1 Corinthians 3:16-23

When I was in grade school, fifth grade to be exact, I learned about the etymology of words. While I wasn't a particularly engaged student at that time, I was fascinated by this type of study. Digging into the deeper meaning or original meaning of words was exciting. (I know, some of you are gagging right now.)

The Scripture text today is about the temple. "Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?" (1 Corinthians 3:16). I dug into the word temple to see its origin.

I know that temple is used here to mean us, Christians; we are temples of the Holy Spirit, a place where the spirit of God dwells. This is really big stuff, not to be taken lightly! Temple comes from the root tem signifying cut; cut out of the blue heavens for sacred uses. We have been separated for a higher use, a dwelling for the Holy Spirit.

As temples we are also community, a Christian community where we are all drawn together as Christ's body on earth. The Life Application Commentary says, "Corinth boasted many pagan temples and shrines, but there was only one temple for God--the Corinthian Christians were it! We can say the same today. Because we as believers are a temple for the Holy Spirit we ought not cause division, because that destroys the temple.

To read the text for today go to Biblegate and 1 Corinthians 3:16-23