Defending God’s Temple

He leads me …

In 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 we read an interesting section of Scripture –

 “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone [a]defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. “(NKJV)

Footnotes:

a.     1 Corinthians 3:17 destroys

Verse 16 confirms what most of us already know. The temple of God is each one of us who are born again Christians, and the Holy Spirit lives in us. In God’s eyes we are justified by Jesus’ work on the cross. It is as if we had never sinned.

Now Paul is saying that if anyone defiles or as the footnote says – destroys us, God will destroy them. This is because what they have attacked is holy.

Let us dig a little deeper and see what the Amplified Bible says.

Do you not know and understand that you [the church] are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells [permanently] in you [collectively and individually]? If anyone destroys the temple of God [corrupting it with false doctrine], God will destroy the destroyer; for the temple of God is holy (sacred), and that is what you are.

Unfortunately, we probably all have instances in our lives where we have taken the fall out for church matters that went wrong and which were not our fault.

In my second book, BOOK TWO: Ways to be Guided by God and to Hear His Voice, there is the true story that I heard of from a woman I worked with of a ‘word of knowledge’. Her daughter had been given a word from her pastor that she was an unwanted child. This almost caused a split in the family because the daughter reacted badly to her mother as a result of what the pastor had said. The mother was devastated and tried to explain to her daughter that she really was a wanted child. The mother also said that God had blessed the conception by providing her daughter’s name prior to her birth.

The mother was not sure whether the pastor was trying to split the family because they did not all go to his church, or whether he was trying to control the daughter in some way, but it was very clear that he had severely strained the family’s relationships. There were also issues between the pastor and the congregation generally, and a few months after I was told this story, he left the church.

I accordance with the scripture above, the pastor ministry was finished.

But this does not mean that Christians can do anything they like, because they have God’s protection around them, or that anyone who touches them will be punished. If we read the words above carefully Paul says that ‘if anyone destroys the temple of God [corrupting it with false doctrine],’ they will be destroyed. Regrettably this includes people in the church too.

Then how do we know if the people we are dealing with each Sunday are real Christians? Jesus said twice in Matthew Chapter 7, ‘By their fruit you will know them.’ (NKJV) Or as another version says, ‘Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.’ Matthew 7:20 (NLT)

What is the fruit that we are looking for and are we producing ourselves?

But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. (Romans 6:22 NLT)

It is great to know that as we go through our Christian walk, the Lord will never leave us or abandon us.[1] And as another scripture says, this means He will be with us through our trials and misfortunes too.[2] Now we see that as we endeavour to do what we believe He is calling us to do, He is our passionate defender against those who try to come against us.[3] We don’t have Superman, the Flash, the Hulk or any of the other super heroes with amazing powers to defend us – we have someone way and beyond all of them put together. We have the Lord God Almighty as our defender! It can’t get any better than that.

[1] Hebrews 13:5

[2] Psalm 66:12, Isaiah 43:2

[3] Psalm 44:5, Isaiah 8:9-10