SKENE 17: the veil torn down

This thought is further strengthened by the other three uses of ‘katapetasma’ in the NT. In each of the synoptic gospels it is recorded that “the veil of the Temple was split” (the verb is ‘schizo’, from which is derived our ‘schism’). Matthew and Mark place this event immediately after Jesus has “given up his spirit” (Matthew) or “breathed his last” (Mark – and Luke), and use identical language, though in a slightly different order; and Matthew draws attention to the importance of this ‘split’ by beginning with ‘idou’ – ‘behold !’ or ‘look !’: “The veil of the Temple was split into two from the top to the bottom” (Matt 27 51, Mark 15.38). Luke places this event immediately before Jesus’ death, and in his excitement becomes telegrammatic: literally, “and was split the veil of the Temple – middle !” (Luke 23.45) The mystery of the incarnation, God living on earth as a man, is ultimately unfathomable and inexplicable, but the Tabernacle, God’s ‘skene’, provides us with a picture to help us. The human body is like a tent, a temporary home on earth in which all mankind live. In the OT God lived among his people in the Tabernacle, but separate from them in the sanctuary ‘beyond the veil’. At the incarnation Jesus took on human form and ‘tented’ among us, God with his people not just as a cloud of glory but as a man like us. But he was not like us in all respects: he was without sin. So while like all men he lived, as it were, in the ‘first tent’, for him the veil was only a one-way barrier, not separating him from God his Father, with whom he continued to enjoy perfect fellowship, but preserving and protecting his fellow men from the unbearable light of his full Godhead. We might, perhaps, see a faint foreshadowing of this in Moses: after 40 days on Mount Sinai in the very presence of God he had to ‘veil’ his face when he returned to the Israelites to protect them from the residual glow of glory which still shone there (Ex 34. 29-35, 2 Cor 3.13). On the cross, the tent of Jesus’ human body was torn and destroyed, and this destruction was graphically and dramatically (‘look!', ‘behold!') illustrated by the tearing of the curtain in the Temple. No more was Jesus confined by the limitations of a physical human body; in death he had passed ‘through the veil’, the veil of his humanity (“his flesh”) into the heavenly sanctuary: the veil was no more, for Jesus’ resurrection body was not subject to the limitations of the flesh. But the symbolism is even more wonderful than this. On the cross, during those three hours of terrible darkness, Jesus, for the only time in eternity, was cut off from the presence of his Father as he became “sin for us”: the curtain was closed against him, and it was in this agony of separation that he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?” (2 Cor 5.21, Matt 27.45-6). But at the end of those three hours he spoke again: “It is finished !”: man’s sin had been fully paid for, and so the curtain in the Temple was torn down, since Jesus’ fellowship with his Father had been restored. In his final word from the cross (Luke 23.46) he once again addresses God, as he always had done, as “Father” – “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”. He did not just slip back into his Father’s presence through a gap in the curtain, like an actor taking a bow; the whole curtain was torn down – “from top to bottom”, “in the middle”, so by God himself, since this was something only he could do. We have seen already that Jesus entered the sanctuary as our “forerunner” (Heb. 6.20), so that where he has gone we may go too. When Jesus called his disciples to “follow me”, that was not just a challenge but also an invitation: those who follow Jesus in life may follow him in death, too, stepping through the torn curtain, just as he did, into the very presence of our heavenly Father. For Jesus was not like some well-meaning millionaire spending a night on the streets with the homeless in ‘cardboard city’ (perhaps the humblest form of tent), and then returning to his comfortable home and a hot bath – and a warm feeling of self-satisfaction. Jesus invites us back to his heavenly home to live with him – and leaves the front door open for us! The “No Entry” sign barring the way into the ‘second tent’ has been taken down at last, and all who are ‘in Christ’ have the right of access, in this life in prayer and worship, and after death with a resurrection body like Jesus. “Therefore”, says the writer to the Hebrews (he too, like Paul, has some great ‘therefore’s), “let us come into the presence of God with a true heart and in full assurance of faith” (Heb 10.22).