We are Part of God’s Temple Built on a Sure Foundation and Cornerstone
Consequently, you are … 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. Ephesians 2:19-21 (NIV)
Paul is illustrating and explaining the richness of his readers’ changed position and their new privileges in Christ. He uses three familiar models of the church, picturing the new Jew-Gentile community as God’s kingdom (2:19a), God’s family (2:19b) and God’s temple (2:20-22). The previous devotional explored the first two.
The third description sees the church as members of God’s temple.
The church is the community of God’s people but can be likened in some ways to a building, and particularly to the temple. The temple in Jerusalem, first Solomon’s, then Zerubbabel’s and finally Herod’s, had for nearly a thousand years been the focal point of Israel’s identity as the people of God. Now there was a new people, not a new nation but a new humanity, international and worldwide. And here in 2:20-22 Paul develops the imagery of the temple that new humanity made up. He touches on the foundation and cornerstone of the building, the structure as a whole and its individual stones, its cohesion and growth, its present function and (at least implicitly) its future destiny.
First, the foundation. It is ‘built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets’ (2:20). How do we understand Paul’s thinking here in relation to what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:11 ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ’? What the two metaphors have in common is their picture of the church as a building. Here in Ephesians Paul is addressing all Christians to help them understand how they fit into the whole structure. In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul is addressing leaders and warning them of their need to minister wisely and carefully (1 Corinthians 3:10,12-15).
Why are the apostles and prophets’ foundational? God’s truth in Christ was revealed to them in a unique way (3:5). Because they received, believed and witnessed to that word, they were the beginning of the building on which others were to be built (Matthew 16:16-18). The initial work of the apostles and prophets was both indispensable and untransmissible. The reference is to New Testament prophets, not only because both words come under the same definite article in the Greek but because of the way Paul continues to refer to prophets in this letter (3:5: 4:11) and his other writings (e.g. 1 Corinthians 12:28).
In this picture of the temple, ‘Christ Jesus himself’ is ‘the chief cornerstone’ (2:20). Paul almost certainly takes His picture from Psalm 118:22, a passage used by Jesus Himself (Mark 12:22) and the early church (1 Peter 2:7; cf. Acts 4:11). There is some difference of opinion about the precise place of the cornerstone in a building but it seems most likely that it was the stone set in the foundations at the corner to bind all the stones together and to give them their line. The significance of Christ described in this way gives Him His true place. He holds the growing temple together in unity.
‘In him the whole building is joined together’ (2:21). All Christians find their true place and function in relation to Christ as they are built into Him. The unity and growth of the church are coupled and Jesus Christ is the perfect centre of both. As a building depends for both its cohesion and development on being tied securely to its cornerstone, so Christ the cornerstone is indispensable to the church’s unity and growth. Unless it is constantly, organically (cf. 1 Peter 2:5 ‘living stones’) and securely related to Christ, the church’s unity will disintegrate and its growth will either stop or run wild. This affects the ‘whole building,’ or as Phillips paraphrases ‘each separate piece of the building.’
This building ‘rises to become a holy temple in the Lord’ (2:21). Paul doesn’t use the general word for ‘temple’ but intentionally chooses the word for the inner shrine, the equivalent for ’holy of holies’ in the Old Testament. The temple in the Old Testament was above all else the special meeting place between God and His people. It was where the glory descended, the place of God’s presence. Christ’s death made the temple obsolete. He Himself was now the dwelling place of God among humanity (John 1:14; 2:19-21). To be ‘in Christ’ is to be in the One who is the Holy of Holies, the meeting place between God and humanity.
You are rising like the perfectly fitted stones of the temple, and your lives are being built up together upon the ideal foundation laid by the apostles and prophets, and best of all, you are connected to the Head Cornerstone of the building, the Anointed One, Jesus Christ himself!
This entire building is under construction and is continually growing under his supervision until it rises up completed as the holy temple of the Lord himself
Ephesians 2:20,21 (the Passion Translation)