Being the Temple of the Holy Spirit
Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? (1 Corinthians 3:19 NKJV)
What did Paul mean by likening us to temples? We often think of them as places of worship and, indeed, they are. But the word temple, whether in Greek or in Hebrew, also carries a strong connotation of home or household. The Holy Spirit’s earliest dwelling place echoes the theme by being a tabernacle–a tent similar in form and construction to those in which God’s people lived.
Until Jesus rose, the Holy Spirit made his home in one of these two types of dwelling places, hiding his face behind a veil. Only after his resurrection did he lift that separating wall and move into human hearts. Ever Emanuel, “God With Us,” he deepened his relationship from “God in the Neighborhood” to “God Inside.”
Tabernacle or Temple of the Holy Spirit?
But what does it mean to be a temple, especially in regard to its function as a home? It might help to compare the Holy Spirit’s two previous housing situations.
His first home, the tabernacle, was built for portability and flexibility. It had to be ready to move with God’s people whenever he called them forward–whether that meant today, or next week, or next month. The tabernacle didn’t find a permanent resting place until the days of King David.
When his son, King Solomon, finally built the temple, he constructed it for permanence and stability. Its foundations drove deep into the great rock atop Mount Moriah—where Abraham had sacrificed his son Isaac. No flood could rise high enough to wash away its footings and no gale could blow down its sturdy stone walls.
Which structure better exemplifies us as the temple of the Holy Spirit? Maybe both of them. Some days the Holy Spirit requires flexibility from us so that we move as quickly and easily as a tent. “Be ready in season and out of season” (Titus 2:15). Other times, he demands we hold fast and stand firm like a bedrock-gripping temple. “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Ephesians 6:13).
The Household of the Temple
The temple and tabernacle differed somewhat in how they functioned as shelters, but they shared a common purpose in enclosing a household. A household is a group of people related to one another through their connection to the head of the family.
This is where things can get tricky. While the Holy Spirit indwells us individually when we accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, we must not lose sight of the fact that neither temples nor tabernacles function at their best with only one worshipper. They are built for groups of people, families, a great cloud of witnesses.
Sometimes we read this as meaning each of us is a little temple housing an individual worshipper. But Paul includes a hint in his letter to the Corinthians in the form of one particular pronoun—“you.”
If your memory bank can take you back to elementary school grammar classes, you’ll remember pronouns can come in any of three “persons”—first person (I, me, we), second person (you), or third person (him, her, it, they). It’s this second person that creates confusion in English sometimes.
In Greek, there’s a difference between the singular form of “you” and the plural, but in English, there’s no such distinction. So it’s easy to miss what was clear to Paul when he wrote it. Here’s how Paul’s sentence reads if we note the form he used: “Do you (plural) not know that your (plural) body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?”
One Temple of the Holy Spirit
Notice that the words “you” and “your” are plural, but the words “body” and “temple” are singular. If he meant us to understand that each of us is an individual temple of the Holy Spirit, surely he would have written “Don’t you know that your bodies are the temples.” Instead, he writes “your body is the temple.” In other words, “the body you all form together is the temple of the Holy Spirit.”
This isn’t too far-fetched because it agrees with comments he makes elsewhere in this same letter. In 1 Corinthians 12, he likens believers to a single body with many members. While the Holy Spirit certainly inhabits each of us individually, it is as a corporate entity that we become a full-fledged temple for the Holy Spirit. It’s only when our many members cooperate as a single entity that we accomplish all the duties and responsibilities of either a temple or a tabernacle.
It’s in the midst of a congregation that I worship more fully than I do alone. And it’s the family by my side that keeps me from getting discouraged or overwhelmed when tending to the needs of the household that makes up our temple.
Challenges of Being One Temple
Which brings us to the challenges of living in a many-membered temple. We form a home where dust will keep falling and food isn’t going to prepare itself. As such, we can expect to endure the inconvenience and upheaval of upgrades and remodels to the temple as our family continues to expand. Where the less mature among us learn from bigger brothers and sisters and each member contributes to the whole.
This is where a temple requires its separate stones to fit more tightly together than mortar could possibly hold them, because even the most normal of family tensions can threaten the peace of any home. Which means patience will be required to keep even the many sheets of a tabernacle’s tent together.
But Paul provides yet another grammatical encouragement in his letter. He uses what’s called the present indicative tense. This signifies an action that is ongoing, or habitual.
Therefore, we not only are the temple, we are continuing to be the temple. We, the many members of a single body are developing the habit of being one, unified temple of the Holy Spirit. Through practice and patient endurance we can learn how to become the a many-membered body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
And then he can truly be Emanuel—God with us, not just God with me.
Want to learn more about the tabernacle in particular? Check out my devotional, A Place for Me in God’s Tent.
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