For three weeks we have been thinking about the imagery of a building as one way to think about the Church. The Bible takes this metaphor a step further. Some buildings are office buildings while others are apartment buildings. Some are commercial buildings and others are educational buildings.
The Church, however, is no ordinary building. It is a special kind of building — a temple kind of building. After the paragraph in 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 that elaborates on the Church as God’s building, the next verse asks the question, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”
Temple-style building
While an individual believer’s body is a temple of God’s Spirit, according to 1 Corinthians 6:19 (where “your” is singular in referring to our physical bodies) the question raised in chapter 3 uses the plural for “you,” meaning that together Christians constitute this temple-style building.
The imagery of a building used to speak of the Church in Ephesians 2:20–22 also designates the building as a temple, “The whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” First Corinthians 3:16 also envisions the Church as God’s temple where God is present among His people through the agency of the Holy Spirit.
The temple imagery is rooted in Old Testament prophecy. Through a vision given to the prophet Ezekiel, God promised a new and perfect temple in the last days. The final nine chapters of the book of Ezekiel contain elaborate and minute details about that future temple. The New Testament passages draw upon temple imagery to speak further about the Church.
Holy place
As a temple-style building the Church ideally is a holy place where God’s Spirit manifests His presence. Sadly the church in Corinth was falling short of being such a place. Sadness is added on top of sadness when across the centuries and in various places other churches also have come short of being “a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22). It is no less sad when it happens in our day and at our church.
A serious warning attaches to the metaphor of the congregation as a temple where God manifests His presence among His redeemed people. The warning particularly targets church leaders whose mission is to attend to the building up of the Church.
This warning could hardly be cast with greater severity than stated in 1 Corinthians 3:17, “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” Even though the nature of the destruction of God’s temple is not spelled out, the force and seriousness in the warning carries its own impact.
When we accept God’s gracious salvation and affiliate with a local church, we give up the right to be a disruptive force in a congregation. Unless truth is at stake and God’s good name is put at risk, church members tread on dangerous ground when they choose to be troublemakers at church.
Grace note
Even though the warning is serious, we must not miss the note of grace that sounds in it. This grace note is a reminder that imperfect people are, in fact, the living stones that comprise this temple of God.
By God’s grace the Church as God’s temple is where spiritual sacrifices are made, where divine worship takes place, where praises ring out and prayers are offered up and where truth is believed and dispersed.
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