You Are the Temple of God: Understanding Our Sacred Identity

The Stunning Truth About Ordinary Believers

Walk into any church on a Sunday morning and look around. What do you see? If we’re honest, most of us are pretty ordinary folks, not particularly impressive in earthly terms, lacking any supernatural glow that makes us appear especially godly or spiritual. We’re just regular people, and often our gathering places are modest as well.

Yet Scripture asserts something truly stunning about this ordinary gathering of believers: collectively, we are the temple of God on earth.

This isn’t merely a doctrine to believe because the Bible teaches it. It’s a reality with profound implications for how we understand ourselves and treat one another. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, doesn’t just declare this truth. He works to apply it to the kinds of issues the church at Corinth was facing, issues not unlike what we wrestle with today (1 Cor 3:16–17).

From Eden to Eternity: The Biblical Story of God’s Presence

To truly appreciate how glorious this identity is, we need to understand it within the broader biblical story of God’s presence on earth. Some theologians argue this is actually the main theme of Scripture: the truth that unifies everything in God’s Word (see, for example, J. Scott Duvall and J Daniel Hays, God’s Relational Presence: The Cohesive Center of Biblical Theology).

The foundation was laid in Genesis, where the Garden of Eden served as a kind of prototype of later sacred spaces. It was there that God manifested His presence, descending in the cool of the day so Adam and Eve could interact personally with Him (Gen 3:8). Though they forfeited that privilege through sin, God continued giving glimpses of restored fellowship to select individuals like the patriarchs.

The manifestation of God’s presence reaches a high point in Exodus, where God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt had a deeper purpose than freedom from slavery. The Lord repeatedly declared His intention: “I’m doing this so that you may know me . . . that I might dwell among you” (e.g., Exod 29:45–56). The meticulous care given to every detail of the tabernacle’s construction reflected this reality. This wasn’t just a fancy tent—it was the house of Yahweh on earth.

The climax came when the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle so powerfully that Moses couldn’t even enter (Exod 40:34–35). About five hundred years later, this scene repeated itself when Solomon consecrated his grander temple, declaring it “a place for you to dwell in forever” (1 Kings 8:13).

But things went sour. The glory departed the temple in Ezekiel’s vision as judgment approached (Ezek 8–11), and the Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s temple. Was this the end of God’s presence among His people?

No! In fact, in a later vision Ezekiel sees a temple where Yahweh would once again dwell (Ezek 43:7). After the exile the temple is rebuilt, and Haggai and Zechariah speak much of God’s plan for dwelling on earth more fully in the future.

The Ultimate Temple

We learn more about God’s dwelling with humanity when we read about the incarnation. As John’s Gospel declares, “The word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Literally, He tabernacled among us. Jesus set up in His own person the dwelling place of God on earth, becoming the ultimate temple, the manifestation of God’s presence through whom alone people can access the Father.

Yet even this seemed temporary. Jesus departed to heaven, and the physical temple was destroyed again by the Romans about forty years later. What happened to the biblical story of God’s presence on earth?

The answer lies in promises Jesus gave in the Upper Room Discourse: though He was leaving, He was sending the Holy Spirit as His personal representative, mediating God’s presence by taking up residence within His disciples (John 14:16–18). This is why Jesus could end the Great Commission with the assurance, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

The Present Reality

This brings us back to Paul’s declaration to the Corinthians and to us. When he asked, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor 3:16), he wasn’t speaking to individuals about their personal bodies (that comes later in chapter six). He was addressing the church corporately, using plural constructions. In Southern English, we might translate it: “Don’t y’all know that y’all are the sanctuary of God?”

The word Paul chose for temple is particularly significant. Rather than using the term for the entire temple complex, he used the word for the inner sanctuary: the unique location believed to be the actual dwelling place of the God being worshiped.

Consider how revolutionary this would have sounded to the Corinthians. Here was a motley crew of people, many of whom would have been marginalized by their culture. Jews and Greeks who typically hated each other, rich and poor who usually avoided one another, freemen and slaves, men and women—all brought together despite their socioeconomic differences. They worshiped the same Messiah who had been executed on a cross, gathering in humble circumstances with no ornate building, no sacrificial system, no visually dazzling rituals.

And yet Paul tells them: “You people, this humble group of unimpressive believers, this random collection of nobodies in the world’s eyes, you are nevertheless the sanctuary of God. You are the present installment of this grand theme of God’s presence on earth.”

The Sobering Application

But Paul doesn’t stop with this magnificent truth. He immediately applies it to the specific problem plaguing the Corinthian church: division. These believers were splitting into cliques based on surface issues and worldly values— preferring one preacher’s rhetorical style over another’s, dividing over stylistic preferences, allowing personality differences to fracture their fellowship.

Paul’s response is sobering: “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him” (1 Cor 3:17a).

What does it mean to destroy God’s temple? You don’t need spray paint, sledgehammers, or bulldozers like you would if the temple were something physical. You can desecrate the temple through your attitudes, your words, and the way you treat fellow believers. When we pit one church leader against another, gossip about church members, make light of others’ convictions, grow impatient with people’s idiosyncrasies, refuse to seek or grant forgiveness, or blast fellow believers in online debates—we’re potentially destroying the temple of God.

This doesn’t contradict Jesus’ promise that the gates of hell won’t prevail against the church (Matt 16:18). That blessed assurance refers to the church universal throughout history. Yet individual assemblies—local manifestations of God’s temple—can indeed be damaged or even destroyed through internal strife.

For those responsible for the destruction, Paul has some of the most sobering words in all of 1 Corinthians: “God will destroy him.” Is that talking about physical destruction or some kind of spiritual destruction or even eternal destruction? The true believer responds to this warning like he does to other Bible warnings: “I don’t want to find out what it means! By God’s grace I’m going to run as far away as I can in the opposite direction!”

 

The Path Forward

What does it look like to run in the opposite direction? How do we honor rather than destroy the temple of the Spirit?

Before engaging in potentially destructive behavior, we pause and preach the gospel to ourselves in this way: “Jesus died to save this person just as He died to save me. And he died not just to get us out of hell, but to form us both into His temple. Will my words and actions build up that temple or tear it down?”

This doesn’t mean avoiding all confrontation or failing to address genuine problems. As illustrated throughout 1 Corinthians, sometimes hard things need to be said. But we have to distinguish between legitimate issues that require biblical correction and unproven accusations, uncharitable judgments, petty concerns, personality differences, or matters that can’t be substantiated by Scripture.

Beyond avoiding such destructive behavior, we should actively look for ways to encourage, edify, and show Christ’s love to our brothers and sisters. By the power of the same Spirit who indwells us, we can be temple-builders rather than temple-destroyers.

The Gospel Truth That Changes Everything

Paul concludes by reiterating the larger gospel truth: “God’s temple is holy and you are that temple” (1 Cor 3:17b). This is how members of a local church should think about themselves. We are something special to the Lord, something supernatural, something that reflects God’s presence on earth in a way not seen anywhere else in the world.

God has chosen to manifest His presence and glory in this age through His people—through ordinary folks like us who gather week after week. This is a privilege to be relished. Let’s treasure every single stone that God is using to build up His temple, cultivating a high conception of our identity as fellow believers!

The deepest longing of the human heart is to enjoy access to God’s presence, to know we’re reconciled to Him and that He not only tolerates us but actually enjoys fellowship with us. Through the work of Jesus, the gospel satisfies that longing. And the presence of God isn’t just a future hope waiting for the new creation. Through the indwelling Spirit, we are God’s temple right now, today, in this present age.

This truth should transform how we see ourselves and treat one another. When we truly grasp that we are the sanctuary of the living God, it changes everything. We pursue unity not as a nice ideal but as people who understand our sacred identity as the temple where the Spirit of God dwells.

In a world that sees us as nothing special, God has declared us to be His holy dwelling place. That’s not just doctrine—it’s a reality that ought to shape every word we speak and every action we take toward our fellow believers.

What would happen if we truly lived as though we believe we are the temple of the living God?

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Ken Casillas is the pastor of Cleveland Park Bible Church and serves on the faculty of BJU Seminary. This article was produced by asking Claude.ai to turn a sermon transcript into a magazine article. You can listen to the original sermon here: We Are the Temple of God. Pastor Casillas has reviewed and approved the publication of this version.

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Photo by Erika Giraud on Unsplash