Placement in God’s True Temple
And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit Ephesians 2:22 (NIV)
‘And in him you too are being built together’ (2:22). The apostles and prophets were the foundational members of this living temple and other Jewish believers were among its earliest ‘stones’ (1 Peter 2:5) built into the wall. But now Gentile believers (‘you too’) were being added to the structure in constantly increasing numbers. The new community, God’s fellowship of reconciliation, transcends all distinctions of race, status and gender. Rightly oriented to the one cornerstone, based on the foundation of apostles and prophets, Gentile Christians, along with fellow believers of Jewish birth, belonged equally to God’s holy house.
‘… to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit’ (2:22). As the God of Israel had once taken up residence in the wilderness tabernacle and later in the Jerusalem temple by His name (Deuteronomy 12:5; 1 Kings 8:29) and His glory (Exodus 40:34,35; 1 Kings 8:11), so now by His Spirit He makes the fellowship of believers, Jewish and Gentile alike, His chosen dwelling place. There is no privilege bestowed on the people of God in which Gentiles do not have an equal share.
The New Testament emphasis on our together being Christ’s temple is far removed from the contemporary, Western church’s emphasis on individual Christianity. We all need to take warning of the dangers of being ‘lone rangers.’ In Philippians 2:3 and 4:2 Paul had to speak against divisions due to personal rivalries, and in 1 Corinthians 1 and 3 against the dangers of breaking into sects built around loyalty to honoured leaders rather than to Christ. Here he has in mind Jewish-Gentile animosities that in earlier days threatened to make two churches instead of one.
As Paul was dictating his letter, there stood in Ephesus the great marble temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and in whose inner shrine was a statue of the goddess. At the same time in Jerusalem there stood the Jewish temple built by Herod the Great, barricading itself against the Gentiles and now also against God, whose shekinah glory it had once housed in its inner sanctuary but whose glory, revealed in the Messiah, it had tried to extinguish. Two temples, one pagan and the other Jewish, each designed by its devotees as a divine residence but both empty of the living God. Now there was a new temple, ‘a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit’ (2:22). It is His new society, His redeemed people scattered throughout the inhabited world. They are His home on earth. The building is not yet complete. It ‘rises to become a holy temple in the Lord’ (2:21), only finished when the last stone is set in place and Christ returns.
This means that God is transforming each one of you into the Holy of Holies, his dwelling place, through the power of the Holy Spirit living in you Ephesians 2:22 (the Passion Translation)