“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #28
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16).
Paul here uses an image he will return to later in this letter. What is striking here is that he is describing the temple of God as being made up of these Christians corporately. He uses the plural—you, all of you together, make up the one temple of God. This temple has been consecrated by the Spirit of God who dwells in our corporate midst. In other words, individual Christians are individual bricks, stones and pillars—or, returning to his earlier example, gold, silver, or precious stones. To take the image that Peter uses, these stones are alive; they are living stones. The temple is made up of living gold, living silver, and living jewels.
There are two aspects of this that a wise master builder should pay attention to. First, he should not seek to build with the wood, hay and stubble of dead things. There are ways to measure success that the world uses that have nothing to do with how God measures it. Fame, buildings, wealth, and so on look permanent to some people, but they are just so much smoke. Do not build a ministry out of dead things. But the second aspect of this is that we should not seek to build a ministry out of dead people either. The Word of God constantly points to the absolute necessity of the new birth. How could the Spirit of life possibly indwell a house made out of dead souls? He is the Spirit of life.