Wells, Springs and Living Water....

For my day job I had the opportunity to research wells and boreholes, which led me to start looking at the significance of wells in the Bible. Before you close this browser tab, let me say that I would probably have stopped reading right there too, but I'm going to ask you to hang in there with me - I got some really incredible revelations from this study and I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I'm about to share.

This image shows types of water wells.
 Dug wells like the one on the left are relatively easy to dig,
but are also most seasonal and vulnerable to contamination.
Wells that access the groundwater / underwater aquifers
are least seasonal and least vulnerable to contamination,
but are also hardest to dig.
(Wikimedia Commons)

In Bible times, and in rural areas today, wells and the water they provide are essential to life. Aside from some of the water cuts we've had here in KwaZulu-Natal and intermittent droughts, for the most part we in the cities and urban areas have clean water readily available. This is not the experience for inhabitants of Biblical Palestine, and of course, for many South Africans today.

In Biblical Palestine there were only two rivers of any significant size. Small streams were rare and usually seasonal and there were a few springs, but certainly not enough for the majority of the population to live near to one. So you can imagine that wells were not just important, they were essential to life; so much so that it was assumed that if you owned the well, you owned the land around it. Owning land without a well or water source was rather pointless as water was necessary for crops, animals and of course, for people too.

A dug well in Kerala, India. (Wikimedia Commons)

Like many people today, finding, collecting and transporting all water required for drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing and irrigating was a daily reality for the people alive in Bible times. This process requires a large amount of time and energy every day.

Besides this, actually building wells is quite a mucky and difficult job. Often wells were only big enough for one, perhaps two people to be digging. They would send the dug out material up via buckets, and those at the top would send down stones to reinforce the walls of the well, depending on the substrate they were digging through. You would essentially stop digging when the rate of water seeping in was faster than you could dig dirt out. It was dirty, dangerous and difficult. Alone in the dark, sometimes over 30-40m underground, with dust falling on you from above, clawing and chipping away at the dirt below - it was arduous but essential work.

Source: Lifewater International

As I was studying wells in the Bible, and the process of actually digging wells, I came to see that even though they are so necessary, they are also very vulnerable.

Water is such a precious, yet unpredictably finite resource, that it would be difficult to be generous with your well water. Your well was part of your family's wealth, dug to supply the needs of your family first and foremost, often with little to spare.

They were also vulnerable to collapsing or contamination - if an animal fell into the well and died you would have a big problem on your hands. They could also dry up or be vandalised. We see stories of the Philistines filling in the wells that Abraham dug as a form of guerilla warfare. Alternatively, you could also fill in wells that would be passed by enemies on their way to you to effectively block their passage. In order to maintain water supply and protect against siege tactics, many of the more established cities and settlements, like Jerusalem, had cisterns in which they would store water gather during rainy times. 

So after that history lesson, you can see how it would be very easy for me to move on to spiritual metaphors:

• Make sure your spiritual wells are deep; dig them as deep as you can, because the deeper the well, the purer and more plentiful and constant the water supply
• We need to defend and guard our wells against contamination
• We need to make sure our cisterns / water stores are not broken / badly maintained so that when barren times come or enemies try to besiege us we have a plentiful supply

But, I think this would be doing you a disservice, because it seems to me that wells represent the Old Covenant way of doing things, where streams and springs represent the New Covenant... I say this for a number of reasons:

Wells represent human effort and cleverness – where springs represent God’s plentiful provision. Even once the work of digging the well is over, getting that water out involves significant muscle power. With a spring, the effort is more in trying to channel the flow – there is no effort needed to get that water going!

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Hebrew word for 'well' is 'beer' where the word for 'spring' is 'en'. Beer has implications of boring down, finding, moving towards the water, where 'en' literally means 'eye' with the inference of 'springing up' - to me that's a picture of the grace poured out towards us in the New Covenant. No longer are we trying to access God's provision of salvation through our own efforts, but through the incarnation, Jesus comes towards us to bring us living water.

Speaking of Jesus, I’d like to propose that it’s not just me that thinks that wells represent the Old Covenant – when I read about Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4 - I have the feeling Jesus felt the same way. This is one of my favourite accounts within the gospels for a number of reasons – and I could spend hours talking about this story – but for today let’s dig a bit deeper...
(Sorry, couldn't help it.)

Let's read the account:

John 4:4-30

⁴And he had to pass through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

Keep in mind, this is the only actual well mentioned in the New Testament.

⁷ A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." ⁸ (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

So what was up with the Jews and the Samaritans anyway? Quick history  lesson: When Saul was crowned the first king of Israel, he ruled over all 12 tribes, as did David and Solomon after him. However, after Solomon died, there was a split in the kingdom. The 10 northern tribes - Asher, Dan, Ephraim, Gad, Issachar, Manasseh, Naphtali, Reuben, Simeon, and Zebulon formed the Kingdom of Israel, and their capital was the city of Samaria. The 2 other tribes - Judah and Benjamin - formed the Kingdom of Judah with its capital at Jerusalem.

The 10 Northern tribes started worshiping idols - immediately after the division, Jeroboam changed the worship of the Israelites in 1 Kings 12:25-33. No longer did the inhabitants of the north travel to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice and worship (cf Deuteronomy 12:5-14). Instead, Jeroboam set up idols in Dan and Bethel.  This was destroyed by Assyrians in 722BC – with whom the people intermarried - so Samaritans were seen as sellouts: he people of God who rejected temple worship and intermarried with other nations.

 ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

Now we have our own ideas about what this term 'living water' means, largely derived from this passage. But it would have had a different yet specific meaning for this woman at the well. At the very least, 'living water' was flowing water - fresh and cool - as opposed to water that was still or stored.

Living water flows!

 ¹¹ The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock."

Traditionally the enmity between Jews and Samaritans was so bad that they couldn't share the same cup - hence the comment about having nothing to draw water with. The woman talks about how this well was provided by Jacob, but Jesus dismisses it as inferior to what he provides. Now Jesus is offering an alternative - himself. He is the fulfillment of the promies.

¹³ Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The law, the Old Covenant, is never enough to provide for eternal life. Every year a new sacrifice must be made. Every day a new supply must be drawn. With Jesus, the promise is that the law will be written on our hearts, and that we will have a source of living water within ourselves - a spring, a constant flow, not a well that we have to draw from.

 ¹⁵ The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."

This lady has a sense of humour. She knows he is speaking figuratively but takes him literally. I can't wait to meet her one day!

 ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." 

In true Jesus fashion, he doesn't answer the question / request directly - but answers the question behind the question - he addresses the source of her shame.

¹⁷ The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." ¹⁹ The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Smart lady! She changes the topic and compliments him - 'I can see you are a smart guy!' and continues by acknowledging his discussion of spiritual topics:

 ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." ²¹ Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

Again, he offers an alternative source of life to that based on the system of temple sacrifices, and emphasizes that it won't be replaced by any alternative system of sacrifice or idol worship as the Samaritans practise - in other words - 'Neither of your religious systems will work.'

²² You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." ²⁵ The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." ²⁶ Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." ²⁷ Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you seek?" or, "Why are you talking with her?" ²⁸ So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, ²⁹ "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" ³⁰ They went out of the town and were coming to him. 

I think it is significant here that the text mentions she leaves her water jar. It's as if the revelation that she won't be needing her own well water anymore has sunk in and she knows that she will have springs of living water flowing from within her - she will never be thirsty again.

The idea of springs and living water representing something of the abundance of God's salvation is not a new one in scripture - here are some scriptures from the Old Testament - and you can see they are almost all written in future tense.

Psalms 36:8-9 They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; And You give them to drink of the river of Your delights. For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.
Psalms 87:7 Then those who sing as well as those who play the flutes shall say, "All my springs of joy are in you."
Isaiah 12:3 Therefore you will joyously draw water From the springs of salvation.
Isaiah 41:18 I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.
Isaiah 49:10 "They will not hunger or thirst, Nor will the scorching heat or sun strike them down; For He who has compassion on them will lead them And will guide them to springs of water.
Isaiah 55:1 "Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost.
Jeremiah 2:13 "For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water.
Zechariah 14:8 And in that day living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and the other half toward the western sea; it will be in summer as well as in winter.
Ezekiel 47 – Describes water flowing from the temple.
Joel 3:18 And in that day The mountains will drip with sweet wine, And the hills will flow with milk, And all the brooks of Judah will flow with water; And a spring will go out from the house of the LORD To water the valley of Shittim.

The scriptures from Jeremiah and Zechariah and Ezekiel are quite interesting, considering that underneath Jerusalem there are massive cisterns designed to store water collected during the winter rainy season to supply the city during the dry summer season. This water became quite brackish and nearly undrinkable toward the end of the summer season as it was 'still' water, not flowing, or 'living' water. Living water flowing out of Jerusalem, from the temple, would have been a miraculous sight!

Streams of living water will flow from you...

So for Jesus to promise streams of living water, flowing from redeemed individuals, united as the new temple of the Holy Spirit under the New Covenant, he is describing the fulfillment of these scriptures.

The story of John 4 is quite pivotal as he announces this part of his master plan for the first time - to a Samaritan woman of all people - and goes on to reiterate it later on in John's account:

John 6:35  Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
John 7:37  On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
John 7:38  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"
John 7:39  Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

And then later in the book of Revelation as well:

Revelation 7:17 for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Revelation 21:6 Then He said to me, "It is done I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.
Revelation 22:17 The Spirit and the bride say, "Come " And let the one who hears say, "Come " And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.

Living Water Brings LIFE!

What does living water look like?

In my understanding, you can see when someone is accessing that living water when they bring life to situations rather than drawing life out of them. Like I said earlier, it is difficult to be generous with well water, you have to get it up and out of the well, the amount you can draw depends largely on your own effort, but with springs of living water, your only responsibility is to direct the flow. If I get my primary sense of value and affirmation from things and people other than Jesus, I can easily fall into the trap of getting my life from them too, but when drawing my life from Jesus, when I allow those streams of living water to flow, then I bring life into those situations and into my relationships.

Living water also refers to the power of the Holy Spirit - as indicated by John 7:39. When I am accessing living water I am allowing the Holy Spirit's power to flow through me and to energise everything that I do. I choose not to rely on my own wells and my broken cisterns, but to accept his moment by moment, life giving flow through my life into the lives of others. When I am not accessing the Holy Spirit's power, I am accessing my own finite resources, making it difficult for me to be radically generous with those resources.

I hope you found that interesting. If you found anything unclear or thought I left anything out, please comment below! I'd love to hear from you. 

The Pearl of Great Price - What is it? or rather, Who is it?

In Matthew 13:44-46 you'll find two quick little parallel parables - the parable of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl of great price. The titles are almost as long as the parables themselves!

via Wikimedia Commons

Let's read:

⁴⁴ The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
⁴⁵ Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. ⁴⁶ When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

So this is the part where the preacher normally says something about how this kingdom, this treasure, this salvation is so very valuable! We should diligently seek salvation and when we find it we sell everything we have, we give everything we value, we even give our whole lives to keep it. And that pearl of great price, that's Jesus, and when we find him, we do whatever it takes to have him in our hearts.

Selling everything you have, giving everything precious to you, giving your life for the kingdom, that's the best investment you can make - that is how you gain this treasure, this pearl of great price.

Then I might ask you - What is the kingdom worth to you? What is your salvation worth to you? Does your life reflect that? And then you feel guilty about all the stuff you haven't sold yet, and we all go home for lunch.

Somehow that interpretation never did ring true, but I've only once ever heard this parable taught differently. That one time changed everything.

I believe that the common understanding of this parable has things all backwards. Sinners don't naturally seek Christ - Jesus draws men to himself and he is the one who seeks and saves those who are lost. We have nothing of value to contribute to our salvation. There is nothing we could possibly exchange to obtain Christ. Our salvation is a free gift.

CC Image courtesy of Alex Valavanis on Flickr

So what is it then?

We need to ask ourselves a few questions here, starting with: Who is speaking? To whom are they speaking?

Well, that's an easy one - We know it is Jesus speaking, and he is speaking, it seems from the context, to the twelve disciples.

So then, who is the 'man' in these parables? What is the treasure? Why a pearl?

In short, I propose that in these two parables Jesus is addressing the Jews as his treasure and the Gentiles as his pearl.

In all of the parables just before this one, the main protagonist in each one represents Jesus - he is the sower of seed, the baker of bread, the planter of the mustard seed and the wise wheat farmer - so why would it change for two parables where the listener becomes the man who finds the treasure hidden in the field or the merchant who finds the pearl of great price?

No, I propose that one key to understanding these verses is to see the man and the merchant in these parables as Jesus.

So that answers that question - but what about the hidden treasure and the pearl?

Jesus was Jewish and all of his disciples were Jewish, so looking at what a Jewish person would have understood about a treasure in a field, and about a costly pearl would certainly be helpful!

Let's start with the treasure...

His disciples were all Torah observant Jews in that they would have been highly familiar with what we know as the first five books of the Old Testament - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

In Exodus 19:5, and Deuteronomy 7:6 (also Deut 14:2 & Deut 26:18), God says about the Hebrew people that he has chosen them as a special treasure. And Psalms 135:4 states 'The Lord has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel for his special treasure.'

Jacob - who was later named Israel - was the father of the twelve men who would be the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. In other words, Jacob, and by implication, all his descendants, would be the special treasure of the Lord.

In contrast to this, it is doubtful whether the word 'pearl' appears anywhere in the Old Testament - there are some words that are sometimes translated as 'pearl' - but any one of them could as easily be translated as another word, like ruby or red coral or something else (Ref.).

What we do know is that pearls come from oysters and if we're going to be technical, other bivalve molluscs too, and molluscs, in general, were considered unclean according to Jewish law:

⁹ ...Everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat. ¹⁰ But anything in the seas or the rivers that does not have fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, is detestable to you. ¹¹ You shall regard them as detestable; you shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall detest their carcasses. ¹² Everything in the waters that does not have fins and scales is detestable to you. - Leviticus 11:9-12

Their value was acknowledged by Jews who could recognise that pearls fetched a high price in the marketplace, but pearls still had the undesirable trait of coming from an unclean animal. No Jew would be willing to harvest pearls, considering that one would have to go through a couple of thousand of their 'detestable carcasses' to get just a few pearls.

At that time, the most costly pearls came from regions outside of Israel - specifically the Persian Gulf - about 1700km away across a mountain range and a large desert.

So they may have understood the first of the two parables, but why then did Jesus tell a bunch of Jewish men that the kingdom of heaven was like a merchant who sold everything he had to buy a pearl?

Let's recap - we have a number of scriptures where God says that he chooses Israel as his 'peculiar' or special treasure. This is the only time that I can find where a specific group of people is referred to as a treasure.

Then in the same breath, as a parallel parable, he talks about pearls - something unclean and foreign. So what else would be considered unclean and foreign to Jews? Gentiles perhaps?

In case that word is foreign to you, a Gentile is anyone who isn't a Jew.

I propose that Jesus is saying that this group of people - unclean and foreign - these Gentiles - that's you and me, are his pearl of great price!

Isn't that amazing? You and I, we are the pearl of great price that Jesus redeemed by giving everything he had...

If that offends you, I understand - it offended me too... I was so wrapped up in my efforts to give everything I had to gain the kingdom, that the idea that he paid the ultimate price, rendering my efforts ineffective and pointless, was rather offensive.

You
Me
I am
We are
The pearl of great price

If saying 'I am the pearl of great price' is difficult for you, take heart, it gets easier every time.

Just that on its own blows my mind, but if we know a little more about pearls it gets even better

CC Image courtesy of Behan

An oyster shell is really not much to look at. I've heard someone say that the first person to open an oyster shell must have been mightily hungry! It's not something one would generally do without good reason.

We have evidence that people of the ancient world ate oysters, not Jews of course, but others. Can you imagine the first time someone opened an oyster and found not only the odd-looking flesh but a pearl too? What a surprise! What a treasure!

And so it must have been somewhat confusing for the Jewish people that God would bring such a treasure from such an unlikely and unclean animal. And so it is with us - the Gentiles. It took quite some doing for the early church to realise that Jesus'' message was not only for them but the whole world, that God intended to include everyone in his plan, not only his chosen people. But, he chose the Israelite nation to be the vessel by which he brought forth salvation  - but not only for that nation but for the nations of the world.

Pearls and Amber are the only gemstones produced by living creatures. Amber is fossilized tree resin and pearls are formed when a foreign material somehow manages to get under the mantle of an oyster or other such creature. It's like when you have a label in your shirt causing an itch - you can't just leave it.

In the case of the oyster, it responds to the itch by coating the offending object in layers of something called nacre - that same substance that you see inside a mother of pearl shell. Nacre is translucent and each coat forms another translucent layer - with layer upon layer being added until it becomes a pearl as we know it.

via Wikimedia Commons

Part of the particular beauty of a pearl is that we can't do anything to improve them. Precious stones have to be extracted from the earth and then worked and cut and polished for them to look good - it takes a lot of work for a diamond to look like a diamond. But pearls come ready formed. Human intervention cannot improve their lustre and brilliance and we certainly cannot reproduce it.

CC Image courtesy of Michael Davis-Burchat
on Flickr

This is such a beautiful picture of the completeness of our salvation - it is finished! It is done! We are a new creation, holy and righteous, clothed in pure, radiant white. There is nothing we can do to 'improve' or 'add to' or 'work at' our salvation. 'Work out' perhaps, but certainly not 'work at'.

Furthermore, pearls are formed in the dark, in secret, and the oyster usually dies when the pearl is extracted. This reminds me of salvation and baptism. In baptism we are buried with him; we accept that we were in Christ in his death. in him we also rise from that death - this kernel of suffering he coats with layers and layers of himself, of his own substance. In his death and his rising, his beautiful pearl is revealed - ready to reflect his light.

Speaking of light, pearls are genuinely radiant. Light enters the pearl and bounces between the layers of nacre, and if you want to get scientific about it, the optical axis of each aragonite crystal that makes up the nacre is at right angles to its surface, from which I understand that light reflects outward in all directions.

So, how is it that something formed in darkness seems made for light?

It's as if God takes suffering and coats it in layers and layers of glory until it is wholly unrecognisable and transformed into something utterly beautiful, something that mirrors his glory. I love how this is a picture of how God can take the worst situation and really truly work it for the good of those who loved him. He doesn't just coat the grain of sand in one layer of himself, just to hide it, but keeps adding glory upon glory, layer upon layer, until the glory outweighs the suffering by many orders of magnitude - and it becomes a thing of great value and dignity.

CC Image courtesy of mrpbps on Flickr

It's also a picture of how Jesus took on flesh to bring forth his kingdom. We were bought with a price (1 Co 6:20 & 1 Co 7:23) and that price was his life. He gave himself for us to purify us. (Titus 2:14) He made us partakers in the inheritance of the saints in light, delivered from darkness into light and translated us into the kingdom of his dear son. (Col 1:12-14)

Just a side note - you may have heard that the lustre of pearls is improved when worn - this is because pearls are formed in a waterlogged environment. They can dry out if the environment is dry enough - so being on the wearer's skin exposes them to perspiration which helps to keep them hydrated and not crack. Feel free to make of that little factoid what you will! Hydration is important!

In closing, in Revelation 21 we read about the New Jerusalem, the holy city. This city has twelve gates - with each individual gate made of one pearl.

⁹ Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” ¹⁰ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, ¹¹ having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. ¹² It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed— ¹³ on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. ¹⁴ And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. - Revelation 21:9-14 (emphasis added)

The angel gives measurements and speaks of the various stones representing the 12 tribes and continues...

²¹ And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. ... ²⁵ and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. ²⁶ They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. ²⁷ But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. - Revelation 21:21, 25-27

Number 12 is believed to be significant as it is the product of 3 and 4. Three represents divinity - the Trinity - and 4 represents the earthly - the four points of the compass. Multiply the two numbers and you have the number of God's divine order on earth. Here it shows the perfection and completeness of the new heaven and the new earth.

So we have 12 foundation stones with the names of the apostles on them - which inevitably reminds one of Ephesians 2:20 which states 'we are being built as a holy temple, on the foundations of the apostles and prophets.'

Then there are the twelve gates with twelve angels. Verse 21 tells us that each gate was made of a single pearl - hence the term pearly gates - but what is astonishing is that each of these gates has the name of one the tribes of Israel on it, anyone entering the holy city will have to walk through a gate made of pearl. This also takes me back to Ephesians 2:11-22

¹¹ Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— ¹² remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. ¹³ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility ¹⁵ by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, ¹⁶ and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. ¹⁷ And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸ For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹ So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, ²¹ in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. ²² In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

In his body, he has reconciled us to God, by covering us in his own substance to give us a whole new nature. 

CC Image courtesy of jev55

You are, I am, We are the pearl of great price that he gave everything to gain.
Our salvation is that ready made gem that cannot be improved by human hands.

Let that sink in.

He takes our suffering and coats it in layers of himself.
He gives us his perfect righteous nature and reconciles us to himself and to each other in his body.
He clothes us in pure white, radiant with his glory. 

You are, I am, we are the pearl of great price.

Any thoughts you would like to share? Please do comment below. Every comment is appreciated.

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