The Dwelling Place

Ask God where he lives, and you may not get the answer you came for. He has a habit of meeting a question with a question of his own.

When Adam hid among the trees, God spoke first, and what he said was not a verdict but a question — where are you? (Genesis 3:8-9) When Job lost everything and demanded that God account for it, God answered out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1), and the answer was question after question with never a direct reply:

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

— Job 38:4 (ESV)

He goes on like that for four chapters — asking after the dwelling of light and the storehouses of snow, whether Job can bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion.¹ Job came wanting an explanation for his pain. God asked him where he had been when the world was built.

It looks like evasion. It is the opposite. When you ask God where he is, he turns the map around and asks where you are — and the strange thing is that the two questions are really one, and the whole Bible is the distance between them closing.

So we will ask it anyway: where does God live? We should only expect that, somewhere along the way, the question turns and asks us back. And to begin answering it, you have to go where God’s questions to Job go first — before the foundations, before the earth, outside all of it. You have to start outside.

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The God With No Address

Outside of what? Outside the only two things any of us has ever lived inside — space and time. Every other resident of the universe has an address: a place, a set of coordinates, a here instead of a there. God has none, and he cannot, because “here” and “there” are things he made.

Genesis does not open with God arriving somewhere. It opens with God making the somewhere.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

— Genesis 1:1 (ESV)

Read that sentence slowly and it says more than it appears to. “The heavens and the earth” is space — the room in which everything else will happen. “In the beginning” is time — the first tick of a clock that had not existed a moment earlier, because there was no earlier. Augustine saw this sixteen centuries ago: God did not create the world in time. He created time along with the world. Space and time are not the stage God stands on. They are things he spoke into being for us to live in.

Which means God is outside both. He does not occupy space. He holds it.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?

— Isaiah 40:12 (ESV)

A span is the width of a spread hand, thumb to little finger. Isaiah says God measures the entire heavens that way — the whole sky a handspan across — and cups every ocean on earth in a single palm. The universe is not the thing God is inside of. It is the thing God is holding.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

— Colossians 1:17 (ESV)

The galaxies do not merely exist near God. They cohere because he sustains them, moment by moment. Withdraw that sustaining word and there is no universe left to have an address in.

He is outside time in the same way.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

— Psalm 90:2 (ESV)

We live strung out along a single line, one moment at a time, unable to step off it in either direction. God does not. Your entire life — every year you have already spent and every year still ahead of you — lies open before him at once, the way a whole valley lies open to someone standing on the ridge instead of walking the road below. When such a God says he knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), he is not predicting. He is looking.

Put it together and you have a being with no location, no beginning, no walls that could contain him. When Solomon finished the most magnificent building in the ancient world and rose to dedicate it, this was the first thing out of his mouth: heaven itself, and the highest heaven beyond it, could not hold the God he had built a house for. Isaiah heard God say it plainly — heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what house could you possibly build me?²

This is the God the story is about. Not a larger version of us. Not an old man in the sky, which is only a small man made big. A being so far outside the created order that “where does he live?” is not a hard question but a category mistake — like asking what color middle C is, or how much the number seven weighs.

And here is the whole astonishment of the Bible in one sentence: this God has spent all of history insisting on an address.

The One who needs no home has never stopped making one. He has moved closer and closer to the people he made — into a tent, into a temple, into a body, through a curtain torn from top to bottom, into the human heart itself, and at the last into a new creation where the distance is gone for good. He has been closing a gap no creature could ever have closed from its own side. The God who holds the universe in his hand has been reaching, the entire time, for you.

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The Room He Built

If God needed no address, why is there a universe at all? Why space? Why time? Why us?

Not because he was lonely. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit had loved one another before the first star was lit (John 17:24). God was not incomplete. He did not make the world to fill an emptiness in himself, because there was none.

He made it to make room for someone else.

Love gives itself away, and a love that has existed forever eventually says: let there be another. Someone to know and be known by. Someone to walk with. But an other who is not God has to have somewhere to stand that is not God — a place of his own — and that is what space is for. And a love freely returned cannot happen in a single frozen instant; it needs a before and an after, a choice and its consequence, a life that unfolds — and that is what time is for. God made the room so there could be a you, and made the clock so your yes could be your own.

Paul said as much to a crowd of philosophers in Athens:

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

— Acts 17:26-27 (ESV)

Read what God assigned: the periods, which are time, and the boundaries of their dwelling place, which are space. He set the when and the where. And he set them for a reason — that they should seek him and find him. The universe is not a machine that happened to produce us. It is a dwelling place God built so that the people he made would come looking for him. And the last line is the whole story in seven words: he is not far from each one of us.

So it does not begin with man reaching up. It begins with God bending down — placing his image in a garden he had made for him, and coming down to walk with him there.³

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The Garden

In the beginning, the distance was zero.

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

— Genesis 3:8 (ESV)

Read that as if for the first time. God walking. A sound you could hear. Not a vision, not a voice from a mountain, not a word through a prophet — footsteps in the cool of the evening, the ordinary sound of someone who comes by every day. There is no curtain in the garden. No priest. No temple, no ritual, no appointed feast. There is a man, and there is God, and there is nothing in between. This is what we were made for: unmediated presence. The dwelling place of God was wherever the man happened to be standing.

And then it broke.

The rupture in Genesis 3 is usually read as a broken rule, and it was. But look at what the broken rule cost. The first thing sin produces is not guilt or punishment. It is hiding. The man who had walked with God in the open now crouches in the trees, sewn into fig leaves (Genesis 3:7), because for the first time in his existence he does not want to be found. The relationship that was the whole reason for the room has gone silent from the human side.

It does not go silent from God’s.

But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

— Genesis 3:9 (ESV)

He knows where Adam is. The question is not for God’s benefit. It is the first move of the pursuit that will fill the rest of the Bible — God, refusing to let the distance stand, coming to find the one who is hiding. He does not wait for Adam to come back. He comes looking.

But sin has consequences that even mercy does not erase, and the man is sent out of the garden — east of Eden, an angel with a flaming sword at the gate behind him (Genesis 3:23-24). Exile from the garden is exile from presence. The distance that was zero is now a locked gate and a guarded road. And the whole rest of Scripture is the journey of God closing it again, step by step, moving back toward the creature who moved away.

The first step was a tent.

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The Tabernacle

Centuries later, God tells a freed slave nation in the desert to build him something. The instruction is startling in its intimacy:

And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.

— Exodus 25:8 (ESV)

That I may dwell in their midst. The God who holds the oceans in his palm asks for a tent in the middle of a refugee camp, so he can move back in among his people. This is God taking a step back toward the garden he had closed. Not all the way back. But closer.

And when the tent is finished, he comes:

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

— Exodus 40:34-35 (ESV)

The presence that walked in the garden now descends into a tent in the wilderness. God is among his people again — close enough that the whole camp can see the cloud by day and the fire by night. But something is different now, and the difference is a curtain.

The pattern God gave Moses (Exodus 25:9) was built in three rings, and each one came nearer to him than the last. Outside the tent was the camp — the ordinary people living ordinary lives, raising children, tending flocks, cooking the evening meal. They could see the cloud by day and the fire by night, but they did not go in. Inside the tent was the first room, the Holy Place, and only the priests entered it — a set-apart few, washed and robed, tending the lampstand, replacing the bread, keeping the incense lit,⁴ carrying out the rituals and ordinances that made up the daily work of religion. Beyond that room, behind a heavy veil, lay the second room, the Most Holy Place (Exodus 26:33) — and no work was done there at all, because that room held the presence itself. Ordinary life on the outside. Religion in the middle. God at the center.

And the nearer each ring came to God, the fewer were allowed to follow. The outer ring held a nation. The middle ring held a handful of priests. The innermost held one man, one day a year — the high priest on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), carrying blood, washed and made ready, stepping into a room he could not enter casually and survive. God had moved back among his people. But he was ringed now, behind a veil, and the way in narrowed at every step until it closed to almost no one at all.

The garden had no rings at all — no camp, no priests, no veil; just a man and his God in the cool of the evening. The distance that was once zero is closing again, but it is not yet gone. God is among his people. He is not yet with them the way he once was.

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The Temple

The tent became a building. When Israel was settled and Solomon was king, the portable sanctuary was replaced by a permanent house of cedar and gold (1 Kings 6), the most magnificent structure in the ancient world. It looked like arrival. God finally had an address on the earth, a house that would stand.

And the man who built it knew better than anyone that no building could hold the tenant. At the dedication of his own temple, Solomon prayed the truest sentence ever spoken about a house of God:

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!

— 1 Kings 8:27 (ESV)

Solomon understood the paradox we began with. The God he was housing was the God who could not be housed — outside space, outside time, holding the heavens in a span. And still God came, and filled the temple with the same glory that had filled the tent (1 Kings 8:10-11), and stooped to be found there. The curtain came with him. The Most Holy Place still had its veil, and the presence still sat behind it, and the way in was still one man, one day, one year at a time.

Then the unthinkable happened. The people the temple was built to keep near God drifted from him — idolatry, injustice, a religious performance emptied of the relationship it was meant to serve. And Ezekiel was given a vision of the consequence no one else seemed to notice:

Then the glory of the LORD went out from the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim.

— Ezekiel 10:18 (ESV)

The glory left. Slowly, in stages — to the threshold, to the east gate, to the mountain east of the city (Ezekiel 11:23) — the presence withdrew from the temple and departed. And the religious machinery went on running as if nothing had changed. The sacrifices continued. The priests kept their schedule. The building still stood, gorgeous and busy and empty.

The temple was destroyed, and rebuilt, but the glory did not return to the second one. By the time of Jesus, the Most Holy Place behind the veil held nothing at all — no ark, no cloud, no fire. An empty room behind a curtain, guarded as carefully as ever, protecting a presence that had already left the building.

That is the state of the distance when the journey reaches its turn: a magnificent, functioning religion built around an empty room. And into that world the glory came back — but not where anyone was looking for it.

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The Word Made Flesh

The glory did not return to the temple. It returned in a body.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

— John 1:14 (ESV)

The word John chooses for “dwelt” is not accidental. In Greek it is skēnoō — literally, he pitched his tent, he tabernacled among us. John is reaching all the way back to Exodus and telling you the tabernacle is here again, and this time it has a face. The glory that filled the tent in the wilderness, the glory that filled Solomon’s temple, the glory that departed in Ezekiel’s vision — it has come back, wrapped in skin, and its name is Jesus. Matthew names the same thing at the other end of the Gospel’s opening: Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23).

And notice what is missing this time. There is no curtain. The presence that had spent fifteen centuries behind a veil, accessible to one man one day a year, now walks the roads of Galilee touching whatever it likes. He touches lepers. He lets a bleeding woman take hold of him. He eats with tax collectors and sinners, goes to their houses, calls them by name. The holiness that once struck a man dead for reaching out to steady the ark now takes the hand of a dead girl and tells her to get up.⁵ The distance that had required blood and washing and a once-a-year appointment is standing in the street, eating dinner with the exact people the old system kept farthest out.

The glory had returned to walk among his people — closer than the tent, closer than the temple, as close as the garden and coming closer. And the establishment guarding the empty room did not recognize him. They were protecting a curtain in front of nothing while the presence itself ate fish on the shore a few miles away.

There was only one barrier left. And he had come to tear it down.

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The Curtain Tears

The presence had walked among them. But the veil still hung in the temple, the ancient sign that the way to God was closed to all but one. As long as that curtain hung, the distance was not yet gone. It came down at the moment you would least expect — not in triumph, but at a death.

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

— Matthew 27:50-51 (ESV)

Every detail carries weight. The curtain was torn at the moment Jesus died — the barrier fell the instant the price for it was paid. It was torn in two, completely, not parted or drawn aside but destroyed. And it was torn from top to bottom. A man tearing that heavy veil would have to start at the bottom, where his hands could reach, and even then could not have done it. This one tore from the top down, from a height no human hand reaches. God tore it. From the inside. From his own side of the barrier, God ripped open the last thing standing between himself and the people he made — and he did it the moment his Son died to make it possible.

The barrier religion had maintained for centuries was gone in an instant, and it was never rebuilt. Access to the presence of God would never again be restricted to one man, mediated by a priesthood, rationed to a single day on the calendar. The room behind the veil was thrown open. The pursuit that began with a question in a garden had torn down the last wall — and God was still not finished coming closer.

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God Moves In

The garden had God walking beside man. The tabernacle and the temple had God dwelling among his people, behind a veil. With the curtain torn, God took a step past even the garden — a nearness Adam never knew. He did not move back into a building. He moved into people.

It happened at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). The Spirit came, not to fill a tent or a temple, but to fill the followers of Jesus themselves. And Paul draws the conclusion with deliberate force:

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

— 1 Corinthians 3:16 (ESV)

Read that against everything that came before. The glory that filled the tabernacle, that Solomon’s temple was built to house, that departed in Ezekiel’s vision and returned in the flesh of Jesus — that presence now lives inside ordinary believers. You are the Most Holy Place. Not a building you visit. Not a room you are kept out of. You.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

— 1 Corinthians 6:19 (ESV)

There is no curtain in this temple, because there is nothing left to keep you out. There is no priesthood standing between you and the presence, because the presence has taken up residence in you. No building to travel to. No day on the calendar to wait for. The God who walked beside Adam in the evening now lives within the believer every hour of every day, nearer than the garden ever was. Adam heard God’s footsteps approaching. The believer carries the presence that made the footsteps.

This is nearer than the tent. Nearer than the temple. Nearer, even, than the garden. But it is not the end of the journey. There is one more step, and it is everything.

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No Temple Needed

Every step of the way, the presence had been housed in something — a tent, a temple, a body, and finally the believer. At the end of the Bible, John is shown the end of the story, and the housing falls away entirely.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

— Revelation 21:3 (ESV)

The dwelling place of God is with man. This is the sentence the whole Bible has been moving toward since the gate of Eden closed. Not God visiting man. Not God near man behind a veil. God dwelling with them, and them with him, the distance abolished for good. And then John notices what is not there:

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.

— Revelation 21:22 (ESV)

No temple. In the new creation there is no sanctuary, no holy building, no set-apart room where the presence is kept — because the entire reality is now the presence. There is nothing to travel to, because you are already there. Nothing to be kept out of, because there is no longer any out. The thing the tabernacle pointed at, the thing the temple was a scale model of, the thing the torn curtain opened and the indwelling Spirit began — it is simply everything now. God with his people, unmediated, unveiled, forever.

Trace the whole line. God walking in the garden. God in the tent in the camp. God in the temple behind the veil. God in the flesh on the roads of Galilee. The veil torn from top to bottom. God in the believer by his Spirit. God with his people in a city that needs no temple because it is full of him. Every step, the distance smaller. Every step, God’s own initiative. Religion kept trying to manage the distance. God kept eliminating it.

There is only one gap left in the whole journey — and it is not between God and the human race. It is between God and you.

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Where Are You?

This story began with a question God asked in a garden. It ends with the same God asking the same thing — except the garden is gone, and now he is standing at a door.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

— Revelation 3:20 (ESV)

Look at how far the voice has traveled to reach that door. It called from outside space and time, from a God who holds the galaxies in a handspan. It moved into a tent in the wilderness. It filled a temple, and left it. It took on flesh and a face and ate with sinners. It tore a curtain from top to bottom so nothing would stand between you and the presence again. It came to live inside the very people it made. Every step was God’s. He closed a distance no creature could have crossed from its own side — from outside everything, all the way to the door of your heart.

There is exactly one step left, and it is the only one he will not take for you.

He does not force the door. He knocks. The handle is on your side — it always was — because the love he built a universe to make possible cannot be forced and still be love. He made space so there could be a you. He made time so your answer could be your own. He will not override the very freedom he made the room for.

Understand who is standing there. This is not a salesman working the neighborhood, smiling through a script, hoping to leave with something of yours. He has not come to take. He knows you already — better than you know yourself. Every year you have spent and every year still ahead of you lies open before him at once. The wound no one sees. The name he has kept in reserve for you. He has searched you and known you (Psalm 139). And knowing all of it, he came anyway, the whole distance, to give you a gift you could never buy and never earn.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

— Romans 6:23 (ESV)

Free. Not a trade. Not a down payment on a debt you will spend your life repaying. A gift — the only thing love ever gives. The last page of the Bible holds the door open with the same word:

And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

— Revelation 22:17 (ESV)

The whole journey has been God moving toward you. The tent, the temple, the cross, the empty tomb, the Spirit, the city with no temple in it — all of it, so that he could stand where he is standing now and ask you the oldest question in the world one more time.

Where are you?

He is at the door. He is knocking. He knows your name, and he has brought a gift that costs you nothing and changes everything.

Will you open the door? Will you invite him in? Will you accept his free gift?

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References

• The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV). Crossway.
• Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book XI — on time as a feature of creation rather than a container God inhabits.