Scripture Daily

Context No. 2125 of 4322 · John

Context · Reflection

John 2:12-17: in context

12After this, he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they stayed there a few days. 13The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14He found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting. 15He made a whip of cords and drove all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers’ money and overthrew their tables. 16To those who sold the doves, he said, “Take these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will eat me up.”

Coming to the temple at Passover, Jesus finds its courts turned into a marketplace: merchants selling oxen, sheep, and doves, money-changers at their tables, the place of worship become a place of trade and profit. Moved by indignation, he makes a whip of cords and drives them all out, pouring out the coins and overturning the tables. Take these things away, he says; do not make my Father's house a marketplace. His disciples remembered the words of Scripture: zeal for your house will consume me.

What moves Jesus here is zeal for his Father's house, for the purity of worship. The temple was meant to be a place of prayer and worship, and it had been turned into a place of commerce and exploitation, the sacred made a marketplace. This roused Jesus not to indifference but to indignation, to a zeal that would not tolerate the profaning of what belonged to God. He cared deeply that God's house be honored as holy, not degraded into a place of trade and profit; and his zeal for its purity drove out those who had defiled it. This reveals something of Christ's heart, and it challenges our own casualness about the things of God. We can grow indifferent to the profaning of worship, to the treating of sacred things as common, to the intrusion of commerce and self-interest into what belongs to God. Jesus was not indifferent; he was zealous for his Father's house, indignant at its defilement. His example calls us to care about the purity and honor of worship, not to be casual where he was zealous. And there is a further application, for Scripture tells us that we ourselves are now God's temple, the dwelling of his Spirit. You are a temple of God, Paul says; the temple of God is holy, which you are. If Jesus was zealous for the purity of the temple in Jerusalem, how much should we care for the purity of the temple we now are, guarding our hearts from being turned into a marketplace of other loves and self-interest, keeping the dwelling of God within us honored and holy. The zeal Jesus showed for his Father's house is a zeal we might ask him to work in us for the temple we are. This searches whether we honor the things of God as holy or treat them casually, and whether we guard the purity of our own hearts as God's dwelling. Jesus drove the marketplace out of his Father's house, zealous for its purity; and his zeal calls us both to honor the worship and things of God rather than treating them casually, and to guard the temple we now are from the intrusions that would profane it, that the dwelling of God, in his house and in our hearts, might be kept holy.

Have I grown casual about the things of God, indifferent to the profaning of worship and the treating of sacred things as common, and can Jesus' zeal for his Father's house, driving out those who had made it a marketplace, both call me to honor the worship and things of God as holy rather than casually, and move me to guard the purity of my own heart, which is now God's temple, from the intrusions that would turn it into a marketplace of other loves?

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