1st Corinthians 3 - The Temple of God

1st Corinthians 3:16-17 - ^"16Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? ¹⁷If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple."

^"16Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" - As a body of believers, we all form the church (God's temple) and God's Spirit lives in each and every one of us when we are baptized (Acts 2:38).

As the church we gather weekly to worship God. We the people are the church - not the building. The building was, is, and will always be just a tool for reaching others. The true church is the gathering of believers - in, or out of a building. Together, we are the temple of God.

^"17If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple." - This is a very important concept to grasp. God loves his church. In Scripture, the church is referred to as the bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7).

I love my wife more than anything but God. If someone came to my house and tried to destroy my wife, I would absolutely want to destroy them. God loves his church so much that He sent Jesus to give His life for it. He sacrificed His only Son so that His church could have life.

If anyone destroyed the church, Scripture tells us clearly that God will destroy that person because the church is sacred to God.

The word "sacred" comes from the Latin root of the word sacrare. The basic meaning when you boil everything down is this - "set apart, made holy." God has set his church apart from everything else and made it holy through the blood of Jesus.

So that begs the question, how do you stop from destroying the church? Well, to answer that, the only things that would destroy a church are divisiveness and blasphemy. I have seen church members split a church over things as simple as decorations in the church. God hates when the church fights amongst itself because it throws us off mission from what we're supposed to be doing.

Blasphemy, we understand, because that is all about speaking out against the church and against God, but sometimes, we can be guilty of a divisive nature against Scripture and against the church. We have to stay away from doing that. We need to remember that the church is "sacrare", it is set apart and made holy by God and we should be building the church up, not tearing it down.

Remember, we are the temple of God and God loves us more than anything.