Tag Archives: temple

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.