The Church is the House of God

Part 1

14^th October 2016

Have you ever heard someone say "my body is a temple"? Non-Christians sometimes say that, and it makes me want to ask them, "A temple of what?"A temple is the house of a god - the place where a god lives. I want to ask them which God lives in their body. And when an atheist says "my body is a temple", that makes no sense at all.

In 1 Corinthians 6:19 Paul writes, "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit". In that verse, the word "you" is singular. Paul is saying that the body of every individual Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit, so we should look after it, and not pollute it with sin. For us, the idea that "my body is a temple" is very real, and very serious. The Holy Spirit lives inside every Christian.

But earlier in the same letter, in 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul asks the Christians who lived in Corinth this rhetorical question: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" Here, the word "you" is plural, both times it occurs. Paul is not talking here about individual Christians, he's talking about the church as a whole. He thought it was obvious that the church is the temple of God.

Just in case there's any doubt about this, Paul said this in the next sentence of his letter: "God's temple is sacred and you are that temple". Again, the word "you" is plural. Paul is saying you plural - you the church - are God's temple. In 2 Corinthians 6:16, Paul says "We are the temple of the living God".

This is the clear teaching of scripture. Strangely, though, many Christians today don't realise it. It's like we've forgotten something that the early church thought was obvious. Or maybe we've been badly taught.

We need to be clear about this. Every Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit, but the church as a whole is the temple of God. You're a temple, but the church is the temple.

It's important that we grasp this idea, that the church is the temple of God, because we need to understand that the church is important, and we need to understand that the temple of God is us.

The temple of God used to be a stone building in Jerusalem, but God allowed that building to be destroyed in 70 AD, because he had no further use for it. His temple now is us - the church. And all Christians are included in it.