1 Corinthians 3:17

‘WHICH TEMPLE YE ARE’

‘For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.’

1 Corinthians 3:17

That each one of you is a ‘temple,’ we have St. Paul’s own authority. ‘Know ye not that your body’—each body in itself individually—‘your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?’ The thought seems to be too wonderful to be true. ‘What! my poor, vile body “a temple”?’ God has said it. And when you die, that body will still be the ruin of a temple. Treat it sacredly!

I. If you ask when you were made a temple, I say, at your baptism. But this consecration is not once only; it is often repeated. By your birth you were God’s. By your baptism you were sealed to be God’s. And by your spiritual birth—whenever that birth was, whether at baptism, or subsequently—whenever the Holy Ghost worked in you consciously, and you, by your own act, made yourself His, and you felt His power and grace in you—then you became, on your part, what you were before on His part, God’s very own. You are His special dwelling-place, ‘His temple.’ So that the date of the process with most of us is fivefold—Birth, Baptism, Conversion, Confirmation, Holy Communion. Thus consecrated, not by man, nor for man, but for the Holy Ghost, you became ‘a temple’; and your ‘body’ is the holy place, and your soul is ‘the holy of holies.’

II. Now carry out this thought to some of its legitimate and necessary conclusions, and see its grand, its awful, its blessed results.

(a) I see one of you mingling with common men, as a common man, in common intercourse. Is ‘the temple of God’ to be such a common thing as that?

(b) I see another demeaning and debasing his body and his mind for sheer worldliness—given to pleasure, to appetite, to money; and I hear the voice of Him Who walks in the temple say, ‘Take those things hence! Make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise!’

(c) I see another: he drinks, he profligates, he gives himself to unclean things. And I go to that unhappy man, and I say, ‘Do you know, do you remember, what you are? You are “a temple,” the temple of the living God! Is that public-house, is that wicked place a fit spot for you? Are these things fit for you? It is sacrilege! You are mixing God with devils! It is sacrilege! And hear what God says to you—who are drunken, who are profane, who are profligate—‘If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy!’

(d) I go to a darkened chamber, where a child of God lies sick and ill and sorrowing, longing, with earnest breast, for the courts of God’s house again, and all those sweet services which once it loved so well. ‘Oh! that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away, and be at rest’; and I say to that ‘prisoner of hope,’ ‘You are yourself the sanctuary. You sanctify the very couch you lie upon. For God is in you. You carry Him wherever you are. The services which go up from that dark sick room of yours will be to God as true and as acceptable (for God has placed you there) as if you were worshipping in the holiest fane. You are the temple.’

III. To every believer and every temple of God, what is the message?—You are named by a holy name. You are sanctified by the Holy Church—and by the Holy One. Be holy! Look well to it that the temple of your heart has all its parts: the porch of faith; the base of truth; the pillars of sound doctrine; the nave of love; the chancel of holiness; the pinnacles of heaven.

Illustration

‘Every Church has three parts—the outer, which is all the baptized, and which make the general congregation; the inner, the communicants; the innermost, the spiritual, the real spiritually-minded, which is the invisible Church—called “invisible” because only God can see its boundaries, and no human eye can detect who do belong to it and who do not. But the strength of the Church, the real proof of the Church, is the last. We should all be travelling from the font to the holy table; and from the holy table to heaven.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE CALL TO SEPARATION

The idea of a temple would be perfectly easy and simple to the Corinthians. But St. Paul puts it in a new way; he says, ‘The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.’

I. What we mean, he seems to say, by a temple is this: A temple has in it that Holy of Holies, that altar of incense and sacrifice; the Greek temple had its Holy of Holies, and he says now the Holy of Holies is a Christian soul, that is the dwelling-place of the Spirit of God; and he says the altar of incense is the Christian life, offered and dedicated to God; that instead of that architecture of Solomon or of Herod, instead of all the wood and stones that built up those old temples, now he says the temple of God is a spirit made conscious of its magnificent destiny as the dwelling-place of the Eternal, living out a life of high endeavour and lofty aspiration; striving, feebly enough it may be, but at least trying to reach in some sort of way the purity and holiness of which Jesus is the perfect pattern.

II. Another thought is that of standing apart from all that is low and mean and frivolous, all that is merely of the world worldly, and emphatically what is of sin, just as a great church towers in its magnificence above the meaner and obscurer buildings around. He tells us that if we are to be the temple of God we must be impressive as a temple of God is, as your temple of God is. There can be no one whose soul is so dim as not to be impressed by a great church. And as the great churches are impressive, so if we are the temples of God we are to be impressive too; impressive for God, impressive for truth, impressive for the honour of His name, reflecting some of the light that we trust we have received. And if we do reflect it we may be quite sure we are helping other people; because as it is true that you cannot touch pitch without being defiled, so it is equally true that goodness is contagious. You cannot live in a house with what we call Christian people, people of prayer, people of deep holiness, without being strengthened by the power of their goodness and devotion.

—Rev. H. Baron Dickinson.

Illustration

‘A temple is a place where God manifests Himself to man, and where man dedicates himself to God. And so it was that in that holy temple upon the hill of Sion there were two objects round which every rite and ceremony revolved, the Holy of Holies and the altar of incense and sacrifice. The Holy of Holies in which are the Shekinah, the mercy seat, God revealing Himself to man; the altar of incense and sacrifice on which man gave himself to God, in prayers which ascended like the burning fumes of incense, and with the blood of bulls and goats at God’s command.’