The House that Love Built pictures the Spiritual Christ, with outstretched arms, inviting the people of the world to enter into His body, to become one with Him in an eternal relationship of Love. For those who accept His invitation, whose spirits He awakens, Christ prepares them a heavenly home: “In My Father’s house are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for you… that where I am, there you may also be” (Jn 14:2-3). The opulent building in the background represents this glorious superstructure, the mansion in heaven promised to believers. Those who enter the body of Christ become part of this heavenly temple, the individual bricks of which it is comprised: “you also, as living stones, are being built a spiritual home” (1 Pet 2:5). Christ is the house, we are the bricks. Christ is the body, we are the organs, cells, and sinew. He is our collective whole, we are the individual parts. The House that Love Built communicates these messages and the rapture as the unifying event that ties them together.
A nimbus surrounds Christ’s head, blended from the mansions architecture in the background. The caption above reads, “Supreme Master In Whom We Trust.” This portrays the only requirement to entering that heavenly mansion—faith. Through trusting Christ, believers receive His imputed righteousness (Rom 4:6). He became our sins, we become His perfect righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). God takes something that “is not” and says that “it is.” Having been purged by His atoning blood, we adopt His spiritual DNA, depicted as pouring forth from His heart at center.
A woman flanked left of Christ drinks from the bottom of a funnel, a straw from which she consumes the blood of Christ. DNA helixes connect the funnel with the Christ-heart at center. The woman adorns a rainbow countenance, signifying the promises of God. Christ’s heart pumps His blood and generates life through His DNA. Another woman launches from the funnel, umbrella in hand, and flies into the clouds above. This pictures the rapture: “Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord” (2 Thes 4:17). From the spiritual DNA, the blood of Christ generates through His heart into believers, thereby empowering us to fly into the clouds at His Coming.
The rapture represents that event in which believers receive their resurrection bodies. The three individuals dressed in white at bottom left imply this transmutation from flesh-and-blood into spirit. They gaze at the glorious appearance of the Lord in the sky, seemingly transformed from people into ants, and then back into new bodies that stand in line to enter the heavenly mansion. The adjacent captions suggest a bodily metamorphosis and a departure from the world: “My skin… it’s somehow transforming”; “Can you imagine Earth without any Christians… in a few years, it might be reality.”
Like the woman who flies into the clouds with her umbrella, the rapture is characterized as a “snatching away” of those who trust Christ. The four rainbow-faced individuals atop the tree hedges signify the spiritual transformation of those who adopt Christ’s DNA, those who receive resurrection bodies at His coming. They blend into the heavenly mansion as living stones, bricks in the temple, parts of Christ ethereal body.
The Bible refers to the fleshly, unregenerate nature as the “old man” (Rom 6:6; Eph 4:22; Col 3:9). He is known as “self,” that fallen creature born in Adam’s likeness. The “old man” operates on fear. His whole motive is self-preservation and pleasure. An “old man” cowers in a crib, huddled in a self-hug at center bottom. He stares at the sign, “faith,” but the adjacent caption states, “something is not clicking.” This portrays the natural man as incapable of pleasing God: “Without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Heb 11:6).
In his fallen state, the old man is unable to understand spiritual matters: “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14). It is only through God quickening to life a new identity in the heart that spiritual understanding is opened. This is pictured by the woman holding a rose, a symbol of life. She stands behind the creature holding the “faith” sign, suggesting that trusting in Christ brings the flower of a new life. The creature holding the “faith” sign is a single eyeball, illustrating the scripture: “if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Mat 6:22)
Once Love stirs the spiritual identity awake in the heart, the new believer is called to kill the “old man,” to crucify self, to put to death the carnal nature and “walk in the newness of life” (Rom 6:4). But evicting the carnal identity from the personality sparks an internal war between flesh and spirit. The two natures battle for control of the mind and heart until one has predominant sway over the other. The illustration at upper right portrays this spiritual conflict. A man wrestles his shadow, holding it upside-down over the ledge. This symbolizes the internal struggle believers face in contending with our own shadows, the “old man” carnal nature. We are called to cast off our shadows, to throw off the old man and dwell in His Spirit: “…that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man… And that you put on the new man” (Eph 4:22)
The “new man” and the child of God are synonymous. They are the “born again” identity spoken of by Christ (Jn 3:3), that regenerate spirit awakened in the heart by Love. The caption above the car at bottom right states, “whoever does not receive the kingdom as a little child will by no means enter it.” This refers to the new nature and its childlike innocence, open to correction and willing to believe anything its mom or dad says. Puppets drive the car outside the temple, further reinforcing the motif of approaching the kingdom as a humble child. A detective scrutinizes the “Good News of Jesus Christ” under a magnifying glass. This communicates that the transformation from a diligent seeker of Truth into a child in the Kingdom of God occurs through examining the Gospel message.
Three doorways appear outside the Kingdom Mansion. The center door leads directly into the body of Christ, the only open entrance. The label, “Get onto my cloud,” infers the rapture, and “show your spirit” implies the prerequisite for right of passage. The two side doors, both closed, are labeled “hear it” and “see it” with respective ear and eye illustrations. This refers to the Gospel being seen and heard but not understood by unbelievers. Without the new heart promised in spiritual regeneration, the “old man” carnal nature cannot perceive the Light. The doors to the Kingdom remain closed.
Scripture repeatedly emphasizes the dull senses of unbelievers, their lost condition and incapacity to receive the Truth: “hearing ye shall hear and not understand: and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive” (Mt 13:14; comp. Jn 12:40; Acts 28:6, 7; Rom 11:8). Christ spoke in parables so that His disciples would “know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God” but unbelievers would, “…seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand” (Luke 8:10; comp. Mk 4:12). But to the diligent seeker of Truth, Christ promises to enlighten the eyes and ears of his or her understanding. This is the concept illustrated at the left entrance. A man knocks on the closed door: “...seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you” (Mat 7:7).
Moses appears at upper left, holding the table of the Ten Commandments. He points at a cute, teary-eyed creature, standing in judgment to the law. This pictures that nobody is innocent under the law. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Even the most innocent of children are born in a marred state of corruption, the original sin inherited from Adam. We all justly deserve condemnation under God’s standard of perfection. But the purpose of the law was to make us aware of our desperate need for the promised Messiah, our Savior Christ. The law was meant to humble us and prepare us as a tutor. Without understanding our need and the impossibility of keeping God’s ways, we might falsely believe we do not need a Savior. Christ fulfilled every part of the law on our behalf, and through Him we share a spiritual life and are provided liberty in a New Covenant based on Love (Gal 5:13-14).
The House that Love Built advertises a message of hope to a dying world. Through faith, we have a home in the heavens, a spiritual temple in the sky. We become living bricks in the God’s mansion. Christ is away preparing our home, and when He returns believers will be snatched away into the sky. May His Love stir your heart and bring you into a deeper understanding of Truth.
Larry Word
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