In Genesis, God created Adam and Eve and spent time dwelling with them in the garden.  After their sin, they hid from God’s presence and God banished them from the special location of his dwelling with them (Gen. 3.23-24).  The patriarchs occasionally experienced God’s visitation in physical manifestation.  Particularly instructive is the account of Jacob’s experiencing God’s presence through a dream and naming the location “House-of-God” (Gen. 28.10-22).  A house is a place where one dwells.  In the wilderness, God instructed Moses to construct the tabernacle for this reason: “that I may dwell in their midst” Ex. 25.8).  After the conquest, God gave instructions for the construction of a temple in which he would “dwell among the children of Israel” (I Ki. 6.13). The tabernacle/temple actually played the sanctifying role for Israel that indwelling plays for New Testament believers (I Ki. 8.57-58).

In the New Testament, John takes the baton for this dwelling theme and extends it through Jesus’ earthly ministry.  He opens his Gospel by introducing the Word who became flesh and dwelt (literally, “tabernacled” – ἐσκήνωσεν) among us (Jn. 1.14).  Jesus referred to his own body as the “temple” (Jn. 2.20-21).  This idea that Jesus was the tabernacle/temple in which God’s presence dwelled is explicit in Jn. 14.10: “the Father … dwells in me.”  John returns to this theme again in his Revelation.  Christ “will spread his tabernacle over” his saints (Rev. 7.15, NASB).  At the apex of the book, John writes that “the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them” (Rev. 21.3, NASB).  This is not the construction of a new temple, however (Rev. 21.22); John applies temple imagery to New Jerusalem because the city will be a place of God’s unmediated presence with his people.

Paul fills in the gap between Jesus’ earthly ministry and his eventual triumph.  God dwells with his people currently by treating them as the temple and dwelling in them directly.  God dwells in his church corporately (I Cor. 3.16) and in each Christian individually (I Cor. 6.19).