The Church is the House of God
Part 2
21st October 2016
We saw last time that the Bible clearly teaches that the Church is the House of God - God's Temple. Paul writes this to the church in Ephesus:
Ephesians 2v19-22
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household,
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
We Gentiles who believe in Jesus have been included in God's people. We've been brought into God's household - God's family. And we are part of God's temple.
(Please don't get hung up by the fact that Paul says "a temple" rather than "the temple" here; It's just the way language works. It was the same with the original temple in Jerusalem. When God told David that Solomon would be the one to build that temple, He said, "He will be the one to build a house for my name" (see 2 Samuel 7:14 and 1 Chronicles 17:12). And when David told Solomon about it, we're told that David "called for his son Solomon and charged him to build a house for the Lord" (1 Chronicles 22:6). Just as 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles called the Jerusalem temple "a house", Paul calls the church "a temple" but there was only one temple in Jerusalem then, and there's only one temple now - the church.)
The church is God's temple. It's built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets - built on the words of Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles, as recorded in the Bible.
Jesus is the chief cornerstone - the first stone to be laid, and the stone from which all other stones take their position. Paul says "In him the whole building is joined together". Jesus is the most important part of the church's foundation, and our unity is based on the one Lord we all serve, the one Saviour in whom we all believe.
The true church is founded on the person of Jesus and on the words of the Bible. Not on the traditions of men, or on our own good ideas, or our own preferences, but on Jesus and the Bible.
And Paul says the church "rises to become a holy temple in the Lord". Jesus, who said "I will build my church" in Matthew 16v18 is continuing to build it. The church gets bigger every day. And Jesus continues to sanctify the church - making it a holy temple.
Do you see how important the church is? It's God's holy temple, built by Jesus Christ himself.
And Paul says "you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit". You and I have a part to play in God's holy temple, which is the church.