Paul’s Question and Alarming Conclusion (3:16–17)

“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (3:16) The building now clearly becomes God’s temple, which, in this context, is the church, the body of Christ. The Spirit of God animates the body of Christ on earth, the community of the redeemed. This is the building, the temple, on which all the builders have been working. Paul warns, be careful! “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” (3:17)

Paul did not say, if any builder destroys God’s temple, but, if anyone destroys God’s temple. By diverting attention away from the gospel while focusing on the approval of the world and its wisdom, Corinthian believers were in danger of undermining the message that called the church into existence.

There are many ways to destroy a church.

Divisions, whether cliques or factions, will do it. Heresy will do it. Taking your eyes off the cross and letting other, more peripheral matters dominate the agenda will do it. Building the church with superficial “conversions” and wonderful programs that rarely bring people into a deepening knowledge of the living God will do it. Entertaining people to death, but never fostering the beauty of holiness or the centrality of self-crucifying love will build an assembly of religious people, but it will destroy the church of the living God. Gossip, prayerlessness, bitterness, sustained biblical illiteracy, self-promotion, materialism, all of these things, and many more, can destroy a church. The apostle Paul warns:

To do any of these, is very is dangerous. It hurts others, and also who we are—who we become, and it wounds and can destroy the church.

Cliques Ignore Our Christian Heritage

1 Corinthians 3:21 Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours.

Paul returns to the contrast between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. God cares about His temple and holds those who destroy it accountable. Paul sternly writes, do not deceive yourselves. Do not think that you can adopt the philosophies and values of the world as if such choices do not have a profound detrimental impact on the church. Do not think you can get away with it.

The world pants after strong leaders, but leaders in the church must first of all be servants of the Lord Christ. The world parades its latest heroes and gurus. Christians, remember that God loves to choose the weak and the lowly and the despised, the nobodies, so that no one may boast before Him. The immediate application of this exhortation is the prohibition of factions and cliques. So then, no more boasting about men! (3:21a).

To focus on boasting of some human leader or something similar cuts you off from the wider heritage that is rightfully yours. You may be boasting because you think you ‘have the best part.’ In doing that you cut yourself off from all those that belong to the church, and all those who form it.

Remember, All is Ours in Christ Jesus!

Be careful, these things are subject to enslave us.

1 Corinthians 3:22 Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.

(1) The world tries to squeeze us into its mold. Romans 12 It demands so much of our attention and allegiance that we can seldom devote thought and passion to the world to come.

This world ties us down; it does not encourage us to soar into the unexplored dimensions of the new heaven and new earth. (2) The world desires us to treat it as if it, not God, is worthy of ultimate respect. We cling to life as if the Bible had never told us that our lives are but vapor quickly vanishing when the first puff of breeze passes by. We live for eternal purposes. (Mt 10:28). (3) Death, which hovers over us, is a tyranny that no one escapes. How would our life goals change if we were planning not only for 75-95 years of existence here, but also for eternity? Life is much more than how well you were able to save for retirement.

All these realities look very different if we examine them from our position of belonging to Jesus Christ.

 This world becomes the gateway to the next. We belong to the One who will one day create a new heaven and earth and He will enable us to delight in it.

 This present life is no longer merely something to cling to. It is the sphere in which we may serve our God and Redeemer, in anticipation of the life to come.

 Death, that fearsome last enemy, cannot have the last word. Our Master has vanquished death.

 The present is where we live and serve God, but it cannot devour us. God is no less sovereign over the present than He was over the past—and He will be over the future.

 If God is sovereign over the future, then the future, too, is not something to be feared. Our future is to be embraced, simply because we belong to Christ, Christ belongs to God, and God controls all, including the future.

As Christians, none of these tyrannies: the world, life, death, the present, or the future, can control us any longer. They have been decisively beaten. They are under the sway of our sovereign Christ, the Redeemer. We are the company of the redeemed.

Since they are His, they are ours.