By the late 1800s, Jönköping's western district was expanding rapidly, and local leaders recognised the need for a large new church to serve the growing population. Agreeing on the building's exact site and design, both inside and out, took many years. The church was finally consecrated on 8 April 1888, the first Sunday after Easter, by Bishop Johan Andersson. It was built by master builder Anders Pettersson of Värsås to a design by the architect and professor Gustaf Dahl, who also designed the Royal Library in Stockholm.
The building is a basilica with an open timber roof, a three-aisled nave of five bays, single-aisled transepts, and a single-aisled chancel with a three-sided end. Pointed arches linking the columns give the interior a light, airy feel typical of the Gothic Revival style. Within the church is St Peter's Chapel, named after the parish's first medieval church, which was dedicated to St Peter.
Among the furnishings, the wooden altar bears a crucifix carved by the sculptor Carl Johan Dyfverman, while a triumphal crucifix in the south chancel is the work of Eva Spångberg of Hjälmseryd. The chancel also holds a seventeenth-century oil painting, said to depict the supper at Emmaus, reportedly acquired in Rome.//The church has an organ built in 1967 by Åkerman & Lund, incorporating elements of an earlier 1887 instrument by the same firm, alongside a smaller chancel organ dating from 1985.
On 1 May 2014, the church's bells were rung as the neo-Nazi Party of the Swedes marched through Jönköping, a symbolic gesture recalling the historic use of church bells to warn of danger, last done locally at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The church was closed for renovation and reopened to the public in 2005.