews?
One reason might be that this was the one time of year when there were
the most Jewish pilgrims at Jerusalem.
The city would be packed with people from all over the world who had
come to celebrate the Passover. If you
are going to start a new ministry, there is no better time for maximum exposure
than the one time of year when there are the most people present for it to be
exposed to.
I thing that an even deeper reason lies in the true meaning
of the Passover itself. One the one
hand, the Passover looked back to the freeing of the Jews from their slavery in
Egypt. It looked to that fateful night
when the angel of the Lord passed over those houses that had the lamb’s blood
smeared upon their doorposts. That same
angel became an angel of judgment and of death as he put to death the firstborn
of each house that was not marked in this manner.
The point of the Passover was that ALL of the firstborn of
Egypt were under the sentence of death.
It did not matter if they were man or animal, Jew or Egyptian. All of the firstborn were to die and the
only way of escape was through the application of the blood of a lamb.
What was true of the first Passover is also true of another
Passover -- a spiritual Passover. This
Passover looked, not to the past, but to the future. It looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, the King of
Israel. This Passover dealt with the
fact that, not only all firstborn, but all mankind lies under the sentence of
death. Jesus Christ is our Passover
lamb who has died in our place. His
blood does for us what the blood of the lamb did for those in Egypt.
Clean
out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact
unleavened. For Christ our PASSOVER also has been sacrificed. (1 Corinthians
5:7).
Just as the blood of the lamb on the doorposts caused the
angel of death to pass over the homes of those for whom it was applied, so also
the death of Jesus has the same effect.
His blood applied to our hearts causes God’s judgment to pass over us.
Just as the ministry of Jesus was made public on the
Passover, so also He would be arrested and crucified for the sins of the world
on the Passover. As the blood of a thousand
lambs would run red over the cobblestones of the Temple, this rabbi from
Galilee would hand on a cross outside the city as the supreme sacrifice for
your sins and for mine.
1. The Temple: And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and
sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated (2:14).
The scene is a dramatic one. Jesus and His disciples arrive in Jerusalem
and make their way toward the Temple.
The streets of the city are packed with Jews from every nation. They have come to celebrate the
Passover. They make their way up the
steps to the Temple Mount.
The main entrance to the temple was
from the south. There were pools here
for ceremonial cleansing located here on the steps leading up to the Hulda
gates. Jesus and His disciples might
have paused here to wash and cleanse themselves before continuing through the
gates and up the steps into the outermost court of the temple.
This was known as the Court of the
Gentiles. It was called this because it
was the only area into which uncircumcised Gentiles were permitted. Gentiles who wanted to worship the Lord but
who had not undergone the ritual of circumcision could come here to
worship. As you stood here and
approached the temple, you would come to a low retaining wall with a sign
posted at each gate leading inward. The
sign warned, upon pain of death, that no Gentiles were to be permitted past
this point.
The Jews had come to utilize the
Court of the Gentiles as a not-so-holy place that could serve the needs of the
worshipers. In past times, the Jews had
conducted this buying and selling of sacrificial animals and money changing
outside the Temple, either in the marketplace of the city or even on the slopes
of the Kidron Valley below the temple area.
But in recent times, it had been
deemed more convenient to allow these merchants into the Court of the
Gentiles. After all, it could be argued
that the buying and selling in which they were engaged was for the benefit of
worship. It had a utilitarian aspect
and it made worship more “user-friendly.”
In taking such a stance, the Jews
had not only commercialized their worship, but they had also made unholy that
part of the Temple that was open to the Gentiles. They would not have dreamed of conducting the same sort of
business operations in the inner courts of the temple, but they thought it
acceptable to do so in those areas frequented by the Gentiles. They were showing but such action that they
considered Gentile worship to be less worthy than their own worship.
2. The Retailers: And He found in the temple those who were
selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated (2:14).
The business that was done in the
Court of the Gentiles fell into two major categories, both having a function for
those who had come to worship.
a. The sellers of oxen and sheep.
This describes the merchants who
sold animals that were to be sacrificed in the temple. When you came to offer a temple sacrifice,
you were allowed to bring your own animal or even to purchase one in the
marketplace of Jerusalem.
However, any animal that was to be
sacrificed had to be first examined by a certified examiner from the
temple. He would examine the animal to
make certain that it had no spot or blemish.
Unless he approved the animal, it could not be accepted as a
sacrifice. The other alternative would
be to purchase a pre-approved animal from one of the merchants who had
purchased from the temple authorities a franchise to do business within the
Court of the Gentiles.
Since the high priest controlled
the examiner and since he profited from those merchants who had their
franchises with the temple, it was often a losing venture to attempt to avoid
the higher prices by bringing your own animal.
The system had developed a vested self interest in protecting its source
of revenue.
b. The Moneychangers.
It had been ordered by the temple
hierarchy that the only coins that could be permitted for the payment of the
annual temple tax were Jewish coins. It
is interesting to note that an exception was made for the coins of Tyre, even
though they bore the image of Baal.
Practically speaking, this mean
that pilgrims coming from foreign lands were unable to utilize their foreign
currency for worship and were required to change their money into Jewish
currency. Naturally, the exchange rate
was marked up significantly so that the moneychangers could see a financial
profit.
As Jesus enters into the Court of
the Gentiles, He sees the clamor of bargaining merchants and takes in the
stench and filth of countless animal stalls.
The tables of the moneychangers are piled with their profits. There is nothing wrong with business, but
this is not the place of business. This
is the place of God. This is supposed
to be a place of worship.
3. The Reaction of Jesus: And He made a scourge of cords, and drove
them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the
coins of the moneychangers, and overturned their tables (2:15).
Too many times, religious artists
have portrayed Jesus as an anemic 90-pound weakling. Such a picture is not consistent with what we read here. This man was a carpenter by trade (Mark
6:3). He did not have power tools. This was a man who knew a full day’s
work. He was a craftsman; a builder; a
construction worker. This sweet, gentle
Jesus wades into this crowded mob of people, swinging His scourge and driving
the merchants and the moneychangers from the temple.
As I read these words, my first
impulse is to say, “Go Jesus! Get those
guys!” But then, I cannot help but to
pause and to wonder what would be the reaction of Jesus if He were to come to
my church this Sunday. What would He
think of us all dressed up in our Sunday finery, or in the way we might turn up
our nose at one who was not dressed as we are dressed or who might not smell as
we smell? What would He say about our
grumblings when the pastor’s sermon goes a little long? What would be His reaction as He looked into
our hearts and examined our spirit of worship?
Would He be pleased? Or would He
make a scourge of cords to drive us out?
You see, the Jews considered
themselves to be faithful to the Lord.
The moneychangers and the merchants selling animals and the Levites and
the priests all thought of themselves as doing the Lord’s work. Over the years, they had blinded themselves
to the hypocrisy and greed and the lack of reverence that took place in their
midst. That can happen to us, too. When it does, look out because God’s
judgment is going to come.
I also want you to notice that
there were a lot of places in the ancient world that were a lot worse than the
temple in Jerusalem. The world of that
day was full of idolatry and paganism and the worship of false gods. There was immorality and corruption in
government. But Jesus did not turn His
scourge toward any of these areas.
Instead, He went to the temple.
There is a reason for this. It
is because judgment must always begin at the house of God.
Hear
this word which the LORD has spoken against you, sons of Israel, against the
entire family which He brought up from the land of Egypt, 2 “You only have I chosen among all the families
of the earth; therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquities.” (Amos
3:1-2).
Why does judgment begin at the
house of God? It is because they are
the people of God and they are supposed to know better. Jesus sets forth this principle in a parable
about two slaves.
And
that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord
with his will, shall receive many lashes, 48
but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will
receive but few. And from everyone who has been given much shall much be
required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.
(Luke 12:47-48).
If you have been coming to church
and enjoying the hearing of the word of God and the warm fellowship of God’s
people, but you have not made a commitment to follow Jesus, then you be
careful. The longer you hear the truth
proclaimed, the more responsible you will be when you stand before God.
On the other hand, if you are
already a believer, you might be thinking to yourself, “When I became a
Christian, I didn’t sign up for this.
They told me that I was going to trust in Jesus and that everything
would be sweetness and light. They
didn’t say anything about whips and scourges and judgment. How do I get out?” I want you to know that, as bad as God’s judgment may seem on the
inside, it is a lot worse on the outside.
For
it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins
with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of
God? 18 And if it is with
difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and
the sinner? (1 Peter 4:17-18).
When it is time for judgment to
begin, it will begin at the house of God.
That means we are in for some difficult times. But when you start to get discouraged, you remember that if
things are going bad for the people of God, they are going to be a lot worse
for the rest of the world.
4. The Reason for the Reaction: And to those who were selling the doves
He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father's house a house of
merchandise” (2:16).
When Jesus had been in the temple
at the age of twelve, He had told His parents that He had to be about His
Father’s business. He is now an adult
and He is back in His Father’s house and He is doing His Father’s work.
Notice the sensitivity of Jesus to
sin. There were a lot of other people
who had been coming to the temple for a long time. They were people who loved the Lord and who had come here out of
a true desire to worship Him. Yet no
one else had ever been moved enough to take action in cleaning up the
temple. I think there is a reason for
this. It is because people had become
accustomed to it. They had developed an
insensitivity to sin.
One of the things I dislike the
most in this world is going to the dentist.
It strikes me as the modern world’s answer to medieval torture. You sit in this chair and the dentist comes
in with a three-foot needle that he is going to use to deaden the pain. He puts this needle in your mouth and fills
it with novocaine. After a while, your
mouth feels like it has swelled to twice its original size, but when the
dentist touches it, you cannot feel a thing.
Sin is like that. It has a deadening influence. At first, it seems really bad. But then you get used to it. Finally, you hardly notice it at all.
How can you counteract that
deadening influence of sin? How can you
develop a sensitivity to sin? I want to
suggest that it is only by first spending some time in Capernaum. It is only when you have first been alone
with the Lord that you can begin to see things with the same clarity with which
He sees them.
5. The Remembrance of the Disciples: His disciples remembered that it was
written, “Zeal for Thy house will consume me.” (2:17).
As the disciples of Jesus watch Him
single-handedly clear the temple of these profiteers and merchants, a portion
of the Old Testament Scriptures comes to their mind. It is taken from the Psalms.
For zeal for Thy house has
consumed me,
And the reproaches of those who
reproach Thee have fallen on me. (Psalm 69:9).
What were the disciples
thinking? They could see that Jesus had
a great zeal for the purity of the house of God. Perhaps they are waiting to see that zeal consume Him as the
priests call out the temple guards to arrest Him and take Him away. Sure enough, as they stand there, Jewish
representatives approach Jesus and His party.
THE CHALLENGE OF THE JEWS
The
Jews therefore answered and said to Him, “What sign do You show to us, seeing
that You do these things?” (John 2:18).
Throughout his gospel account, John mentions “the Jews” as a
special, localized body (John 1:19; 5:10; 5:15-18; 7:1, 11, 13, 15, 35;
18:12). In this passage, it seems to
refer to the Jewish authorities; perhaps representatives of the Sanhedrin, the
supreme court of Israel.
This delegation comes to Jesus and they are upset. If you want to capture the feeling that is
going on here, imagine how you would feel if a man walked into your Sunday
morning church service and started laying into people with a two-by-four. In light of this, it is noteworthy to
observe the specific way in which they challenge the actions of Jesus. They do not say that what Jesus had done is
wrong. Instead, they ask, “What sign
do You show to us, seeing that You do these things?”
Perhaps it was obvious to them that the temple needed
cleaning from the pollution of the merchants and the moneychangers. In any case, they do not challenge Jesus on
the basis of His action. Instead, they
challenge Him on the basis of His authority.
This challenge is put in the form of a question.
What sign do you show?
Where are your credentials?
Do you have a doctorate in
temple-cleaning?
I fear that the church hasn’t changed that much in the last
two thousand years. We refuse to hear
someone preach or to publish his book unless he has graduated from an
acceptable seminary. We want to know
how many degrees are behind his name before we allow him to proclaim the word
of God. We have Christian denominations
today that have structures that would exclude the ministries of Jesus and all
twelve of His disciples (they might take Judas Iscariot if he had the right
degree).
THE SIGN - RAISING THE
TEMPLE
19 Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
20 The Jews therefore said, “It took forty-six
years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking of the temple of His
body. 22 When therefore He was
raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they
believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had spoken. (John 2:19-22).
The Jews asked Jesus for his credentials; now He is going to
given them His credentials. They had
asked for a sign; He is going to given them the sign of His resurrection.
This cryptic remark of Jesus is all
the more striking when we realize that there were two possible words He could
have used to describe the temple.
• IeroV:
This is the most common word for the temple. It is used to describe the entire temple area, both the inner
sanctuary as well as the outer courts.
It is the word used in verses 14-15 when we read that the money changers
and the merchants were in the TEMPLE and that Jesus drove them out of the
TEMPLE.
• NaoV: This is a more specific term, normally
indicating the inner sanctuary. When it
is used in the New Testament, it usually refers to the inner part of the temple
where only the priests were permitted to enter.
It is this second word -- the naoV -- that Jesus uses here to speak of that
which will be destroyed.
The Jews missed the whole
point. Jesus was not speaking of
Herod’s temple. He was speaking of his
own body. It is His body that is the
inner sanctuary of God. The Jews did
not realize that. They thought He was
claiming to be a master builder. I can
hear them now: “We know that you are a carpenter, but don’t let it go to your
head!”
Herod the Great had begun the
project of rebuilding and adding onto the various courts of the temple. That work had begun in 20 B.C., long before
the birth of Christ. That work was
still going on at this time. These
building projects had been going on for 46 years and they were still not completed. They would not be finished until 64 A.D.
Jesus was referring to His own body
as a temple. Neither the Jews nor His
disciples grasped the significance of this at the time. It is only by hindsight that we can understand
this prophecy.
This tells me something about
prophecy. Prophecy is a lot easier to
understand AFTER it has been fulfilled.
I sometimes have to chuckle at Christians who feel that they have God’s
entire plan for future prophecy all figured out with color charts and
arrows. They miss the point that we are
always missing the point when it comes to prophecy. Prophecy is a lot easier to understand after it has been
fulfilled and, even then, it is not always so easy to understand.
This brings us to a question. Why does Jesus refer to His body as a
temple? A temple is a structure in
which deity resides. It is a place
where men come to meet God. You will
remember that when the tabernacle was first completed in the wilderness, the
glory of God moved into it with a brightness that was so intense that the
priests were forced to move out. In the
same way, when Solomon completed his temple, the cloud moved into the
sanctuary, filling it with the glory of God.
The presence of God was no longer
visible in the temple. Ezekiel’s vision
had pictured the presence of God departing from the temple and no vision ever
was given to show that it had returned.
Instead, there was a promise given.
It was a promise that there would come a day when the Lord would return
to His temple.
“Behold,
I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the
Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the
covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming," says the LORD of
hosts.
2 “But who can endure the day of His coming? And
who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like
fullers' soap. 3 And He will sit as
a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and
refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD
offerings in righteousness.” (Malachi 3:1-3).
The Jews had waited for 400 years
for the Lord to come to His temple. They knew that His coming would be preceded
by a messenger and then the Lord would come.
His coming would be fiery and it would be purifying and it would result
in righteous offerings.
In the meantime, the presence of
God was no longer in the temple. The
structure was bigger and more glorious and more elegant than it had ever been,
but it was missing something. It was
missing the presence of God.
Now Jesus is on the scene. He has come, and with Him has come a
presence. Within this human body, there
is both man and God. It is here that
men can come to meet God.
This brings us to a question. Where is the presence of God today? Where can we go to meet God? It is within the church. The gathering of God’s people are
collectively the temple of God.
16 Do you not know that you are a temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17
If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of
God is holy, and that is what you are. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
What is a temple? It is a structure in which God resides. He resides today within the church, both
within individuals (that is brought out in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20) as well as
within the gathered church in its corporate sense. When God’s people come together, He is in our midst. And just as Jesus took seriously a neglect
of the temple, so also God takes seriously a neglect of the church.
The disciples of Jesus did not
understand at the time what He meant when He spoke of raising up the
temple. It was not until after Jesus
had risen from the dead that they would remember and believe. This faith was grounded in two things:
• They
believed the Scriptures.
The Old Testament Scriptures had
prophesied of the resurrection of the Messiah.
Psalm 16:10 promised: For
Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt Thou allow Thy Holy One to
undergo decay. When this prophecy
was fulfilled by the resurrection, the disciples would come to understand its
significance and they would believe (Acts 2:28; 13:35).
• They
believed what Jesus had said.
They would remember the words
Jesus had spoken in the temple. They
would remember and they would believe.
I have already indulged in a certain amount of speculation
as to what the disciples might have been thinking during this period as Jesus
went up to Jerusalem to present Himself in the temple. From a human viewpoint, this visit to the
temple would have seemed the perfect opportunity for Jesus to perform a
dramatic miracle. I can imagine the
disciples wondering why Jesus had not taken advantage of such an opportunity.
There is a principle here.
God’s plan always operates according to His own predetermined
schedule. That schedule is not always
clear to us. This is because of our own
limited perspective. We are too close
to the details of our situation to see clearly. It is like looking at a hand-woven rug through a microscope. For such a close perspective, it appears to
be a vast jumble of twisted fibers and knotted threads. It is only when we back up and see from a
distance that we can taken in the grand design.
So it is with God’s plan.
We look at it from our own limited perspective and it seems to be a
meaningless tangle of isolated events, wrought by pure chance and with no
ultimate goal in sight. However, if we
were able to see it from God’s perspective, we would behold a fantastic design
as the Lord works in our lives through the circumstances he has brought our
way.
The Lord is weaving you life into a heavenly pattern that
you shall only truly appreciate when at last you stand with Him and look upon
it from His perspective. Until that
time, you can look at the circumstances of your life through eyes enlightened
by faith, seeing the bits and pieces of the grand design and looking to the day
when you can see it in its fulness.
For
now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but
then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known. (1 Corinthians
13:12).