1 Corinthians 3:17: Destroying God's Temple?

The difficulty of 1 Corinthians 3:17 has to do both with the meaning of the important terms used and with the implications of it for our living as Christians. Who, or what, is God's temple? By what actions or lifestyle or words can this "temple of God" be destroyed? Are the words or deeds which destroy this temple of God like the "unforgivable sin" of Matthew 12:31-32, since they bring down the judgment of God ("God will destroy him")?

The most common understanding of the text is that Paul is here talking about our individual bodies as temples or dwellings of God's Spirit. If we destroy these "temples"--through the way we live (for example, through sexual impurity) or by what we put into them (for example, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, excess food) or by what we do to them (for example, suicide)--we become the objects of God's final, destructive judgment. For, since our bodies are both created by God and the objects of God's redemptive work, they are sacred and should not be destroyed by us in these ways.

These are all significant insights, and Paul specifically addresses the issue of the proper use of our physical bodies with regard to sexuality later in this epistle (1 Cor 6). But Paul is not speaking to these important issues in this text. Our physical, individual bodies are not what he is here concerned about. For both grammatical and contextual reasons, this understanding must be set aside in order to truly hear God's word for the Corinthians and for us in this text.

First Corinthians 3:16-17 forms one unit of thought and must be treated as such. This is recognized by most English translations, which set verses 16-17 apart in a distinct paragraph, and it is clear from the fact that both verses speak of God's temple.

The question "Who or what is God's temple?" is answered when we understand Paul's use of the personal pronoun "you" here. In Greek there are different words for singular "you" and plural "you" (that is, "you all"). Further, verbs have distinct endings that show whether the subject of the verb is singular or plural, first person ("I," "we"), second person ("you," "you all") or third person ("he," "she," "it" or "they"). Thus the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 is unambiguous regarding the number of the "you" addressed; the verb endings and pronouns all reflect the plural.

Among modern translations, only the NIV and TEV make a partial attempt at accurately rendering the Greek. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 the NIV reads, "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple?" And in 1 Corinthians 3:17 TEV reads, "and you yourselves are his temple." Yet even these do not bring out the meaning as clearly as the Greek. The following annotated rendering is an attempt to catch the precision of the Greek: "Do you (the many) not know that you (the many) are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in (among) you (the many)? Anyone who destroys God's temple will be destroyed by God; for God's temple is sacred, and you (the many) are that temple."

This recognition of the nuances of Paul's Greek shows that he is not here thinking of individual Christians as temples inhabited by God, but of the church, the fellowship of believers in Corinth, among whom the Spirit of God dwells and is operative. Paul expresses this same sense in 2 Corinthians 6:16 where he says that "we are the temple of the living God." If he had wished to address individual Christians in their physical bodies, Paul would have had to say, "Don't you know that you are temples of God?" and "You are those temples." (And in 2 Corinthians 6:16, "We are the temple of the living God.")

In many ways, 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 reveals Paul's foundational understanding of the church and is a key to the meaning of the entire letter. Namely, the church, the people of God among whom God's Spirit dwells, is God's option, God's alternative to the fragmentation and brokenness of human society. The Christian congregation gathered in Corinth was called to model that alternative in the midst of the brokenness of Corinthian society. But their divisiveness, their immorality, their enthusiastic spirituality which disregarded concrete, bodily dimensions of life--all these were destroying the viability of God's option, God's temple in Corinth. And it is that destruction which stands under God's judgment.

This corporate understanding of God's temple is confirmed by the context. Paul is occupied in the first four chapters of this epistle with divisions which are threatening the very life of the church (1 Cor 1:10-17; 3:3-4). These schisms apparently centered around loyalty to certain teachings that the Corinthian Christians had received from their founder (Paul) or from leaders who worked among them after Paul's departure (Apollos, Peter, see 1 Cor 1:12).

In this section (1 Cor 3:10-15), Paul shows that those called to leadership in the church, and perhaps all Christians, are accountable to God for the way in which they participate, through life and work, in the growth of God's building. It is possible to build with materials that endure (gold, silver) or with materials that are of inferior quality (hay, stubble). The end-time judgment ("the day"), pictured here and elsewhere in Scripture as a fiery ordeal, will reveal with what materials individuals have built. It may be, as some commentators have suggested, that Paul has the followers of Peter and Apollos in mind. The former may be attempting to build their own legalistic Jewish practices into the structure of the church; the latter may be building with eloquent (worldly) wisdom and superspirituality. These "building materials," as Paul shows throughout his writings (particularly Gal and 1 Cor), are ultimately useless. Though Christians who build with these materials are not excluded from God's salvation, their passage through God's judgment into eternity will be accompanied by the experience of failure and loss.

But beyond the danger of using worthless building materials in the growth of God's people, there is the greater danger of acting and living in such a way that "God's building" will in fact be destroyed. It is that danger which Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 3:17.

The congregation of people composing the church at Corinth was in danger of destroying itself. As the entire catalog of problems with which Paul deals in this epistle reveals, the possibility of this church's destruction was real: their haughtiness regarding the presence of flagrant immorality (1 Cor 5); their use of pagan courts for settling internal disputes and the continuing participation of certain members in pagan rites of cultic prostitution (1 Cor 6); the use of Christian freedom and knowledge in such a way that the "weak in faith" would fall back into sin and be destroyed (1 Cor 8, 10); the rejection of Paul's teaching on the resurrection of the body in favor of an emphasis on purely "spiritual redemption" (1 Cor 15), which led the Corinthians to a total disregard for the concrete, practical dimensions of life within the fellowship and the larger society.

To destroy the church, this temple of God, is to destroy God's alternative to the brokenness of human society; it is to make it impossible for God's redemptive presence and work, through his "temple" in Corinth, to redeem Corinthian society. Those who thus oppose the very redemptive purposes of God--by factious and contentious, acrimonious behavior; by false doctrines which reject the message of the cross as scandalous and foolish; by perverting the freedom of the gospel into unrestrained libertinism; by replacing salvation by grace through faith with legalistic dependence on works--are liable to God's destroying power. Their destruction, however, is not to be seen as an act of vindictive retribution, but rather as the inevitable result that comes to those who reject God's way of salvation.

It is in this sense that the one who "destroys the temple of God" belongs to the category of those who, according to Jesus in Matthew 12:31-32, commit the unpardonable sin. There, it is the rejection of the redemptive presence of God's Spirit in the life and ministry of Jesus. To reject that work of God is to refuse God's forgiveness. For Paul, it is the destruction of God's way of salvation through the church, in which the Spirit of God is operative (1 Cor 3:16), that leads to destruction. For to destroy this work of God (see Rom 14:20) is, in the final analysis, the rejection of God.