Your Physical Body is NOT the Temple of the Holy Ghost

December 13, 2011 By James Early 11 Comments
I Corinthians 6:19
I Corinthians 6:19

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You’re probably familiar with the often quoted Scripture, I Corinthians 6:19,20

Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Have you ever stopped to think what that actually means?  It’s pretty amazing to think that the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Pneuma is inside each of us.

I have heard untold numbers of Christians quote these verses with such reverence and awe and earnestly accept the responsibility for what it means to them:  to take care of their physical bodies because it is a temple.

(And I have know other people who start worshiping the “temple”–i.e. their body– instead of God.  But that’s another issue altogether.)

But there was always something about this Bible passage that just didn’t quite sit right with me.  And I never could quite put my finger on it.

There was something missing.

A couple of weeks ago in one of the classes I teach at the nearby Federal Prison, almost everyone in the class quoted I Cor 6:19 and vowed to take better care of their bodies.  This is certainly important.  We can’t ignore our bodies.  We need to care for ourselves in the most practical way.

But when all these women kept referring to their bodies as the temple of the Holy Ghost, it prompted me to do a little research.  I got out the Bible concordance and different translations of those verses.  Went round and round the same familiar territory.  Nothing new.  No fresh insights.  So I was just quiet and tried to listen for the “still small voice.”

Suddenly, it hit me like a bolt of lightning, a true BFO.  (Blinding Flash of the Obvious)

How could I have overlooked this for so many years!

When Paul says, “your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost,” in the original Greek, the “your” is second person plural.  He didn’t mean one person’s body.  He meant the collective body of believers.

The difference between “thou” and “you.”

Now if you use a modern translation of the Bible, most of them do not distinguish between 2nd person singular and 2nd person plural.  That’s why I love the King James Bible.  Complain all you want about KJV, but I love it for lots of reasons and this is one of them.  When I see the words, thy, thine, and thou, I know it is talking to one person.  If it says you, ye, your, or yours, more than one person is involved.

This may seem like a minor little point.  But think of the difference it makes with “your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.”  It does not say “thy” body.  If it did, then I would have to say that all these folks are right who think the Holy Ghost is inside their bodies.

It does not say “your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost.”  That could also mean that each of our bodies is a temple of the Holy Ghost.

What Paul is saying here is what he says elsewhere:  “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” (I Cor 12:27)  Notice he says “ye” (you all) are “the”–singular, or one body.  We are not each the body of Christ anymore than we are each the temple of the Holy Ghost.  It takes all of us to be the body of Christ and it takes all of us to be the temple of the Holy Ghost.

And besides, the Holy Ghost could not fit inside one physical body or multiple bodies.  It is too infinite for that.  Nor can it be divided into bits and pieces.  The Holy Ghost dwells in us collectively, not in each of us separately.

The Greek word “body” is used in a wide range of literal, figurative and spiritual meanings in the New Testament.  In this verse it refers to the spiritual body of Christ, not the physical body or bodies of anyone, not even Jesus.

Our body, the one body of believers, the whole lot of us, is the temple of the Holy Ghost.  It is a collective body and it does NOT refer to yours or anyone’s physical body individually or collectively.  The body of Christ is the spiritual (not necessarily human) unity of  all Christians.

Should we listen to men or to God?

This is another example of how some traditional Christian teachings have given people the wrong idea about what the Bible actually means.  Hey, I know it’s sometimes hard to strip away and let go of these cherished concepts we have been taught and believed in all sincerity.

The New Testament was written in Greek.  No person in the Christian church at Corinth reading or listening to Paul’s letter would have heard the “your body” as “thy body.”  It was clear he was referring to something besides the physical body of an individual as the temple of the Holy Ghost.

If you have been inspired by the thought that your individual body is this temple, you may not necessarily appreciate what I have put forward.  But don’t take my word for it.  Search the Bible yourself.  Find one that distinguishes between “you” singular and “you” plural.  And let me know what you discover.

To be honest, I think this larger view of what constitutes the temple of the Holy Ghost is even more wonderful than this traditional teaching discussed here.  It means we are all connected as members of the body of Christ.  We cannot be a little island of faith unto ourselves.  We are a collective whole of God’s creation, of His family.  And we are united in the bonds of Christ’s love.  We cannot ignore each other.  We cannot be judgmental of each other.  We can only worship God and be part of the body of Christ as we acknowledge the place and value of every one of our brothers and sisters in that same body.

WE ARE the temple of the Holy Ghost.  Let us behave accordingly, individually and collectively.

Blessings,

James

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God Did Not Make You “a Little Lower Than the Angels.”

December 5, 2011 By James Early 6 Comments

I love these verses from Psalm 8.  They speak of how God made us in His glory and gave us dominion.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:  Psalm 8:3-6

This reminds me of the first chapter in Genesis where God made man in His image and likeness and gave him dominion over all the earth and everything in it.  (See Genesis 1:26)

But all too often we belittle ourselves because of mistakes we’ve made or because of a negative self image–based sometimes on what others think and say about us, but usually on how we see ourselves.

So this declaration in Psalm 8 that we are just “a little lower than the angels,” has always been encouraging and comforting to me.

Angel Workshop at the Prison

I am currently conducting a workshop on the subject of “Angels” in my prison ministry at a nearby Federal women’s prison .  We have been studying everything the Bible says about angels.  And how these amazing stories can apply to us today.

When we got to Psalm 8, I really made a point to the women that we must remember how God originally made us in His image and likeness.  No matter what they had done, no matter what I or anyone had done, underneath all the “mud” that the world had thrown on us or that we had wallowed in ourselves,  we were so much more than that in God’s eyes because of how He originally created us. We need to remember how glorious God made us, how close we are to Him and how dearly He cares for us.

It was a very moving moment.  Everyone in the room felt God’s love.

This idea has always given me a sense of divine awe.  It’s one thing to give lip service to this concept and say, “Oh yes, isn’t it marvelous that we’re made a little lower than the angels,” but to let the idea sink way down into your heart and then change the way you live is another thing altogether.

Just think, we are just a little lower than the angels!  What could be more glorious than that?

An amazing discovery

The next week, I was doing some more research for the “Angels” workshop and had out that illustrious old and monstrous book, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance.  I was curious about how the Hebrew word often translated angel is really just the word messenger.  Sometimes it’s translated as angel and sometimes as messenger.

But then I made a startling discovery.  In Psalm 8:5 in the phrase, “a little lower than the angels,” the original Hebrew word for angels is elohim, or God.

This is not really a new concept.  I have since found Bible translations that bring out this point.  The Amplified Bible for example.  Some Bibles use the term “divine beings”, or “heavenly beings.”  But I had not noticed this before since I usually use the King James, which uses the word “angels.”

I imagine that Bible scholars have gotten into all the nitty gritty about this verse.  Does it mean: gods, God, angels, heavenly beings, etc.?

The main point for me here is that we are much more than we seem to be.  The physical world and it’s ways and means try to define us as limited, mistake-prone, lowly beings which chance throws around like a football.

But God has made us so much more

Actually, He has made us so very different from that.  We are His image and likeness.  Just a little lower than Him.

If we are His image, how can we be lower?  Doesn’t the image look just like the original?  Aren’t we then, an exact duplicate of God.  No!  God does not make a bunch of fellow Creators.  He creates and we are the creation.  We are not the source or cause or creator of ourselves or the world, God is.  In that sense we are “lower.”  We reflect all God’s glory and are “filled with all the fulness of God.”  Ephesians 3:19  We are just not the source of this glory.

I will even venture to say that we are above the angels instead of just below them.

It is clear that Jesus is above the angels.  Hebrews 1:5 tells us, “For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?”

Now we cannot make any claim on being THE Son of God.  Jesus is the only Messiah.  But we are Jesus’ brothers and sisters.  He said so himself.  He referred to God as his Father and our Father.  We are therefore, the sons of God, the daughters of God, the children of God.  And consequently above the angels in the order of God’s creation.

I’m not talking about the sinning race of Adam, the “old man” referred to by St. Paul, as above the angels.  I’m talking about the “new man” or original man of God’s creating made in His image and likeness.   This is our true identity–however much it may seem to be covered up by the world’s material perspective and worn out, man-made theological doctrines.

So remember who and what you are as a child of God.

You are glorious.  You are the radiant image and likeness of God’s divine nature and fullness.  So is that person sitting next to you on the bus or standing in the checkout line in front of you.

Remember who you are.  Remember who they are.  And live accordingly.

Blessings,

James

 

 

 

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