WE ARE THE TEMPLE OF GOD
by Tim Thomas
December 11, 2005
Ephesian 2:19-22
Amplified Bible
5Arthur S. Way, The Letters of St. Paul to Seven Churches and Three Friends. aaIsa. 57:19.
19Therefore you are no longer outsiders (exiles, migrants, and aliens, excluded from the rights of citizens), but you now share citizenship with the saints (God's own people, consecrated and set apart for Himself); and you belong to God's [own] household.
20You are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself the chief Cornerstone.
21In Him the whole structure is joined (bound, welded) together harmoniously, and it continues to rise (grow, increase) into a holy temple in the Lord [a sanctuary dedicated, consecrated, and sacred to the presence of the Lord].
22In Him [and in fellowship with one another] you yourselves also are being built up [into this structure] with the rest, to form a fixed abode (dwelling place) of God in (by, through) the Spirit.
New International Version
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
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As you should be able to tell from my writing, I have a tendency to iterpret Scripture from the perspective of how it speaks to my relationship with God. To that extent, I have an individualistic faith. Much of Scripture, however, was meant to be interpreted collectively, as here in verses 20 to 22. Other places in the New Testament speak of an individual believer being a temple of God, and that is true (see John 14:23; 15:4-5; 1 Corinthians 6:19). In these verses we are looking at, the Apostle Paul is referring to the collective Church as being the temple.
These verses tell us that the work of building the Temple is not yet complete -- it is an ongoing project. This not only implies that the number of the Church is being added to everyday, but more to the point, that each of us are being worked on so that we can form the parts of the Temple that we are meant to be. It also means that we collectively are being fashioned to fit together. If you think of us as being stones for the Temple, we all have rough edges that need to be chipped away, so that we can rest on other stones, and other stones can rest on us. I do not want to take the analogy too far, because rough-edged stones imply that we are sitting apart from the Temple so that the Workman can work on us, and the truth is that we are already integrated into the Temple, but the Workman is still able to mold us in place.
Jesus has the important position in the Temple of being chief cornerstone. That means Jesus is obviously the critical piece. However, it also implies that Jesus is so identified with us that He is part of us -- the Temple -- not someone who is separate from us. Sometimes we take such a high or holy view of God that we cannot fathom Him being intimately entwined with us. But in this analogy, Jesus is one of us, though clearly the leader. In Colossians 1:18, the Church is said to be the Body, and Jesus is the Head. Still, a headless body is without life, but so is a head without a body.
In this analogy that Paul is making, he also mentions the apostles and prophets who form the foundation of the Temple. Perhaps you haven't given it much thought, but the apostles and prophets who wrote the Bible and who structured the first century Church performed an amazing function that we could not live with as believers today. We have so much diversity, and a fair amount of conflict, within the Church today, and we all have the Bible to at least put some bounds on this diversity. While I think diversity is good, you can imagine that if we did not have the Bible, we would have disunity to the point that you could not discern a Temple or Body.
I certainly believe in the ministry gifts listed in Ephesians 4. With the existence of present-day apostles and prophets, one wonders whether this verse speaks to them, or not. If it does, it tells us that they still provide a foundation on which the rest of believers are built. My gut feeling is that while the role of apostles and prophets is important at every point in time, this verse is primarily speaking to the role of apostles and prophets in establishing the church in the first century.
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