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When the NT says our body is God’s temple, for us that tends to go in one ear and out the other. But if we really understand the meaning/image of that, it will transform your view of not just your body but your whole life.
While we discuss this, remember to continue your breathing and focus in part on feeling and relaxing your entire body.
We have to go back to the OT to the first day of the temple…
2 Chronicles 5:13-14 (NIV)
“The trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, the singers raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang:
(ESV) ‘For he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever,’
Then the temple of the LORD was filled with the cloud, 14 and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the temple of God.”
- Dedication of the temple Solomon built.
- The temple in the OT was a physical presence of Heaven on Earth. But only priests who ceremonially consecrated their bodies could enter.
- At this dedication, God gave a visible sign of his presence in the temple, God’s physical presence on Earth.
- The temple was filled with the Holy Spirit (cloud) — “for the glory of the LORD filled the temple of God.”
But because of Jesus’s physical, bodily birth, death, resurrection, and ascension, all those who look to him for their restoration/salvation experience the same thing OT priests did when they consecrated their body before entering God’s temple. That was foreshadowing symbolism of what Jesus would ultimately be and do for those who look to him.
As the NT puts it in…
1 Corinthians 6:11 (NIV)
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (ESV)
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Now, “you are not your own” because you didn’t make yourself. But what this verse is saying is far more comforting than just that. It’s saying that YOU have been “bought” out of being lost to the thorns and thistles and dust and death and swept away to nothingness in the end. You’ve been “redeemed” by Christ’s body. Your body is now bought with the price of Christ’s body and you now belong again to your Creator forever.
And NOW you — your body — is God’s presence on earth.
Too often we adopt a very unbiblical and unchristian view of our body somehow being separate from, or at least unrelated to, our soul and our eternal connection with God. But the Bible teaches that your body is actually a vital part of your eternal AND present and intimate connection with God.
Imagine/envision God 100% present IN you right now in this present moment. That’s what the Bible’s teachings are all about. Yahweh/Jesus present in your body in every present moment.
And it is a presence in your very body, because the NT teaches that in this very moment Jesus by his Holy Spirit dwells in your body as his holy temple.
Jesus’s death and resurrection redeemed you out of nothingness and into his house and his glory forever. You are not your own, thank God! YOU belong! And so you are never on your own. God’s Holy Spirit is within your body. Your body has the security of the ownership and protection of God now and forever. So God’s very presence and glory is within your body. Which is why you can experience God’s presence and glory in your body.
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Our audio engineer is Diego Huaman.
This podcast is a ministry of The Crossing, a church in Columbia, Missouri, a college town where the flagship campus of the University of Missouri is located.