Temples of the Holy Spirit

In John 2. 13-22 Jesus cleanses the Temple but then says that the new Temple is his body which is shortly to die and be raised to life again after three days.

The physical Temple was destroyed in AD70 by the Romans, as Jesus had prophesied, and this left Jews and Christians with a dilemma; where to worship now the focus of worship had been removed. Jews solved this problem by making synagogues the heart of Judaism while Christians understood that, as the church is the body of Christ, the Holy Spirit lives in us, as in Jesus’ physical body, and so we too are temples of the Holy Spirit.

We see this teaching worked out and applied by Paul in 1 Corinthians 6. 13b – 20 where he ends by saying: “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.”

If we are now God’s temple because he lives in us by his Holy Spirit, then says Paul, there is another cleansing that needs to go on. Our bodies, our lives need to be made into a fit dwelling place for the Spirit of God. Our lives need to become houses of prayer not a den of thieves and that means that they need to be cleansed of all that is wrong, sinful or unholy and used for the glory of God.

Lent is an opportunity for us to reflect both on the wonderful privilege of being a body, a life, a person where God lives by his Spirit and a time for reflecting on the tremendous responsibility of being a temple of the Holy Spirit.

In what ways do our lives need cleansing? Do our lives resemble a ‘market place’ or a ‘house of prayer’? Can we use Lent as a time to give our temple of God’s Spirit a full and proper spring clean driving out by prayer and fasting all that is sinful in our lives and committing ourselves to hallowing our lives through prayer and sacrifice as we follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

“Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.”

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Michelle Shocked - Quality of Mercy.