The Church as Temple

The burden of this series of blog posts has been to demonstrate the centrality of the temple theme across all of Scripture from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. As a significant part of that development, it has been emphasized that Old Testament manifestations of this theme point typologically to Jesus Christ. With the next few posts, we will shift gears a bit to show a second area of fulfillment in the church of Jesus Christ.

To say that the temple points typologically to both Christ and his church may strike some readers at first blush as contradictory. Am I arguing for too much in applying temple typology to both? In response, I would suggest the following:

1. As we have seen, Old Testament typology is Christocentric and multifaceted. Thus, while this study has emphasized Christ as the fulfillment of the temple type, it has also been mentioned that he is the fulfillment of the priesthood (Hebrews in particular lays this out) and is, of course, the fulfillment of the sacrificial system administered by the priests. Thus, Christ is temple, priest, and sacrifice. This is not a contradiction; rather, it simply points to the way that all that preceded Christ points toward him.

2. That Old Testament temple typology pointing to Christ would also point to his church seems natural when one realizes the inseparable connection between Christ and his church. Western individualism has produced many great results, but it has led to unbiblical views of the church and has impoverished Christians thereby. I fear that we do not take nearly seriously enough the various metaphors used to describe the essential unity between Christ and his church: head and body, cornerstone and structure, bride and groom. Note that the connection between Christ and church is essential (not optional) with regard to each of these: a bride is not one by definition without a groom. A stone that is not part of an overall structure becomes nothing more than a cut rock. A body part severed from the body is something grotesque, and so is a Christian severed from the visible church and its Savior. American individualism has distorted this biblical understanding.

Thus, the church is described as a building filled with the presence of God (thus, a temple) -- in the next post we will look at Ephesians 2, which is my favorite amplification of this theme. Given that I want to keep this post short, we will look briefly at how this is developed in I Corinthians 3. The Corinthian church had fallen into various cliques, with different ones claiming allegiance to various leaders. In response, Paul points out that these leaders were not competitors for the affections of believers, but that each one had been used by God for the building up of the church. In making this argument, Paul begins by viewing the church as a garden: "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.... For we are God's field, God's building" (I Cor. 3:6,9 ESV).

It is interesting to see what Paul did there: "God's field, God's building." Having used the garden theme, he shifts to a structural one. In the following verses, he turns to the structure: "... like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it." Interestingly, he refers to precious stones as a part of this structure.

Why does the mind of Paul move seamlessly from gardening to building? It is because he understands the Old Testament temples found from the Garden of Eden through the building of Solomon's temple and its successor, and he is connecting that flow of thought to the church. Nor is Paul isolated in this. Revelation 21 and 22 will describe the final temple in similar though more expansive terms: a structure constituted by precious stones that comes down from heaven in Revelation 21 and accompanied by an agrarian description at the opening of Revelation 22.

Returning to I Corinthians 4, Paul writes, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" This is not about individuals; it is the church.