Tag Archives: God

Temples of God: The Lord is in His Holy Temple

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cloudsOne of the most beautiful promises of the New Testament is that God will come to live inside of us, his children. We, both individually and collectively, are made into temples of God:

Romans 8:9     You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.  10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.  11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. 

1 Corinthians 3:16     Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 

1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 

2 Corinthians 6:16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Ephesians 2:21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 

Colossians 1:27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 

1 Peter 2:4     As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—  5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

According to the New Testament, the implications of this are that we are to be holy, set apart from “common” things, just as the Old Testament temple was a special, sanctified place. God lives in us! We aren’t meant for immorality. Christ in us, the hope of glory. We are meant for good, not evil. The sanctifying Spirit dwells in us. Because of that, we are to dedicate our bodies to God’s service. The church is the temple of God. Therefore, anything that we do to harm the church is an attack on God’s temple.

We need to recapture that feeling of awe, the recognition of the holiness that is ours, not because of our human efforts, but because the Creator of all has chosen to make a home within our hearts.

Temples of God: The Spirit at work in us

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cloudsSo what does the Bible tell us about the work of the Holy Spirit? In the first place, we see that Jesus promised to send his apostles the Paraclete, a comforter/counselor/helper (John 14:16,26; 15:26; 16:7). We need to recognize that the promises in these three chapters in John were made specifically to the apostles. While we learn about how the Spirit works and what his nature is, we can’t directly claim these promises.

The letters to Christians in the New Testament give us more insight into the Spirit and his work in our life. God gives us the Spirit as a “deposit” on our salvation (2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:13-14; 4:30; Romans 8:23). The Spirit helps us approach the Father (Romans 8:26; Ephesians 2:18; 6:18; Jude 20). He leads us toward godly living (Romans 8:1-17; Galatians 5:16-25) and helps to make us holy (Romans 15:15-16; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Titus 3:4-7; 1 Peter 1:1-2).

In the New Testament, the work of the Spirit is related to God’s Word: both are described as dwelling in us, teaching and convicting, guiding and sanctifying. However, the Spirit is not confined to the Word. He speaks (Acts 13:2-3). He intercedes for us with groans (Romans 8:26-27). He can be lied to (Acts 5:3-9) and can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30). He gives gifts to believers (1 Corinthians 12:11).

There is a definite connection between the Word and the work of the Spirit, but the two are not one and the same. God’s Spirit is the living presence of God in our lives.

Temples of God: Receiving the Spirit

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cloudsOK, I didn’t forget that I was going to get back to the subject of the Spirit. I don’t promise anything earth-shaking nor definitive, but I’ll share some of what I’ve come to see in the Bible.

I believe that when we are baptized (Acts 2:38; 5:32) Christ/the Spirit/the Spirit of God/the Spirit of Christ/the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 8:9-11) comes to live in us (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Colossians 1:27; 2 Timothy 1:14).

For reasons that I don’t fully understand, some have tried to explain away this reality, either saying that the Spirit only works through the Word and doesn’t indwell or by saying that the Spirit only indwells us through the Word (and no, I don’t fully see the difference in those two arguments). I believe that Jesus Christ comes to live in us through the Spirit, helping us to live the way God desires us to live. Let us give thanks to God that he saw fit to make us his temples, leading us to be ever holier, day by day.

They Call Me Trinity

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Discussions about the divine, as we’ve seen can be problematic. To be honest, I’m not fond of non-biblical terms like “trinity” nor am I fully up to date about all the different opinions out there. I’ve already shown that I believe Jesus to be God, but I don’t believe Jesus to be the Father. Passages like Romans 8:9-11 help me see this:

“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” (Romans 8:9-11)

Who lives in us? Is it the Spirit? Christ? The Spirit of Christ? The Spirit of God? The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead? The answer, of course, is YES. Jesus is God and lives in us. He’s not the Father; Paul seems to avoid such language. Yet, they are both God.

Romans 8 shows us that the Spirit is also in the equation. We also see that in other passages, like the letters to the 7 churches in Revelation. The letters are clearly from Jesus, yet each letter ends with an urge for the readers to hear what the Spirit had to say to the churches. Again, no New Testament writer would say that the Spirit had been crucified nor that the Spirit was the Father. Yet the Spirit is shown to be divine.

No, I can’t explain it. Not fully. I can’t explain God’s eternal nature either. I can’t explain how He can hear thousands of people praying to Him in dozens of different languages. I can’t explain lots of things about God. As I’ve said before, I like it that way. I want a God who is bigger than I. One I can’t completely wrap my thoughts around. That’s my God.

The identity of Jesus, Pt. 3

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“I have often seen with what pleasure the Arian dwells upon the words “first born of every creature;” “the beginning of the creation of God.” And how seldom, and with what reluctance, he quotes “I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last;” “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Again, the Socinian emphasizes with great force upon the words “the man Christ Jesus;” but never dwells with delight upon this sentence, “Who being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be like God.” The Trinitarian rejoices that “there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and that these three are one;” that Jesus said, “I and my Father are one,” &c. But seldom does he quote on this subject the texts on which the Arian and Socinian dwell with pleasure. Not one of them will quote with equal pleasure, or readiness every thing said on this subject; and had they the liberty they would trim and improve the apostles’ style to suit their respective theories. (Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, March 1827)

Guess what: the subject of Jesus’ identity is not an easy one. Devout, godly, scholarly men have arrived at very different conclusions on the subject. It’s a mistake to claim that the conclusions are obvious.

It’s my belief that it should be hard to fully understand God. I talked about that in my post “My God Can Beat Up Your God.” It doesn’t bother me that I can’t fully understand the relationship between Jesus and the Father.

There are passages that directly say that Jesus is God. We have to deal with that on some level. I have heard people try to claim that “Jesus is divine” or “Jesus is a deity,” while maintaining that He isn’t God. Folks, that’s called polytheism, and we definitely don’t want to go there. There is one God and one Lord.

I think that Philippians 2 sheds some light on the subject. Look at verses 5-12:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant,being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11)

Jesus was equal with God before His incarnation. He was willing to take on the form of a servant, taking human form. That’s why Jesus can be described as God’s servant, as being submissive to God. That’s why He was able to be tempted, why He experienced all the limitations of being human. That’s why He could pray to His Father. The Word became flesh.

Still, Jesus isn’t the Father. They are not exactly the same, yet they are one. How do we fully explain that? We don’t. Not now, not in our present, finite state. We, as humans, are incapable of fully understanding God. We can speculate and theorize, but the only things we can say with complete confidence are the things directly stated in Scripture.

I’ve been quoting Stone and Campbell, mostly out of curiosity. They had very different views on the subject, but both agreed that the answer was to limit ourselves to what the Bible says.

What would happen if we did that?