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A Temple

             Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. (I Corinthians 3:16-17)

 

            A temple is where a (supposed) god regularly meets man, a place of worship, sacrifice, judgment, and performance of duty. It’s also a place where others can see what the god associated with the temple is like – often because there is an image of the god there. What one generally doesn’t find there is anything that displeases the god. Jews used to burn human bones on altars to foreign gods so they couldn’t be used anymore. Other altars were set up in the temple in Jerusalem, and Antiochus Epiphanes sacrificed one or more pigs on the altar in Jerusalem, desecrating it.

            So, if you and I individually, or we collectively, are a temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in us, we must be a place in which worship, sacrifice, judgment, and performance of duty take place. For some, this tends to mean that other folks need to give up drinking, smoking, sleeping around, indulging in pornography, or taking drugs. Some would add using foul language, dancing, and playing cards or gambling to that list. And those who feel the sting of those judgments might justifiably point out the excesses of weight carried by those who make the long list. Suffice it to say that in any way that what is brought into your temple separates you from God or takes precedence over God, it desecrates your temple.

            But let’s consider it a little more closely. If you don’t do any of those things that actively desecrate the temple but don’t care for it, you’ll still destroy it. If you absent yourself from it or neglect it, you’re destroying it. You're still destroying the temple if you do all the right things but do them for the wrong reasons. You were made in the image of God, so the more you resemble God, the more your temple has an image that shows others what God is like. Similarly, the less resemblance you have to Him, the more you desecrate the temple. That’s why we need to be holy. 

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