1Corinthians 3:16,17 – GOD’s temple

Are you not aware that you are a temple of God and the spirit of God is making its home in you? If anyone is corrupting the temple of God, God will be corrupting him, for the temple of God is holy, which you are.

In these verses Paul’s tone is even more serious than in the foregoing. First he points out what the ecclesia is. All believers together form GOD’s temple for the simple reason that GOD’s spirit dwells in them The Corinthians knew that. What is not concerned her is that GOD’s spirit lives individually in every believer (such as later in 6:19), but that GOD’s spirit lives in the collective. Where believers are gathered together as ecclesia, they jointly form GOD’s temple. They are holy, just as a temple is holy by definition, purely because GOD dwells in it (Eph. 2:21).

This sacred status has as a consequence, that violation of that temple (ie. the ecclesia), is equivalent to profanity. Whoever builds God’s temple with faulty material (wood, grass and straw), is corrupting the temple. The consequence of this is that GOD will also corrupt him. Paul had already made clear what that means in the previous verses. All human work will go up in smoke entirely. This is how GOD is watching over his temple!

Delen: