Day 3
We Surrender our Bodies as we Fast - We are a Temple of God
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” - 1 Corinthians 3:16–17
Our humanity, the entire scope of our mind-body existence, was made to inhabit God’s presence and to be indwelt by His Spirit. We were made for sacred space and to be sacred space. In the biblical imagination, the foundation image of sacred space is the temple.
Temples of the ancient variety do not occupy a prominent place in the American landscape or consciousness. Consequently, Christians in the United States and in other Western developed societies can easily miss what the Apostle Paul means when he asks the Corinthian church, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”
What does Paul mean? And why does it matter, especially in a season of fasting and prayer?
To answer this, let’s go back to Genesis.
In the beginning, God created the cosmos (heaven and earth). You might recognize this language from Genesis 1. But what you may not realize is that the original Hebrew text of Genesis 1 was written in the ancient Middle Eastern genre of a temple building account. In the biblical world, temple building accounts centered on the greatness and sovereignty of the god who would occupy a temple, not the mechanical construction of the temple itself. In other words, where we modern Americans read Genesis 1 modernly, as an account of how God made our world, the ancient Hebrew audience understood the narrative as an account of who made the world and why.
According to Genesis 1, the God of Israel created the world. Not only that, God made the earth as his temple, and he made humanity to be his royal representatives on the earth, to steward his righteous rule throughout the land for all generations.
This proclamation by the ancient Israelites was both revolutionary and polemical. In a world where nations and their gods competed for supremacy, and in a world where humans were regarded as a slave labor force tolerated by the gods, Genesis 1 shouts two truths that set the record straight: (1) As creator of the world, God of Israel reigns supreme, and (2) as the image and likeness of the Creator God, humans are made not for slave labor but to exercise God’s kingship as part of his earthly family. That’s deep theology on the first pages of Scripture!
Genesis 2 continues the creational thread from a fresh angle. Where Genesis 1 reveals how humans inhabit sacred space, Genesis 2 shows this and more. God creates the adam (“the male human”) out of dirt, then places him in a garden. Gardens (and mountains) in the ancient Middle East were standard scenes for depicting the habitations of gods on earth. The garden scene of Genesis 2 would have been readily familiar to the ancient Israelite audience. But Genesis 2 goes further by introducing an innovation: humans were made to be sacred space, living temples. How so?
When God puts the man to sleep in v. 21, he takes a “rib” from his body and fashions woman from that bone and flesh. The word “rib” is a translation of the Hebrew word tsela. This is no ordinary biological term. In fact, tsela is not a biological term at all. Rather, it’s an architectural term used to describe the sides of sacred spaces, like the sides of the ark of the covenant (Exod 25:12), of the tabernacle (Exodus 26), of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 6), and of the temple in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek 41:5). With this insight in mind, what does Genesis 2 mean by saying that Eve was formed from Adam’s tsela?
Bible scholar Dr. Ingrid Faro explains that when God fashioned woman from the man’s tsela, he’s not simply creating two distinct genders, male and female, he’s doing something even more profound. Together, the man and woman form equal and adjacent sides of sacred space. When the man and woman work together within God’s garden, they also become sacred space wherein God’s own presence may dwell. That insight into the Hebraic text is deep and mind-blowing!
From the very beginning, God made humanity, embodied male and female, to be a community that inhabits his presence and houses his presence.
Paul picks up on this Edenic vision in his New Testament letters. Where sin compromised humanity’s temple-inspired identity, Jesus’ faithfulness to the cross and his resurrection redeemed human identity.
Individually, you who are made new in Christ get to live from a sacred, temple-inspired identity. Your body is now a temple of God’s Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). For this reason, your bodily surrender to Christ is sacred worship. Fasting is one profound practice of such sacred, temple-inspired surrender. Your surrender will never be perfect, yet God is gracious and patient with your journey in righteousness. The Spirit is performing a good work in you.
Corporately, we who are made new in Christ get to live from a sacred, temple-inspired identity. Like the man and woman in Eden, when we come together, we make space for God’s presence. It’s not random that when Paul says, “you are God’s temple,” he’s using the plural “you” in Greek (1 Cor 3:16). Likewise, Peter writes in the plural, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Pet 2:5). That’s multiple people coming together, like Lego bricks, being built up into one united temple! Our modern individualistic minds tend to overlook the corporate categories that the ancient Jewish apostles majored on, where corporate identity was the rule rather than the exception. While we may be accustomed to thinking about our faith in individualized terms, we must not let the truth of our corporate temple-identity slip through our fingers. The presence of God is mighty when his people unite.
Not just you, but we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. When we fast in one accord, we enact a solidarity of allegiant surrender to King Jesus. We create a sacred space fit for God’s presence. And when that happens, the Spirit will move mightily.
Listening Prayer:
Take a minute to breathe and quiet yourself. Ask the Holy Spirit:
· Is there any part of my identity that I’ve built on something other than You?
· Are there labels I’ve accepted—from culture, from others, or even from myself—that are out of alignment with my temple-inspired, Christ-centered identity?
· Which of my brothers and sisters in Christ do I need to reconcile with so that together we can be a temple of God’s Spirit?
Pause and listen. Be still. Pay attention to what comes to mind—a word, a memory, a feeling, a name.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, thank you for speaking truth in grace to me. I surrender every false identity, every broken label, every self-definition that competes with the truth of who I am in You. Renovate my heart and mind into sacred space for your presence. Clean house. And reconcile me to members of your body so that your presence may dwell in our midst. Continue Your transforming work. Amen.
1 Corinthians 6:17–20
17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 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, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Ephesians 2:18–22
18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
1 Peter 2:4–5
4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.