1 Corinthians 3:17

Again an asyndeton. 1 Corinthians 3:16 was the minor of the syllogism of which 1 Corinthians 3:17 is the major: “Ye are a temple...; he is destroyed who destroys a temple..., therefore...” The conclusion which is self-evident is understood.

The future φθερεῖ, shall destroy, is no doubt the true reading, though the present φθείρει might also be defended as the present of the idea, and consequently of certain realization. In 1 Corinthians 3:15, notwithstanding the loss of the reward (the ζημιοῦσθαι), the salvation of the workman was reserved; here, it is excluded. The punishment increases with the guilt: “As thou has treated the house of God, thou shalt be treated.” The Greco-Lat. reading, αὐτόν, him, emphasizes the identity of the man who has destroyed and who is destroyed. But the Alex. and Byz. reading, τοῦτον, him, this man, is at once better supported and more forcible.

The following proposition gives us to know the wherefore of this severe treatment; the dignity of the building to which this sacrilegious workman does violence. The force of the proof rests on the attribute ἅγιος, holy. What is holy, that is to say, consecrated to God, partakes of the inviolability of God Himself.

The apostle finding it superfluous to enunciate the conclusion in full, contents himself with suggesting it by the last words: “a holy temple, which ye are.” The plural pronoun οἵτινες is a case of attraction from the following ὑμεῖς. This relative pronoun of quality is to be connected not with ναός only, nor with ἅγιος only, but with the entire phrase, ναὸς ἅγιος, holy temple.

To what persons did this warning and threatening apply? Evidently to those who had laboured at Corinth in such a way that they had ended with disorganizing the Church, poisoning its religious and moral life, and compromising the Divine work so happily begun and carried forward in that great city. Here it is, as it seems to me, that we find the full explanation of the end of chap. 2, where Paul spoke of the psychical or natural man, distinguishing him from the yet carnal Christian (1 Corinthians 3:1-4). The majority of the Church of Corinth belonged to the second category; but there was certainly a minority in it whom the apostle ranked in the first. It was they whom he had in view in the last two so severe verses of chap. 2: the man who has only his natural understanding; and it is to them he returns in the verses immediately following, where he again, as in chap. 1, puts worldly wisdom on its trial. We have already said: these various passages, as it seems to us, can only concern those of Christ, as they are unmasked in the Second Epistle. But why does the apostle address this warning not to the guilty themselves, but to the Church: “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God,” and all that follows? It is because he wishes to excite the whole Church to a holy indignation, and to call forth within it a vigorous reaction against the authors of these troubles; comp. the appeal to the vigilance of believers, Philippians 3:2: “Beware of evil workers.” In the following verses, Paul shows the source of the evil, as he had already pointed it out in chap. 1, in order to open the eyes of both.