No Temple in Heaven
A. K. H. Boyd, D. D. Revelation 21:22-23 And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.… The explanation given of how this comes to be does not at the first satisfy us. We all know that in this world, to say that every day should be kept as a sabbath, comes to exactly the same thing as having no sabbath at all. Some of you will think how a certain eminent man, set free from work after many years of weary and uncongenial drudgery, said that he found that where all your time is holiday, there are no holidays. And yet this is all the comfort given us in the presence of the statement that in heaven there is no temple. We are told that there will be no temple in particular, because the place will be all temple. Now, the somewhat disappointed feeling that rises at the first glance at our text comes of our applying our common worldly ways of thinking to the better world — to a state of being that transcends our present thoughts. As we are now, it is only for short isolated times that we can be at our best in the matter of spiritual mood and holy feeling. But in heaven all this is changed. And it seems to me as if there were a sudden light cast upon the state of the redeemed, by the brief statement that as for heaven, the happiest and holiest place in all the universe, there is no temple there. You know, that statement might, standing by itself, read in either of two quite opposite ways. It might be the very worst, or the very best, account of the place of which it is written. "No temple there," might mean no care about religion at all. "No temple there," may mean that the whole place is one great temple; and that the whole life there is worship; and that the inhabitants are raised quite above all earthly imperfections, and above the need of those means which in this world are so necessary to keep grace in the soul alive. All temple would, with creatures like us, be equivalent to no temple at all. But with glorified souls, it means that they are always at their best: always holy and happy: always up to the mark of the noblest communion with their Saviour and their God! All this, however, is but one truth set out by this text. Let us now proceed to an entirely different view of it. It is something to remind us of the great fact that blest souls in heaven are lifted above the need of the means of grace. They have reached the end of all these; and accordingly the means are needed no more. You have got the good of them, indeed, but you do not need to use them now. They were very well in their time, but their time is gone by. Now, all the means of grace — and God's house, with its praises, prayers, and exhortations, among the rest — are just as steps towards heaven. And when the soul has reached heaven their need is over. The church and its services are no more than the means, and when we can have the end without the means we may well be content. You know the scaffolding which the workmen use in building up some tall church spire may be very ingenious, may serve its purpose admirably well; but when the spire is finished you do not propose to keep the scaffolding up permanently. And the means of grace, all of them, and God's house with the others, are no more than as the scaffolding by whose means the soul is edified. And when the glorified soul has reached the highest attainments of Christian character, and has always within reach the sublimest depths of Christian feeling and solid enjoyment — as it has in heaven — then the scaffolding by which it was built up to this may be taken down; the means of grace, so needful in their time, may be done without, may go. (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. WEB: I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, are its temple.