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The Bible talks about the house of God or the house of the Lord. Remember that God is a Spirit and so it is God’s Spirit who lives in this house on the earth. We know that the Christian God neither lives in a tree, mountain, river nor rock.
So, now, what is this house in the world, in which God lives today? Is it a cathedral or any magnificent building in which believers gather to worship?
Well, when we carefully study the Bible, we will know that under the Old Covenant, tabernacles and temples built with human hands served as the house of the Lord. He dwelled in them. Thus, God’s presence manifested extraordinarily in those tabernacles and temples.
However, the coming of the New Covenant through Jesus Christ changed God’s dwelling place on the earth (Jeremiah 31:31-32). God now dwells in the hearts of His children, making the bodies of Christians His temples today (1 Corinthian 6:19).
Paul states that a Christian’s body is the temple in which God lives. And Peter also writes that every living Christian is a spiritual house who is being built up (1Peter 2:5).
Truly, the elect of God or the assembly of called out ones, which is the Church is the house which the Lord Jesus Christ promised to build and dwell in and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18).
Thus, the early ministers of the gospel was concerned with building up Christians to conform to the image of Christ Jesus than putting up magnificent buildings.
The apostles did not mind establishing churches even in people’s houses (1 Corinthians 16:19). What mattered to them was the consecration and presentation of their bodies as a holy and living sacrifice to God.
This should teach us that a Christian’s body is important to God than magnificent church buildings. Nowhere in the New Testament does God command us to present our church buildings to Him as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him.
Rather, God commands us to do so with our bodies. And He says if we present our bodies to Him, it will be regarded as our spiritual worship (Romans 12:1).
So, Christian ministry focuses on building strong spiritual houses as royal priesthood to God whereas Judaism focused on the construction of powerful temples made with human hands.
It took the Jews 46 years to complete the Jerusalem temple, showing the importance they attached to it (John 2:19). But a Christian is instructed to consecrate his body, discipline his body and present his body as a living sacrifice; we are warned not sin with our bodies. We must do all these things because our body is the temple of God.
By James Quansah
