A Temple Must Be Kept Holy

Suppose a large bank asked to turn your house into one of its vaults, with millions of dollars stored in your living room.

What would happen to the security of your home?

No bank would say, “We are a modern bank, so relax, leave the front door unlocked, and let anyone wander in.” Steel doors would go in, cameras would go up, and alarms would be wired to every window. From the moment the vault moved in, your house would be held to the bank’s standard, not to yours. The presence of the treasure would raise everything.

The Verse on the Coffee Mug

Here is Paul’s sentence about the body, read in its setting:

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Or do you not know that your body is a naos ναός nah-os'(temple, inner-sanctuary) of the hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your pneuma(spirit), which are God's.

Paul was writing to Corinth, a busy port city with many temples to other gods. To believers in that city he wrote that the body is a naos, a sanctuary, of the Holy Spirit.

What makes it a sanctuary is nothing that people have built. The Spirit in it is the one “whom you have from God,” and the body itself was made by the One who made the world and everything in it. That is why Paul goes on to say, “you are not your own,” and “you were bought with a price.” The body belongs to God. And God, who chooses where He will dwell, has chosen to dwell there.

Paul says the same thing about the whole community:

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 Do you not know that you are the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of God and the pneuma(spirit) of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of God, God will destroy that person; for the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of God is hagio(holy), and that is what you are.

And again in his second letter:

2 Corinthians 6:16-17 Or what agreement has the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of God with idols? For you are the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of the living God; just as God said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people." "Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate," says the Lord, "and do not touch what is akatharton(unclean); and I will welcome you."

Paul Was Quoting the Torah

When Paul says, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people,” he is not inventing a new idea. He is quoting a promise from the Torah:

Leviticus 26:11-12 And I will set My tabernacle (mishkan מִשְׁכָּן mish-kawn') in your midst, and My soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh) shall not abhor you. And I will walk about in your midst, and I will be to you for God, and you shall be to Me for a people.

And from the prophets:

Ezekiel 37:27 And my tabernacle (mishkan) shall be over them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

So when Paul says that the body is a temple, he is not saying that the temple has been abolished. He is saying that the promise of the Torah, “I will set My tabernacle (mishkan) in your midst … I will walk about in your midst,” is coming true before his eyes.

That is why the step from Paul’s words in Athens (Acts 17:24) to his words to Corinth (1 Corinthians 6:19) is not a “but.” It is a “therefore.” God is not held by buildings made with hands. Therefore He chooses where He will dwell, and therefore He has chosen to dwell in His people.

Therefore, Holy

The bank vault makes the point plain. A body that is a temple does not lower the standard. It raises it.

In the same chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul says:

1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee sexual immorality; every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

To the same church he wrote, “the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of God is hagio(holy), and that is what you are.” In the second letter he asks, “what agreement has the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of God with idols?” and then commands, “do not touch what is akatharton(unclean).” That last command is a quotation from Isaiah, and Isaiah was speaking to those who carried the vessels of the LORD:

Isaiah 52:11 Depart, depart, go out from there, touch no unclean thing; go out from her midst, be clean, you who bear the vessels of the LORD.

Paul is taking the purity that belonged to the temple in Jerusalem and carrying it into the daily life of every believer and every gathering. An idol had no place in the house of the LORD; when King Manasseh set a carved image there, Scripture called it evil in the eyes of the LORD. In the same way, no one may bring idolatry, sexual immorality, or anything unclean into the temple that is your body.

The Reversal

Here many readings go wrong. People hear “your body is a temple” and conclude that the temple’s rules of purity no longer apply. They treat the verse as a free pass.

But that turns Paul’s “therefore” upside down. Paul does not say, “Your body is a temple, therefore holiness is relaxed.” He says that your body is a temple, and then, “therefore glorify God in your body.” The text does not conclude that the standard is gone. It concludes that you must be holy.

When the vault moves in, the bank does not turn off the alarm. It turns it all the way up.

One Man, Two Statements

So far we have heard Paul say two things. In Athens he said that God does not dwell in temples made with hands. To Corinth he wrote that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. If those two sentences meant that the temple in Jerusalem was finished, we would expect Paul himself to live as though it were.

Paul’s own travels show whether he did.