Another Temple Thought

Okay, so I just had another thought immediately after that last post. If our bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit (and in a different way for our spirits--that is they are the houses in which or spirits dwell), then Jesus' comment of John 2 is extremely apt. When asked by the Jews for a sign of His authority, Jesus responds "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). The Jews get angry because they spent forty six years building their temple and Jesus has just claimed that He could do it in three days. However, John points out that Jesus is actually talking about something else altogether: "But he spake of the temple of his body" (John 2:21).

If our bodies can in any way be considered temples, then certainly Jesus' was. Our bodies house our eternal spirits, and when we are worthy they can house the Holy Spirit (When we're unworthy, we provide a dwelling place for a very different sort of spirit (Matt 12: 43-5)). But Christ's body didn't just house any spirit, it housed the Great Spirit, the Spirit of Jehovah. It was to this same Jehovah that the Jews built their temple as a house for His unembodied spirit. No wonder Jesus called His body a temple. In many ways, it was a truer temple than the House which the Jews had built, but which had begun to fall into apostasy. Jesus' words proved prophetic. The Jews did destroy the temple of His body, and He did raise it up in three days. It is interesting to note that not long after the Jews rejected and destroyed the temple of Jesus' body, the temple at Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Rejection of the Lord's earthly tabernacle and the Spirit that dwelt therein prefigured the destruction and "desolation" (Luke 13:35) of what once had been the House of the Lord, but which had merely become the temple of the Jews.