1 Corinthians 3:17

Paul writes these words to believers who have lined up behind different leaders. In 1 Corinthians 1–3 some say they follow Paul, some Apollos and some Cephas, and Paul answers that every minister is only a servant through whom God works, and that the wisdom of this world stands against the wisdom of God shown in the cross. He calls their quarrelling a sign that they are still carnal, babes who can take only milk (1 Corinthians 3:1–4). Then he pictures the church as a building. He laid the foundation, which is Jesus Christ, others build on it with gold, silver and precious stones or with wood, hay and stubble, and fire will test each one’s work (1 Corinthians 3:10–15). In verse 16 Paul turns from the builders to the building itself, and the building is a temple.

The word for temple is naós. It means a temple or shrine, and at Jerusalem it was the word for the temple building proper, the sanctuary, as distinct from the whole enclosure with its courts, for which Greek uses hieron. Paul chooses the word for the house where God dwells. The church at Corinth is God’s sanctuary.

That would have struck everyone in the church. For Jewish believers the temple at Jerusalem, the house Solomon first built for the LORD (1 Kings 6), was the place of God’s presence among his people. Gentile believers lived in a wealthy trading city full of temples built to house gods such as Aphrodite, Apollo and Poseidon. To both Paul says, “ye are the temple of God.” The place where God dwells is now the community of his people, and that raises both their standing and their responsibility. It also reaches into ordinary days, because the people themselves are holy to God wherever they are.

Verse 17 turns the truth of verse 16 into a warning. “If any man” is eí tis, a plain “if any”, and it takes in everyone in the church, whether a leader, a teacher or an ordinary member. Whoever he is, if he defiles God’s temple, God will destroy him.

In the KJV “defile” and “destroy” are two English words, but Paul uses one Greek verb twice, phtheírō. It means to shrivel or wither, to spoil or ruin, and figuratively to corrupt or deprave by moral influences. The repetition makes the judgment match the deed: the man who ruins God’s temple, God will ruin. The word “God” in “him shall God destroy” is theós, and the judgment comes from God himself.

The setting shows what ruins the temple. First of all it is the factions Paul has been rebuking since he urged the Corinthians to be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10). It also includes false teaching, immoral practices that bring scandal on the church, and whatever undermines its spiritual health and its witness. Every builder in 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 whose work is poor will suffer loss, and verse 17 goes further, to the one whose work tears the building down.

Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” and he spoke of the temple of his body (John 2:19–21). Through his death and resurrection he became the true temple, the place where God and man meet. Because of his finished work the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4), and God now dwells in his people rather than in buildings made with hands. The church is Christ’s body (Ephesians 1:22–23), and so it shares in his own temple-body.

Paul has just said, “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). The temple of verse 16 stands on him, with Jesus Christ himself as the chief corner stone (Ephesians 2:20), and in him believers are “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). Its holiness comes from Christ, who sanctifies and cleanses the church “with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:26–27).

That gives the warning of verse 17 its full weight. Christ is the head of the body, the church (Colossians 1:18), which God purchased with his own blood (Acts 20:28). Whoever ruins the church dishonours Christ, and the judgment Paul promises shows how jealously Christ protects his bride. The temple waits for its completion in the new Jerusalem, of which John says, “I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Revelation 21:22).

These two verses tell a quarrelling church what it truly is. The God who once filled Solomon’s house now lives by his Spirit among ordinary believers in Corinth, and his presence makes their gathering holy. Their leaders are servants, their divisions are an offence against God’s own house, and their unity matters because God lives there.

The warning shows how dearly God holds his people. Those who corrupt or divide his church answer to God, and the same holiness that makes the warning so solemn is the protection of every believer in it. God guards his house. In the end the whole of it will be filled with him, when the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.