1 Corinthians 3:16

THE TEMPLE OF GOD

‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and than the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’

1 Corinthians 3:16

Not only does the Holy Ghost come to convict of sin, not only does He come to lead us into the path of righteousness, but He dwells in us. And, therefore, the tremendous fact is this, that the Holy Ghost within me speaks to the Holy Ghost within you, and that both of us will have to render an account before the judgment-seat of God.

I. In one sense the earth itself is the temple of the Holy Ghost.—Half our difficulties in faith arise from forgetting that the earth itself is an expression of the Holy Spirit. The world is not a dead, pagan, unholy thing. That sunshine is an expression of His being; He lingered over that glorious lily; those roses He thought of; He is the Spirit of order Who made the world. And it is not only that the idea of the earth as the temple of the Lord is an inspiring thought, but it is so helpful. Have you never felt any difficulty about the Incarnation? Have you never thought it was almost too good to be true, that the Son of God came down and took human flesh? But what if it is God’s world to start with? What if human flesh is a holy thing, which it is? There is no such thing as the purely secular when we understand the world. It is God’s world. ‘God’s in His heaven’—God is in His earth—‘all’s right with the world.’ And, therefore, it helps me with the Incarnation. He came into His own world; and so, when the Holy Spirit came, He came down upon the earth which He had made. It is most striking to-day, and I like to help the thinking men who may be among us and who study these things. Have you ever noticed how the philosophers and thinkers of the world are coming round to this truth to-day? I can remember when the fashionable philosophy of the day was what is called materialism; materialism is out of date to-day. Even though they have not reached our full truth—that the Holy Spirit is the centre of everything—you find advanced thinkers (I could mention some of their names) to-day who begin to tell us that spirit is the only reality; that matter is a form of spirit, and that the spiritual world is the only real world. How the children of God come to their own, if they only wait! It is what we said years ago. And therefore the thought—the first thought before we get to even more intimate truths—that the earth itself is an expression of the Spirit of God wonderfully helps the spiritual life. Are we surprised that the dead body of Jesus Christ was raised from the dead? But what if the flesh itself, what if the body itself, was a spiritual thing?

II. The Church is a body which the Holy Spirit fills.—‘Ye are the temple of God’—the whole of you. Do you remember how the waiting Church waited as silently as you wait—timid, irresolute, cold—when with tongues of fire and sudden rushing wind down came the Holy Ghost upon that waiting Church, and has never gone back? And while we are accustomed to the thought that the Church exists for you and me, have you never thought that you and I exist for the Church? That the Holy Spirit’s great office is to prepare a bride for Christ?

III. ‘The Spirit of God dwelleth in you.’—Do you see what it means? That behind the outer court of the temple, which is your body, behind even the holy place, which is your soul, in the inner holy of holies of your being, the Holy Ghost lives—except ye be reprobate. ‘The Holy Spirit is in you,’ says St. Paul, ‘except ye be reprobate.’ Have you never felt some still, small voice speaking within you? That was the Holy Spirit’s voice pleading with your conscience. You know that the flesh lusteth against the spirit, but do we all realise that the spirit lusteth against the flesh? that we cannot be quite happy if there is an impulse uncrushed yet within us that cries aloud for good, that draws us towards better things, that stirs us up, which prevents us being really happy in our sin? Oh, for God’s sake do not choke it down. That is the Holy Dove of God struggling, pleading still within you.

IV. What effect, if this is so, ought the Holy Ghost to be having over spirit, over mind, and over body, as He dwells in the holy of holies behind the body, behind the mind, and behind the spirit?

(a) What effect upon the body? The body is a holy thing—there is nothing wrong in the body. Jesus Christ wore the body without a touch of sin. Do not lay the blame on the body. Passions, instincts of the body, are planted there by God. The body is a holy thing, but there is all the difference between a man on a horse with the reins in his hands and the bit in the horse’s mouth and that same man with the reins round his feet dragging him in the dust. That is the difference between the man or woman whose body is ruled by the Spirit and the man who has let his passions master him and drag him into the dust. The body, like the horse, is a splendid servant, but a terrible master.

(b) What effect will it have upon the mind if the Spirit dwells within us? You cannot indulge those bad and wicked thoughts; you cannot harbour that jealousy which you brought to church with you; you cannot go back and carry on that bitter quarrel if the Holy Spirit is going to rule your life. Yield to those better, gentler feelings; to ‘whatsoever things are pure, lovely, and of good report.’ Let your mind dwell on these alone; that is what the Spirit is putting into your mind; not the wicked, jealous, angry, bitter thoughts.

(c) What effect will it have upon the spirit? How earnest will be our prayers if, in the holy of holies, our spirit dwells with God. There will be no forgetfulness of prayer; no cold, half-hearted petitions. If the Holy Spirit of God dwells in the holy of holies with my spirit, then how I shall pray for others! Then how earnest will be my prayers; then I shall say, ‘Come, Holy Ghost, my soul inspire, pray with me, give me the words, the thoughts, to pray.’ That will be the effect of the Holy Spirit dwelling within me.

—Bishop A. F. Winnington-Ingram.

Illustrations

(1) ‘Here is one of those inspirations about the earth which that wonderful poet, Browning, has put into the lips of a little maiden, “Pippa,” as she “Passes” in the early morning:—

The year’s at the spring

And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God’s in His heaven—

All’s right with the world!

That maiden’s spring song is full of a glorious truth. Our earth, our world, is part of the mind of the Spirit.’

(2) ‘ “There was a poor girl lying on her back,” said the Bishop of London, “whom I used to visit every week in my first curacy, and it used to puzzle her and those who watched her, why she was allowed to lie like that for over fifteen years, I think it was. (I was only there for a year or two, she lay years before I went and years after I left.) Why was she allowed to lie there year after year, month after month, in constant pain? I found a reading which comforted her more than anything in Bishop Walsham How’s book Pastor in Parochia. It was about the stonemason’s shop; how the stonemason takes his chisel and works away at the stone day after day, with very little apparent result at first, but he is getting it ready for a place in his building, and the more time he spent upon the stone the more beautiful a place it is going to have. That taught her that she existed for the Church, for the temple; that it was not waste of time, her years of suffering and patience. She loved to think that the Master Builder was working away at her, and refining her, to make her more fit for a beautiful place in His temple.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT

The first visible fruit of the coming of the Holy Ghost was in the gift of tongues. It was the extraordinary, and not the ordinary, gift of the Holy Ghost, and we make a great mistake when we think that the extraordinary must of necessity be of more value, of greater worth, than the ordinary. The extraordinary gifts which appear from time to time in the New Testament have passed; do not envy them. The ordinary gift of the Holy Ghost—that remains with us, and that is of much higher value than the extraordinary.

What is the ordinary gift? It is the gift of spiritual power. ‘Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.’ That is the Master’s promise, and they were to wait for it. Of this other gift of languages He said nothing—only of the more precious gift, the gift of the power from on high.

I. It is the power of the Holy Spirit which takes hold of our understanding.—The Holy Spirit entering into our soul, making the body and the soul His temple and dwelling within us, comes as an added strength to our understanding, raising our understanding, so that it can not only deal with the things that it sees, but rise to the height of faith, giving a new power of faith, and opening our eyes to see the true bearing and meaning of the words of the Lord, and of the acts of the Lord. All that He has done and said for our own soul needs a key. There the words lie on the page, and they are like a locked room. It is the Holy Spirit Who can come and open those words for our understanding, according to the promise of the Lord: ‘When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.’ Remember, the words of the Lord are only to be understood by the help and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

II. The Holy Spirit comes and brings power or brings strength to our own heart and to our own affections, and teaches a man, and helps a man to hate what is hateful, and to love what is good and what is true. The Holy Spirit dwells within our hearts and puts in them that double faculty of the appreciation of what is good, the love of what is good, and the renunciation and hatred of what is evil.

III. The Holy Spirit, entering into our hearts, finds His way into our will—our will which has been weakened by self-indulgence and self-pleasing—and puts new strength into that will, and gives to us what He gave to the Apostles at that time—new heart and new courage to face the difficulties before them. The coming of the Holy Ghost made of these men, who were cowards, heroes and martyrs. One after another, these men who had denied their Master, after the coming of the Holy Ghost, laid down their lives. The strength of the martyrs is the witness of the power of the Holy Ghost, just as all the most beautiful things which have been written and thought are the gifts of the Holy Ghost. And all true love of God and man is an outcome of that Holy Spirit Who has made the soul His temple and resting-place.

—Rev. E. F. Russell.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE SUBJECTION OF THE BODY

There are fallacies by which men often deceive themselves into luxurious life. God made my nature, they say; God made my passions, my instincts, my body; God spread this fair world around me, and may I not use it? There is something so plausible in that that it is the fallacy by which again and again men deceive themselves. God made my nature—yes, but

I. He impressed a law on my nature, the same law that He has impressed upon the whole of His creation, and that is the great law of sacrifice. I am to use the material world in which He placed me, I am to use my body, with all its capacities and powers, but I am to use them in obedience to that law, seeing that I never make the material thing, the dead piece of matter, an end, an object of pursuit in itself, but always make matter the obedient minister of spirit, and seeing that it is ever rising up through me to God. And so stamped upon creation, when we look it in the face, is this great law of sacrifice; and when we are bidden remember that our bodies are the temples of God, that is no arbitrary command laid on us; we are only thereby bid to remember that we are part and parcel, and the crowning part and parcel, of the whole material creation, that part of it through which it rises into articulate expression in the spirit of man, and is able to praise the God Who made it. And it is in that deep sense that we are the priests of creation, we gather the lower world into ourselves, and through ourselves we raise it up and offer it back to God Who made it. And through us the whole family of the material world is capable of becoming the minister of spirit.

II. That then is why luxury, the misuse of the material world, is wrong; it is a counterworking of the laws of creation, it is using matter down, down to the dust, instead of to lift us up to God; it is misusing the whole of this creation in which God has placed us. And the thing which you can see to be the misuse and contravention of the Divine law is surely a very terrible thing. By looking at luxury in this way I do not minimise its dangers; no, you see rather how deeply rooted in the very nature of the world this will be if it is a contravention of the law of God.

III. And its results are commensurate with the deepness of its evil.—Think of what luxury does for men; think how it blinds the spirit; take luxury in its lower forms, the deliberate life of pleasure lived on year after year, the deliberate pursuit of money for its own sake, any of those grosser forms of the life of luxury, see what they do for the spirit. Let a man live in them for years, and he can no longer see God; he no longer believes that there is a God; gradually but certainly they darken the spiritual vision till at last the luxurious life ends in blindness. And possibly there is even a worse thing than blindness—hardness of heart. And think what love is in human life, think what it can do for human life, think how it glorifies human life; and is there any one thing that man can do which more kills love than to lead the life of luxury? Slowly as it grows upon you it hardens the heart, it lowers love from its spiritual down to an earthly nature, and gradually it kills it out of the heart; all the finer feelings and sensibilities and emotions die, and love passes over into its own deadly opposite of cruelty.

When luxury and the life of luxury has had its perfect fruit, it is then the contravention of Divine law stamped upon the world; it blinds the spirit, it hardens the heart, it destroys the temple which should be the temple of the Spirit of God.

Rev. Canon Illingworth.

Illustration

‘Consider the principle upon which the sinfulness of luxury rests; people often rest it upon inadequate principles; they think that they may be luxurious, for example, if it does not hurt other people, and so forth; but all those imperfect reasons do not root the thing out from your heart. There is a deep principle in the very creation which makes luxury a sin. Luxury is the misuse of the material world; and in what does that consist? We misuse the material world directly we make it an end in itself, an object of pursuit for its own sake, instead of a minister and a means to something higher.’