A Dwelling In Which God Lives
We are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people”.
2 Corinthians 6:16
Temples don’t mean much to twenty-first-century Christians. Most of us worship God in places that have little in common with the temples of antiquity.
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To understand more fully what Paul’s temple metaphor means, we need to be “time travelers”—we need to put ourselves in the historical context of Paul and his audience.
Travel back in time with Alfred Edersheim as he shows us how one old temple ceremony perfectly pictured the new temple made up of Christ and those on whom he has poured living water.
WALK WITH ALFRED EDERSHEIM
“When the water was being poured out, the temple music began. When the choir sang ‘Hosanna, Lord,’ all the worshipers shook their palms towards the altar. One year, on the last day of the feast (after the priest had poured out the water and the interest of the worshipers had been raised to its highest pitch), a voice resounded through the temple from amidst the mass of people chanting and shaking a forest of leafy branches. It was Jesus, who stood and cried, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink … Rivers of living water will flow from within them’ (John 7:37-38). The effect was instantaneous. Suddenly roused by being face to face with him in whom every type and prophecy is fulfilled, many said, ‘Surely this man is the Prophet’ (John 7:40).
“When the crowd from Jerusalem took palm branches and went out to meet him shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ (Matthew 21:9), they applied to Christ one of the chief ceremonies of the feast. They were praying that God through the Son of David would now send the salvation which was symbolized by the pouring out of water.”
WALK CLOSER TO GOD
In the Old Testament, the glory of the Lord filled the temple through the cloud. In the New Testament, God the Son fills the church—the new temple—through God the Holy Spirit. Paul expected that to energize the Corinthians to greater holiness. Wouldn’t he expect it to do the same for us?
