CHAPTER 12
The Church in this Age: The Quarry of Living Stones
Formation Now, Assembly in the Age to Come
Introduction
The Church as the Quarry, Not Yet the Temple
Between the first appearing of the Lord Jesus, when He inaugurated the New Covenant, poured out the Spirit of grace, and opened the way into the Heavenly Sanctuary, and His second appearing when He will resurrect the faithful, judge the unfaithful believers and the ungodly, and bring forth the Seventh Day, He is building His Church. Yet Scripture makes a crucial distinction between the Church in this age and the glorified Church of the Age to Come. In this age the Church is not the finished Temple of God, but the quarry in which the Father shapes the “living stones” who will one day be assembled into the Temple of God in the Age to Come.
The assembled Temple of God belongs to the Age to Come, when the faithful are glorified into celestial bodies and dwell in the Heavenly Jerusalem. This present age is the place of chiseling, cutting, discipline, sanctification, and the salvation of the soul; the next age is the moment of assembly and glorification, and the manifestation of the fullness of the presence of God in His people, “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). In this age the Spirit of grace forms Christ within His people; in the next, what has been formed will be unveiled in glory.
This age-structure and its relationship to the true Temple of God can be sketched in this way. In this present age stands the quarry, where living stones are cut, shaped, and refined through discipline and the salvation of the soul. At the appearing of Christ comes the transition into open judgment, the universal resurrection, the separation of the faithful into the resurrection of life and the unfaithful and ungodly into the resurrection of judgment, and the gathering of the consecrated stones into the Heavenly Jerusalem. In the Age to Come, the glorified sons stand with Christ in the Heavenly Sanctuary, enthroned as celestial sons in His rest throughout the Seventh Day. When the Eighth Day dawns and the resurrection “of the end” brings forth restored terrestrial immortals, these same celestial sons will step into open priestly ministry on behalf of the renewed nations.
In this way, the whole span from this present age to the New Creation can be seen as the movement from quarry to Temple, from hidden formation to unveiled glory. In this sense, the quarry is larger than the gathered church. It encompasses the whole terrain of this present age—the households into which believers are born, the workplaces where they labor, the schools where their convictions are tested, the neighborhoods and cultures that may oppose or misunderstand them. In all these settings the Father orders pressures, misunderstandings, injustices, and even persecutions as chisels upon the soul. The local assemblies of believers are the quarry in miniature, where the tools of the Word, the ordinances, discipline, and mutual exhortation are applied most directly; yet the wider networks of family, society, and daily vocation are also instruments in His hand, through which He shapes each living stone for its place in the Temple of God. The present assemblies scattered throughout the earth are not yet the Temple in its completed form; they are the construction site, the place where the hammer strikes, the chisel cuts, and the stones are prepared for their appointed place in the Heavenly Sanctuary.
The Pattern in Scripture: Stones Prepared at the Quarry, Temple Assembled in Glory
The divine pattern appears with unmistakable clarity in the construction of Solomon’s Temple. Scripture records that “the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built” (1 Kings 6:7). Every stone was shaped elsewhere, cut, measured, smoothed, and perfected in advance, so that it could be silently placed into the Temple without alteration. The Temple did not form the stones; it received them fully prepared.
This architectural detail reveals the underlying architecture of God’s purpose across the ages. The stones were not brought to the building site to be roughly hacked into shape in the very place of glory. They were formed in another location, far from the visible splendor, and then carried up to Mount Moriah to be set in their appointed place without the sound of iron. All the noise and dust belonged to the quarry; the Temple knew only the quiet assembly of completed stones.
This pattern governs the Church’s formation. The present age is the quarry, the place of discipline and transformation. The Age to Come is the site of assembly, enthronement, and unveiling, when the faithful who have been perfected in this age are glorified, set in their place before God, and then revealed with the Lord Jesus as the completed Temple of God. Without the quarry there can be no Temple. Without sanctification there can be no glorification. Without formation there can be no firstborn inheritance.
The apostle Peter speaks directly to this reality: “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4–5). The present tense—”are being built up”—indicates ongoing construction. The spiritual house is not yet complete. The stones are still being quarried, cut, and fitted. Peter’s language joins temple construction and priesthood, showing that those being formed as living stones are simultaneously being prepared for priestly service.
Paul uses similar imagery when he describes the Church as “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:20–22). The word translated “fitted together” (sunarmologeō, συναρμολογέω) suggests the precise work of matching stone to stone so that the entire structure rises in unity. This fitting is progressive—the building “grows into a holy temple”—and it occurs now, in this present age, as believers are joined to Christ and to one another through the Spirit.
The language of building and temple therefore pervades the New Testament’s understanding of the Church. It is not incidental but foundational. The Church is described not primarily in organizational or institutional terms but as living architecture—stones being shaped, fitted together, and prepared for the day when the completed structure will be revealed. At the same time, Scripture teaches that the visible sphere of the kingdom in this age is mixed and leavened, containing both wheat and tares, sound teaching and corrupt doctrine. Not everything that bears the name of ‘church’ is a true living stone in God’s building. The visible assemblies scattered throughout the world are therefore best understood as the scene of the quarry and the construction site: within them the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are quietly shaping and fitting the living stones, even as leaven and counterfeit structures spread in the wider mass of Christendom, until the appointed hour of separation and assembly arrives.
The Father’s Work in the Quarry: Discipline, Pruning, and Preparation
In this age the Father works upon His sons through discipline, correction, and pruning. Scripture teaches that every son whom the Father receives undergoes training “for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). This discipline is not punitive but transformative. It chisels away the remnants of Adamic corruption, exposes the hidden motives of the heart, purifies disordered desires, and prepares the faithful for the celestial glory that awaits them. Without the Father’s discipline no believer can be formed into a living stone suitable for the Temple of God.
The imagery of pruning in the teaching of the Lord Jesus communicates this same reality. He describes the Father as the vinedresser who cuts away what hinders fruitfulness so that the life of the Son may flow more freely within the believer. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:2). This pruning is the precise work of the quarry, often painful, humbling, and disruptive to natural desires, yet entirely necessary for the formation of a soul capable of bearing the weight of celestial glory. Through this work the faithful are conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29) and trained for the role that awaits them: to stand with Him in the Heavenly Sanctuary throughout the Seventh Day, and then to step into the unveiled priestly ministry of the Eighth Day.
Through this work the faithful are conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29) and quietly prepared for celestial glory. Yet the Father never works in isolation. In all of this, He acts through the Spirit of grace, who applies the cross to the inner life and renews the soul day by day.
The Spirit’s Work in the Quarry: Renewal, Transformation, and Holiness
In the quarry of this present age, the Spirit of grace is the divine Craftsman who shapes each living stone for the Temple of God. He renews the inner person day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16), steadily displacing Adamic corruption and forming within the believer the new-creation life of the Lord Jesus. He convicts of sin, strengthens obedience, enlightens the mind, purifies motives, and imparts the power to walk in holiness. Through His working, the faithful enter into the lifelong putting off of the old man (Ephesians 4:22), the renewing of the spirit of their mind (Ephesians 4:23), and the putting on of the new man created according to God in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24).
This interior work is the deepest and most essential dimension of the quarry. By the Spirit the believer participates in the crucifixion of the old man (Romans 6:6), resists the flesh (Galatians 5:17), grows in the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23), and becomes a vessel set apart for the Master’s use (2 Timothy 2:21). The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in the believer, communicating resurrection life and making it possible to walk in newness of life (Romans 8:11). It is in this sense that “he who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked” (1 John 2:6).
The Spirit’s present formation determines the faithful believer’s role, function, and degree of glory in the Age to Come. The character formed now becomes the material from which the true Temple of God will be assembled—the consecrated priestly house that will stand with Christ in the Heavenly Sanctuary during the Seventh Day and serve with Him publicly toward the nations in the Eighth Day. The Spirit does not only renew individuals; He also baptizes them into one body, distributes gifts for the profit of all, and builds the Church into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:4–13; Ephesians 2:22). Thus His work is both personal and corporate, shaping each stone and joining all the stones together.
The Work of the Lord Jesus in the Quarry: Discipleship and the Cross
The Lord Jesus is the Master Builder who shapes His disciples through obedience, endurance, and the daily bearing of the cross. He teaches that anyone who desires to follow Him must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Him (Luke 9:23). This cross-bearing is not ascetic performance, but the means by which the Adamic nature is put to death and the image of Christ is formed within the soul. Through this process He exposes pride, purifies motives, crucifies self-will, severs worldly attachments, and empowers obedience.
He builds His Church not through outward institutional structures, but through inward transformation. When He declares, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18), He is promising the progressive formation of a people whose souls bear His likeness. The true Church is the community of those united to His life, shaped by His hand, and prepared for heavenly assembly. The quarry is where He forms this inward reality; the Age to Come is where the consecrated house is set in its place before God and revealed.
He builds through the ministry of the Word, through the gifts and offices He gives—apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers—for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:11–12). He builds through suffering and opposition, using even persecution, false teaching, and division as instruments to refine faith, clarify truth, and separate wheat from chaff. What the enemy intends for destruction, the Lord uses for construction.
The united work of the Father, the Spirit, and the Lord Jesus in the quarry may be summarized in this way. The Father chisels and prunes, exposing motives and purifying desire, so that His sons may partake of His holiness. The Spirit renews the inner person, displacing Adamic corruption with the new creation life of Christ and knitting believers into one body. The Lord Jesus leads His disciples in the way of the cross, conforming their souls to His own image through obedience and endurance. Through this threefold working, the quarry of this age becomes the place where the priestly house is quietly formed for its future unveiling in the Age to Come.
The Church as One Body in Christ: From Individual Union to Corporate Reality
The previous chapter considered the believer’s union with Christ—the participation in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and heavenly life that forms the foundation of all spiritual blessing. Yet union with Christ is not merely an individual reality. Because every believer is united to the same Lord by the same Spirit, believers are necessarily united to one another. Individual union creates corporate union. The one who is joined to the Lord becomes part of a body composed of all who share that same union.
Paul states this truth with precision: “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:12–13). It is striking that he concludes, “so also is Christ.” The corporate body of believers is so organically united to the Lord Jesus that it bears His name. The Church is Christ’s Body, and Christ is the Head of that Body (Ephesians 1:22–23; Colossians 1:18). Head and Body together form one new Man, the corporate Christ, who will be manifested in glory as the church of the firstborn.
This corporate identity transcends all natural divisions. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female; all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). The Lord Jesus has broken down the middle wall of separation between Jew and Gentile, creating “one new man from the two” (Ephesians 2:14–15). This one new Man is not a loose association of individuals, but a unified corporate person: the Body of Christ, the household of God, the dwelling place of the Spirit.
This unity is not organizational but organic. It flows from shared life, not from institutional structure. Just as the human body is one because all its members share the same life and are governed by the same head, so the Church is one because all believers share the life of Christ and are governed by Christ the Head. The unity of the Church is as real and mysterious as the unity of the human body. It cannot be manufactured by human effort, nor can it be destroyed by human failure. It is a spiritual reality established by God through the Spirit’s work in uniting believers to Christ and to one another.
Yet this unity does not erase diversity. The body is one, but it has many members, and not all members have the same function. God has deliberately designed the body with diversity and has placed each member in the body just as it pleased Him (1 Corinthians 12:18). No single member possesses all the gifts or fulfills all the ministries needed for the body’s growth. Each member depends upon the others. The body functions well only when each member fulfills its particular calling and honors the contribution of every other member. In this way, the body metaphor complements and enriches the temple metaphor. The temple imagery emphasizes structure, holiness, and the dwelling place of God. The body imagery emphasizes life, organic connection, and mutual dependence. Together they reveal that the Church is both a living organism and a sacred edifice—a body animated by the Spirit and a building constructed by God for His own habitation.
The goal of this corporate life is maturity in Christ. The ascended Lord has given gifts “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man [teleios anēr], to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12–13). The “perfect man” is the mature, complete corporate Man—the Body of Christ fully grown and conformed to the image of its Head. This maturity is corporate, not merely individual. Individual believers grow in grace and knowledge, but the corporate body also grows as a unified whole. This corporate maturity will be revealed when the Church is assembled in glory, when the faithful are gathered into the Heavenly Jerusalem and stand together as the completed Temple of God and the radiant Bride.
Until that day, the body grows in the quarry. Believers learn to submit to one another in the fear of God (Ephesians 5:21), to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), to forgive one another as Christ forgave them (Ephesians 4:32), and to build one another up in love (1 Thessalonians 5:11). These relational dynamics—the friction, the mutual shaping, the learning to fit together—are themselves the chiseling of the quarry that prepares the living stones for their final assembly.
The Visible Assembly and Its Ordinances
Although the true Church is defined by spiritual union with Christ and will be fully revealed only in the Age to Come, the visible assembly of believers in this present age serves a vital role in the quarry. The local gathering of Christians is the primary context in which the Father’s discipline, the Spirit’s gifts, and the Lord’s teaching are corporately experienced and applied. The local assembly is the quarry in miniature. Here the living stones rub against one another, revealing rough edges and requiring mutual adjustment. Here gifts are exercised for the common good. Here the Word is proclaimed and applied. Here discipline is administered to protect the purity of the body. Here baptism and the Lord’s Supper are observed as visible signs of inward realities. Here elders shepherd the flock, guarding against false teaching and caring for the weak. Here the body grows up in love as each member contributes its share.
Baptism serves as the initiatory ordinance of the New Covenant, marking the believer’s entrance into the visible body of Christ. It is the God-ordained act by which the believer publicly confesses union with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection and is received into the fellowship of the Church. The Spirit baptizes believers into one Body; water baptism testifies to this spiritual incorporation and locates the believer within a specific assembly. Baptism is therefore not a private ceremony but a corporate event, declaring to the church and the world that this person has passed from Adam to Christ and has entered the quarry to be shaped as a living stone for the Temple of God.
The Lord’s Supper serves as the ongoing ordinance of the New Covenant, nourishing believers and expressing their unity in the Body of Christ. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). “For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). The Supper proclaims the Lord’s death till He comes (1 Corinthians 11:26), looks back to the cross, looks up to the risen and ascended Lord, and looks forward to the feast in the Age to Come. It is both nourishment and test: nourishment for those who partake in faith and love, judgment for those who eat and drink in an unworthy manner, “not discerning the Lord’s body” (1 Corinthians 11:29). In the quarry, the Supper sustains the faithful and exposes hypocrisy, calling the assembly to repentance, self-examination, and renewed devotion.
Church discipline is the corporate exercise of corrective authority within the visible assembly. Its aim is not destruction but restoration and protection. When a brother sins and refuses private correction, the Lord commands that the matter be brought before witnesses and, if necessary, before the Church, and that the unrepentant be treated “like a heathen and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17). Paul instructs the Corinthians to remove the immoral man from their midst, delivering him “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 5:5). Discipline protects the body from the leaven of tolerated sin, demonstrates the seriousness of holiness, and serves as a tool in the Father’s hand to chisel and restore.
The Lord has also appointed elders to shepherd His flock in this present age. They are to “shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers,” not as lords over those entrusted to them, but as examples to the flock (1 Peter 5:2–3). They must hold fast the faithful word, able “by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict” (Titus 1:9). They watch over souls as those who must give account (Hebrews 13:17). Through their teaching, example, and oversight, they serve the quarry-work of God, nourishing the flock, guarding against wolves, and helping to ensure that the spiritual building rises in truth and love.
All these visible realities—the gathering, the ordinances, discipline, and oversight—are not ends in themselves. They are the appointed means through which the Father, the Son, and the Spirit pursue the deeper work of forming living stones for the Temple of God. To despise the local assembly, to neglect baptism or the Supper, to resist discipline or to reject spiritual oversight, is to resist the very quarry in which the firstborn sons are being prepared.
The Present Church’s Imperfection and the Perfection of the Church to Come
Because the present age is the quarry and not the Temple, the Church in this age is necessarily imperfect, incomplete, and still undergoing formation. The living stones in the assemblies that exist throughout the world do not yet reflect the finished Temple but the ongoing chiseling of the stones. This explains the weaknesses, immaturity, divisions, inconsistencies, and limitations found within the Church today. The Lord is not assembling the Temple now; He is preparing the living stones for the day of assembly.
The Lord Jesus Himself taught that the visible Church in this age contains both wheat and tares. Until the harvest, both grow together in the same field (Matthew 13:24–30). The net of the kingdom gathers fish of every kind; only at the end are the bad separated from the good (Matthew 13:47–50). The assemblies of this age contain both faithful servants and unfaithful servants, wise virgins who are ready and foolish virgins who are not. Some are spiritual, some are carnal; some walk in the Spirit, others walk as mere men (1 Corinthians 3:1–3). The mixed condition of the visible Church in this age is not an accident but part of the quarry, part of the testing and revealing that must occur before the day of separation arrives.
The true completed Church—the glorified Temple of God—will be gathered at the appearing of the Lord Jesus, when the faithful are raised into celestial bodies (1 Corinthians 15:40–42) and gathered to Him in the heavenly assembly described as “the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven” (Hebrews 12:23). Only then will the Church appear as the radiant Bride, fully conformed to His image, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing (Ephesians 5:27). The washing and cleansing occur now, in the quarry, “with the washing of water by the word”; the presentation in glory occurs then, at the appearing of Christ (Ephesians 5:26–27). The imperfections of the present Church do not negate this promise; they reveal the ongoing work of divine craftsmanship.
The Quarry and the Firstborn Inheritance
The quarry is the proving ground for the firstborn inheritance. The faithful—those who yield to the Spirit, obey the truth, endure discipline, and pursue holiness in the context of the body—will receive celestial bodies at the appearing of the Lord Jesus and will dwell in the Heavenly Jerusalem as the consecrated Royal Priesthood. They do not receive mere access to the Heavenly Jerusalem; they are established there as their eternal home and sphere of shared rule with Christ. Throughout the Seventh Day they stand with Him in the Heavenly Sanctuary as the enthroned priestly house, entering His rest and sharing in the heavenly oversight of the judgments carried out on the earth below. In the Eighth Day, when the nations rise in the resurrection “of the end,” they step into the full public exercise of their priestly ministry toward the renewed creation.
In this light, the New Testament’s temple language reveals the weight of the calling placed upon every believer in the quarry. When Paul tells the assemblies, “you are the temple of God” (1 Corinthians 3:16–17), and speaks of the Church as being “built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22), he uses the word naos (ναός), the inner sanctuary, rather than hieron, the wider temple courts. The naos refers to the holy place and the most holy place, the inner chambers where the priests served and where the glory of God dwelt. This means that the Father’s intention is that His sons should be formed as an inner-sanctuary people, sharing the nearness of the holy place and the most holy place in union with Christ.
The True Temple and the Fullness of God
Paul’s use of naos—the inner sanctuary—to describe what the faithful are being built into raises a question of the deepest significance: why does the God who fills all things require a Temple at all? The answer lies in the relationship between God’s transcendence over all created realms and His chosen means of manifesting His fullness within them.
Scripture is clear that all heavens are created, including the highest heaven. Nehemiah declares, “You alone are the LORD; You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them, and You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You” (Nehemiah 9:6). The heaven of heavens—the Third Heaven, the realm of the angelic host and the location of the Heavenly Tabernacle “not of this creation” (Hebrews 9:11)—is nonetheless a created realm. It is “not of this creation” in that it does not belong to the visible, material order subject to corruption and dissolution, but it is still a work of God’s hands and therefore finite, bounded, and incapable of containing Him. Solomon understood this when he prayed at the dedication of the Temple: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). Even the highest created heaven cannot hold the living God.
The Lord Jesus Himself witnesses to this mystery. On the eve of His passion He prays, “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5). The One who speaks is the eternal Son, sharing the glory of the Father before all ages. This same One, having humbled Himself and taken flesh, “descended” and then “ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10). As the eternal Son He transcends every created realm, celestial and terrestrial alike. The Third Heaven is where He now manifests His throne-presence, where the angelic host worships, where the Heavenly Jerusalem stands, but He Himself is not contained by it, just as He is not contained by the earth. He is present everywhere but contained nowhere. “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the LORD (Jeremiah 23:24).
In His exaltation the Lord Jesus possesses a glorified human body, the very body in which He suffered, died, rose, and ascended. That body is truly human, truly glorified, and truly the place where His uncreated glory is made manifest within the created order. Yet His divine person and life are not enclosed or exhausted by that humanity, for as God He fills all things and remains above every created circumscription. His glorified humanity is the perfect created vessel of revelation; the eternal Son who dwells in that humanity is Himself beyond all created measure. This glorified body is the same kind of body that will be given to the faithful in the resurrection of life (Philippians 3:21; 1 John 3:2). In His earthly life and in His present existence in the Third Heaven, the Lord Jesus is therefore both unique—uncreated Son and Giver of glory—and also the pattern and forerunner of the sons and daughters who are being brought to glory.
Yet Paul gives a purpose for this ascension above all heavens: “that He might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10). And the means through which He fills all things is not the heavens themselves but His Body, the Church. Paul calls the Church “His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23). He prays that the faithful would “be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). He describes the goal of the Church’s maturity as “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). In the same passage where he speaks of Christ ascending far above all the heavens, he immediately turns to the gifts given to the Church—apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers—through whom the Body grows toward that fullness (Ephesians 4:11–13). The filling of all things happens through the Body. The Head ascended far above all heavens; the Body, grown to full maturity, becomes the vessel through which that headship is manifested to every created realm.
This is the deepest reason why the quarry exists and why the faithful are being formed as a naos, an inner-sanctuary Temple. The Father and the Son, who transcend all created heavens, have chosen to manifest Their presence, Their glory, and Their governance through a people united to Christ as His Body. The Lord Jesus is the Head; the faithful are the members. Together, Head and Body constitute the vessel through which the uncreated God, who is above the heaven of heavens, makes Himself known in both the celestial and terrestrial realms. The Royal Priesthood in the Heavenly Jerusalem will not merely reside in the Third Heaven as inhabitants of a created realm; they will be the Temple through which the Father and the Son—who fill and transcend that realm—manifest Themselves to the angelic host above and to the nations below. And when the celestial sons manifest in the terrestrial realm, as the angels have always done and as the Lord Jesus did in the forty days after His resurrection, it is the fullness of God in Christ, through His Body, reaching into every corner of the created order.
This brings us to the meaning of that word fullness—plērōma (πλήρωμα)—which Paul uses with such weight and frequency. The fullness of God is not something God lacks and must acquire. He is already infinitely full. The fullness is what He has concealed within Himself and intends to reveal through the proper vessel at the proper time. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Proverbs 25:2). God conceals, and He conceals for a purpose: the concealment awaits the vessel capacious enough to bear the revelation.
Throughout the ages, God’s character has been known in part. His power was displayed in creation. His holiness was revealed at Sinai. His justice was manifested in judgment. His faithfulness was proven in covenant. His mercy was foreshadowed in sacrifice. Yet no single vessel—not the angels, not Israel, not the nations, not even the created heavens themselves—has ever contained and displayed the totality of who He is. The angels see His throne but have not experienced His redemption. Israel knew His Law but not the fullness of His grace. The nations witnessed His power but not His covenant heart. Each knew a facet; none bore the whole.
Paul speaks of “the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26–27). The mystery was hidden in God throughout the ages and is now being revealed, but even now only in seed form. “Christ in you” is the hope of glory, not yet the glory itself. The full manifestation is still future, still awaiting the assembly of the Temple and the unveiling of the completed Body.
Even more remarkably, Paul says that “the manifold wisdom of God” is being “made known through the Church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10). The angels—celestial beings who have worshipped before the throne since their creation—are learning something new about God through the Church. Dimensions of His wisdom, His character, and His purpose that they had never seen before are now being revealed through a people being formed in the quarry of this present age. If even the angelic host, with all their proximity to the throne, did not know the fullness of God, then what is being formed in the Church is a vessel of revelation unlike anything the created order has yet seen.
The fullness, then, is the totality of God’s nature—His holiness and His mercy, His severity and His kindness, His wrath and His patience, the justice that judges and the love that restores, the wisdom that brings sons to glory through suffering—manifested together, in one vessel, for all creation to behold. The faithful who are being formed in the quarry have experienced what no other beings in the created order have experienced: the Fall and redemption, sin and forgiveness, corruption and renewal, the cross and the resurrection, law and grace, judgment and mercy, suffering and glory. Every dimension of God’s dealings has left its mark upon them. When the Temple is assembled and the fullness of God fills it, what will be unveiled is not something God adds to Himself but something He has concealed within Himself from before the foundation of the world, revealed at last through a people uniquely formed by the complete journey from dust to glory, from Adam to Christ, from the quarry to the inner sanctuary.
This is why Paul writes that “in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). The ages to come—the Seventh Day and the Eighth Day—are the theater in which God shows what has been hidden. The faithful are the vessel through which He shows it. The nations behold in the celestial sons not merely glorified humans but the living Temple of the living God—the Body through which the Father and the Son, who transcend all heavens, manifest Their concealed fullness to every creature in heaven and on earth. And the creation that groaned under bondage finally sees what it was waiting for: “the manifestation of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19), which is in truth the manifestation of the Father Himself through His sons.
This reveals why Paul prays with such urgency that the Ephesians would understand “what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). The language is deliberately striking: the Father has an inheritance in the saints. The faithful are not only those who receive an inheritance from God; they are the Father’s inheritance—His own portion, His own treasure. This is the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant promise given at Sinai: “you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people” (Exodus 19:5). Peter declares this fulfilled in the faithful: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). The Hebrew word behind “special treasure” is segullāh (סְגֻלָּה), a treasured possession set apart from all others as uniquely belonging to the king.
The Torah already established this pattern in the tribe of Levi. The Lord told Aaron, “You shall have no inheritance in their land, nor shall you have any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel” (Numbers 18:20). The Levites were the Lord’s own portion among the tribes, set apart for priestly service, belonging to Him in a way the other tribes did not. And He was their inheritance; they possessed not land but God Himself. The relationship was mutual: God was their treasure and they were His. The faithful in the ages to come fulfill this Levitical type in its fullness. They are the Father’s own possession, His inheritance, the vessel through which He manifests Himself, and He is their all-sufficient portion—the One who fills them without limit.
The phrase “without measure” is decisive. John writes of the Son: “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure” (John 3:34). The Son received the fullness of the Spirit without measure, “for in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). And John declares of the faithful: “we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). If the faithful are conformed to His image, receive celestial bodies of the same order as His glorified body, and enter the heavenly realm as His brothers and sisters, then they too will receive the Spirit in overflowing fullness, according to their glorified creaturely capacity as sons. In this way the fullness of God is manifested through them as the true Temple, just as it dwelt without measure in the Son during His earthly ministry and now in His celestial glory. They do not become a second incarnation, nor do they share the divine essence by nature, but they become the corporate vessel through which the life of the Son is expressed without external limit across the created realms.
Yet this does not mean that the terrestrial immortals of the Eighth Day are left without God’s presence. Paul declares that the end of all things is “that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28)—panta en pasin (πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν). When all enemies have been put under Christ’s feet and death itself has been abolished, God dwells in every restored person in the renewed creation. The purified unfaithful and the healed nations—all who have been brought through the fires of the Seventh Day and raised in the resurrection “of the end”—are genuinely indwelt, genuinely blessed, genuinely in Christ (Ephesians 1:10). God is present in them. But they are not the naos, not the inner-sanctuary Temple, not the vessel of the fullness without measure. They receive God’s presence as those who dwell on the renewed earth under the light streaming from the Heavenly Jerusalem, restored, indwelt, and blessed in measure, receiving from the celestial priesthood the knowledge and glory of God that flows through the true Temple above.
The graduated picture is therefore this: the faithful receive the fullness of God in overflowing measure as the true Temple, the Body through which the Father and the Son, who transcend all heavens, manifest Their presence in both the celestial and terrestrial realms. The terrestrial immortals receive God’s dwelling presence in genuine but differentiated measure, indwelt because God is “all in all,” yet receiving the knowledge and blessing of God through the ministry of the celestial sons rather than bearing the fullness themselves. And the whole creation is filled because God is present in every restored person, in every corner of the renewed heaven and earth, while manifesting His concealed glory, His plērōma, through the vessel He formed across the ages for that unique, set apart purpose: the faithful, the Royal Priesthood, His own special treasure, His inheritance in the saints.
This is also why the quarry cannot be shortened or bypassed. The fullness of God can only be manifested through a vessel that has been formed by every dimension of His character. A people who had not passed through the discipline of the Father, the renewal of the Spirit, and the cross of the Lord Jesus could not bear the weight of that revelation. The suffering, the testing, the chiseling, the long patience of the quarry—all of it is forming a Temple capacious enough to contain and display what God has kept hidden in Himself from before the ages. Every blow of the chisel, every cut of the pruning knife, every fiery trial is enlarging the vessel, deepening its capacity, shaping it to hold more of Him. When the Temple is complete and the fullness fills it, creation will understand why the quarry took so long and cost so much, and will worship the wisdom of the God who concealed His glory in order to reveal it through sons and daughters formed in His own image, bearing His fullness, and manifesting His presence in every realm He has made.
Conclusion
The Quarry and the Assembly of the True Temple of God
The formation of the Church in this age as the quarry of living stones reveals both the dignity and the severity of God’s present work. In the quarry the faithful learn to submit to the Spirit of grace, to embrace the chiseling of discipline, and to walk in the narrow way of the firstborn calling. This hidden formation prepares them for celestial glory, for their place in the heavenly court of the Seventh Day, and for the priestly ministry toward the nations that will be unveiled in the Eighth Day. The Father disciplines, the Spirit renews, and the Lord Jesus forms His disciples through obedience and the cross; together They shape the living stones into the priestly house that will stand as the true Temple of God in the Age to Come.
Yet the quarry does not stand apart from history. As this present evil age moves toward its appointed end, the same God who forms His sons inwardly also orders the outward conditions under which they are tested. Scripture does not present the end as universal collapse or a distinct global “tribulation of the Church,” but as an atmosphere of deceptive normalcy, increasing lawlessness, and spiritual negligence. “As it was in the days of Noah… as it was also in the days of Lot,” people will be absorbed in eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building, “even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17:26–30). At the same time, the prophetic witness reveals a focused covenant crisis in Israel—a defiled sanctuary, a profane ruler, and a sacrilegious act in the holy place—that brings Israel’s long accountability under the Law to its final turning point. This crisis becomes the last sign before the appearing of Christ and the transition from this age to the Age to Come.
With this in view, the next chapter turns from God’s internal formation of His people to the external shape of the final crisis that precedes the appearing of the Lord Jesus. Having seen how the Father, the Son, and the Spirit labor in this age to prepare living stones for the Temple of God, we must now consider how the covenant crisis in Israel, the deception and moral drift within the Church, and the apparent stability of the nations together form the last stage of “this present evil age.” The following chapter, “The Final Crisis Before the Appearing of Christ,” will set out this pattern from Torah, Prophets, the Lord Jesus, and the Apostolic writings, showing how the work of the quarry is brought to completion as the Day of the Lord draws near.
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