The temple of God,' says the context, the temple of God is holy, which (holy persons) ye are.' The plain first idea of the temple is a place set apart and consecrated to God.
Hence, of course, follows the idea of purity, but the parent idea of holiness' is not purity, which is the consequence, but consecration or separation to God, which is the root.
And so in very various applications, on which I have not time to dwell now, this idea of the necessary sanctity of the Temple is put forth in these two letters to the Corinthian Church. Corinth was a city honeycombed with the grossest immoralities; and hence, perhaps, to some extent the great emphasis and earnestness and even severity of the Apostle in dealing with some forms of evil.
But without dwelling on the details, let me just point you to three directions in which this general notion of sanctity is applied. There is that of our context here. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God? If any man destroy the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, and such ye are.'
He is thinking here mainly, I suppose, about the devastation and destruction of this temple of God, which was caused by schismatical and heretical teaching, and by the habit of forming parties, one of Paul, one of Apollos, one of Cephas, one of Christ,' which was rending that Corinthian Church into pieces. But we may apply it more widely than that, and say that anything which corrupts and defiles the Christian life and the Christian character assumes a darker tint of evil when we think that it is sacrilege--the profanation of the temple, the pollution of that which ought to be pure as He who dwells in it.
Christian men and women, how that thought darkens the blackness of all sin X How solemnly there peals out ,the warning, If any man destroy or impair the temple,' by any form of pollution,' him' with retribution in kind, him shall God destroy.' Keep the temple clear; keep it clean. Let Him come with His scourge of small cords and His merciful rebuke. You Manchester men know what it is to let the money-changers into the sanctuary. Beware lest, beginning with making your hearts houses of merchandise,' you should end by making them dens of thieves.'
And then, still further, there is another application of this same principle, in the second of these Epistles. What agreement hath the temple of God with idols?' Ye are the temple of the living God.'
Christianity is intolerant. There is to be one image in the shrine. One of the old Roman Stoic Emperors had a pantheon in his palace with Jesus Christ upon one pedestal and Plato on the one beside Him. And some of us are trying the same kind of thing. Christ there, and somebody else here. Remember, Christ must be everything or nothing! Stars may be sown by millions, but for the earth there is one sun. And you and I are to shrine one dear Guest, and one only, in the inmost recesses of our hearts.
And there is another application of this metaphor also in our letter. Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?' Christianity despises the flesh'; Christianity reverences the body; and would teach us all that, being robed in that most wonderful work of God's hands, which becomes a shrine for God Himself if He dwell in our hearts, all purity, all chastisement and subjugation of animal passion is our duty. Drunkenness, and gluttony, lusts of every kind, impurity of conduct, and impurity of word and look and thought, all these assume a still darker tint when they are thought of as not only crimes against the physical constitution and the moral law of humanity, but insults flung in the face of the God that would inhabit the shrine.
And in regard to sins of this kind, which it is so difficult to speak of in public, and which grow unchecked in secrecy, and are ruining hundreds of young lives, the words of this context are grimly true, If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy,' I speak now mainly in brotherly or fatherly warning to young men--did you ever read this, His bones are full of the iniquities of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust'? Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?'
And so, brethren, our text tells us what we may all be. There is no heart without its deity. Alas! Alas! for the many listening to me now whose spirits are like some of those Egyptian temples, which had in the inmost shrine a coiled-up serpent, the mummy of a monkey, or some other form as animal and obscene.
Oh! turn to Christ and cry, Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the ark of Thy strength.' Open your hearts and let Christ come in. And before Him, as of old, the bestial Dagon will be found, dejected and truncated, lying on the sill there; and all the vain, cruel, lustful gods that have held riot and carnival in your hearts will flee away into the darkness, like some foul ghosts at cock-crow. If any man hear My voice and open the door I will come in.' And the glory of the Lord shall fill the house.
