The Encourager
“The Church is God's Temple - Jeff Curtis”
The Church is God’s Temple
By Jeff Curtis
Sociologists say that the modern-day Western world is becoming extreme in its individualism. The individual’s neglect of community responsibilities appears to be accelerating. Civic groups have trouble attracting members, and public service in government is declining in popularity. People spend more and more time looking at screens on phones, computers and other electronic devices. Ironically, while the widespread use of “social media” brings people together in one way, it also isolates people from one another and reduces human interaction.
The church that Jesus built is much more than a community pf people who share a common confession of faith and commitment to a given way of life. Along with everything else that the church is, it is a social network. Like other institutions that depend on social involvement for existence, the church suffers when individualism results in isolation. Adaption to the spirit of the times is possible only to a degree. For example, evangelism often begins with an individualistic appeal; “Do you want to be saved?” some evangelists ask. “All you have to do is say the sinner’s prayer and let Jesus come into your heart.” Such an appeal would have sounded strange to Peter, Paul and other authors of the New Testament. Paul taught in the marketplaces and on street corners. He called on people to repent and to be baptized (Galatians 3:27). He told those who would listen that, following a public statement in faith in Christ and the Son of God and baptism into Christ, the Lord would add the saved to a body of people. Life with Christ means life in community, it means life in the church.
Being saved is more than a private, individual act to let Jesus into the heart. In addition to obeying the gospel, it is becoming part of a people – sharing with them, receiving encouragement from them, and being corrected by them. Each member gives and receives from a social network of people in the church.
The church at Corinth suffered to the degree that Christians in the city forgot they were members of one another. Collectively, they were the people of God, the temple of God. God lived in (indwelt) His temple. The apostle was bold enough to teach that no life in Christ was possible, no indwelling of Christ was possible, no indwelling of Christ could occur in the individual, until that person had been added by Christ to His body. The church flourishes or wanes, depending in the commitment of individuals to all who share faith.
A lecturer in a chemistry class once performed a demonstration one day that made a lasting impression on the class. He took a flask of glass. It looked ordinary. He explained that the glass had been hardened by a special technique. To prove his point, he used it as a hammer. He lifted it high with his hand, and drove a nail through two boards. After that, he lifted the flask, took a small metal shaving, and dropped it into the glass. It shattered into a thousand pieces. He took a broom and swept up the pieces. The class learned that blown glass containers that not cooled in the environmental way can be extremely hard on the outside yet fragile on the inside.
The demonstration shows that churches that are firm in teaching the truth and seemed able to withstand external pressures but were torn apart from within. A church can be strong as a hammer when it confronts external forces and still be vulnerable to internal attacks. The church at Corinth was breaking apart before Paul’s eyes – not because they had left the doctrines of Christ, but because “slivers” of selfishness, pride, and jealousy were shattering their fellowship from within.
