Your body needs rebuilding

I failed to get to church yesterday, which has left me feeling decidedly ill at ease. I miss the shared fellowship that comes from being stood with other Christians singing, praying and being challenged by God's word.

As a result, I committed to reading the evening service passages last night and briefly meditating on them, particularly as my close friend had preached at the evening service, so I was curious. I was quite struck how much jumped at me from Haggai 1:13-2:9, John 2:13-22, and 1 Corinthians 3:10-17.

Jesus is our temple (Jn 2:21). We do not, like the Jews, go to a physical temple made by hands. We worship Jesus, our holy place.

Yet, we believe that Jesus is in us (Col. 1:27) and we are in Jesus (Col. 3:3; Eph. 1:7).

Following the logic on, it then stands to reason that we are temples, if Jesus (our temple) is in us.

Now let's pause for a moment. I've heard this dozens of times...we are God's temple...blah blah blah...but what real significance does/should this make?

Firstly, we are made for the worship of God (Eph. 1:12). I consider this to be quite a profound thought, which does stand at odds with the randomness of evolution. I do not believe we are accidentally residents on earth, but made by God, for a reason - worship.

Secondly, in order to worship we are designed, if you will, to act as temples regardless of what we specifically worship. We're made to seek out things to worship, which is why the ten commandments injunctions are relevant for all mankind, we all seek to worship - but do we worship God? Sadly, the Israellite's own history tells us what is to happen when a temple is given over to false worship (1 Cor. 10:7-8). Paul states that idols have no place in our temples (2 Cor. 2:16) but we allow idols to reign - whether money, power, emotions, clothes, our family, our ambitions... Secondly, our temple is made unclean through sexual immorality (1 Cor. 6:19).

And here comes the clever theology...

We are temples, but like the temple in the Old Testament, we are given over to idolatry and all manner of sinful behaviours which make the temple both invalid (as a place of worship to God) and unclean (they could not be used for real worship even if purposed to be such). As a result, the only just thing to do with the temple - destroy it. The Babylonian exile speaks of our exile from God as humanity - both individually and corporately we have polluted our temples and God has declared that we should die (Romans 3:23). We retreat from this truth, but it seems quite stark. We are made to be places of worship, carrying around with us God's holy presence, but through our idolotrous and immoral behaviour we cease to be set apart, we cease to be holy and when this happens God retreats.

However, the return from exile includes important prefiguring: the temple can be rebuilt (and it is promised to be more splendid than the one that preceded it (Hag. 2:9)), and the temple, once rebuilt needs to be cleansed.

This is where Jesus comes in.

Jesus body is a temple, and as an untainted body, when he suffers the punishment (exile) we deserve (death) the temple is rebuilt (resurrection). However, unlike the second temple (which was not actually as grand as the first (Ezra 3:12)) Jesus resurrection body is a rebuild on quite a different scale. Furthermore, God promises that if we believe in Jesus - accept him as Lord and Saviour - God no longer sees us as ourselves alone with our broken temple, but he sees Jesus in us and us in Jesus with a temple that is holy and righteous, both clean and holy.

Which is why Paul is so unraged at the sin which threatens to pollute the new temple in us.

- Do I commit sins of idolatry?
- Do I commit sins of sexual immorality?

In our resurrection bodies we will worship Jesus forever.
In my current fallen body I can taste this in advance as I worship God and live a life of service.
Sin seeks to dominate, indeed Satan longs to cause our current temple to fall into ruin, into disrepair, and in time to be destroyed - he seeks my daily death.

I in turn am forced on God's grace which welcomes me to a daily return from exile, to a daily resurrection of the temple.