1 Corinthians 3:16

Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

The words of this text are sometimes applied to individuals; but, as Morris said, "The reference here is to the church."[24] There is no article before "temple" in the Greek; and it would be more accurately translated, "Ye are a temple of God."[25] "The building of which the apostle speaks is the Christian church, called in this verse The Temple of God."[26]

THE CHURCH THE TEMPLE OF GOD

Of all the beautiful metaphors of God's church such as the bride of Christ, the vineyard of the Lord, the household of God, the pillar and ground of the truth, the spiritual body of Christ, and the flock of Christ, none is more beautiful or intriguing than "The Temple of God."

The first suggestion ever made regarding a temple for the one true God was made by David, whose conscience was stricken with the thought of his own house of cedar compared with the humble tent-shrine which housed the ark of the covenant. Nathan the prophet, however, explained to David that God had never once expressed any desire to have such a house (temple), stating emphatically that after David's death, David's son would build God a house, that his kingdom would be established for ever in the person of that "seed" (which was Christ, of course). See 2 Samuel 7:1-13. Concerning the Greater Son of David, who is Christ, it was prophesied that he would build a house (temple) for God's name and that his throne would be established for ever. From the remarkable teachings in this passage from Samuel it is absolutely clear that God never intended that a physical temple would be constructed in Jerusalem. The departure of Israel from God's word in 2 Samuel 7 is exactly parallel to their departure from God's word in 1 Samuel 8.

How did David react to the prophet's forbidding him in God's name to build a temple, and promising that "the Son of David" would build God's temple (a prophecy of the church)? He said, in effect, "Well, that has to be Bathsheba's boy! Solomon will build the temple!" To be sure he did so, but there is no evidence whatever that the building of a material temple in Jerusalem was any different in the sight of God than the setting up of the earthly monarchy in the days of Samuel. God permitted both. He used both. He accommodated to the hardness of the people's heart; but that extravagant earthly temple of the Jews was only a second outcropping of the fleshly desire of Israel to be like the nations around them, which had their richly ornamented temples erected to pagan deities.

It is known that God would not permit David to build the temple because of his wickedness. He was a man of blood. But was Solomon any less wicked and bloody? His notorious debaucheries were the scandal of forty generations.

Moreover, the temple proved to be as big a stumbling block to the Jews as the secular kingdom was. Christ's first announcement to his generation included the fact that "One greater than the temple is here!" (Matthew 12:6). While Christ was on earth, the true temple was "his body" (John 2:21); and after Pentecost, the true temple has been nothing other than the spiritual body of Christ. This was the element of Stephen's speech that so infuriated the religious partisans in Jerusalem that they mobbed him. See under 1 Corinthians 3:9.

Therefore, Paul's designation of the body of Christ in this passage as the temple of God is of the utmost significance. Paul himself had, with difficulty, come to understand this. As soon as he was converted, he went straight to that old secular temple; and God told him to get out of the place, even out of the city (Acts 22:17-21); and Paul, even after that, returned to the temple where he was mobbed; and in the behavior of the temple partisans (including the high priest), Paul finally read the will of God as it had been declared by Jesus that the temple was nothing but a "den of thieves and robbers" (Mark 11:17), that it was not God's house at all, but the house of the Jews, and that it was left unto them "desolate" (Matthew 23:38).

The above reflections are not denied by the fact of God's using the temple after the Jews constructed it against his will; he did the same thing with the secular kingdom.

The true temple of God, therefore, has never been anything else except the church of Jesus Christ our Lord. In it alone, not in some man-made shrine, men are called to worship and serve the Lord of glory. Meeting houses are not, in any sense, "true" sanctuaries.

The fact of God's Spirit dwelling in the spiritual body of Christ which is the church does not deny the residence of the Spirit of promise in the hearts of individual Christians (Acts 2:38ff; Ephesians 1:13).

[24] Leon Morris, op. cit., p. 69.

[25] Ibid.

[26] James Macknight, op. cit., p. 46.