Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
You Are God's Temple
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
16 Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? · WEB
The building under construction turns out to be a temple, and the people wrecking it with their factions are warned in the strongest terms in the letter.
Don't you know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 1 Corinthians 3:16.
The first of the letter's ten reproachful questions 1 Corinthians 5:6 1 Corinthians 6:2 1 Corinthians 6:19 1 Corinthians 9:24, and it lands the building image on its real subject. The structure being erected on the foundation of Christ is not a general institution; it is a temple, and the pronoun is plural throughout. The congregation together is the sanctuary. In a city of temples this is a considerable claim: the real dwelling of God in Corinth was a group of mostly unimpressive people 1 Corinthians 1:26 who owned no building at all.
And the reason it is a temple is stated: God's Spirit lives in you. What made the tabernacle and Solomon's house holy was never the architecture but the presence Exodus 40:34 1 Kings 8:10–11; the same logic transfers. Paul will apply the identical image to the individual body later, for a different purpose 1 Corinthians 6:19 — here it is corporate, because the sin in view is corporate.
If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is holy, which you are 1 Corinthians 3:17.
The severest warning in the letter, and its placement is what gives it force. This is not aimed at persecutors from outside or at heretics denying the foundation. It comes at the end of a passage about factions 1 Corinthians 3:3–4 and party loyalty to favorite teachers. Splitting a church is here classified as vandalizing a sanctuary, and the sentence matches the crime word for word — destroy, and be destroyed.
The logic is drawn from the law of the sanctuary rather than asserted. Under the covenant, holy things were dangerous to handle carelessly; the temple's holiness protected it, and violation carried a penalty Leviticus 10:1–2 2 Samuel 6:6–7. The final clause makes the transfer explicit: God's temple is holy, which you are. What people were treating as a club to be organized by preference is under that protection.
It is worth noticing how far this is from how church conflict is usually assessed. The Corinthians presumably thought of their parties as vigorous disagreement among people with strong opinions about good teachers. Paul thinks of it as demolition work on holy ground — which is why the chapter turns immediately to the self-deception that makes it possible: let no one deceive himself 1 Corinthians 3:18.
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