You Are God's Temple: Waking Up to Your Sacred Identity

Introduction

James Hutinet opens this message with a question that hits home : “Do you know that you are God's temple?” A question borrowed directly from the apostle Paul, who wrote to the church in Corinth around AD 55 to correct it, encourage it, and call it back.

Corinth, at the time, was a major port city in ancient Greece, capital of a Roman province. A cosmopolitan crossroads of merchants, craftsmen, sailors, and adventurers. Idol temples everywhere, including one to Aphrodite, goddess of love and prostitution. A city famous for its luxury, its freedom, its pleasures, its immorality. It was in that setting that Paul planted a church during his second missionary journey, in AD 51–52. Three or four years later, he learns that the immorality he thought was behind them has resurfaced, and he picks up his pen.

This letter, from chapter 1, he addresses “to the assembly of God which is at Corinth, those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place.” In other words : it's written to you too. Today. In your church. In your living room. On your couch.

In chapter 3, Paul returns to the glorious wonders of God he mentioned in chapter 2 · things that “never entered into the heart of man”, and he grows indignant : he can't hand them to you if you're still living as a person of the flesh. If you're still following the wisdom of the world. If you're still on the bottle. So he asks the question that turns everything around : “Don't you know that you are a temple of God, and that God's Spirit lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

Outline of the Message

1. The New Man, Reborn by the Spirit of God

• Paul contrasts the person of the flesh with the person of the Spirit. The person of the flesh leans on the principles of the world. The person of the Spirit is indwelt and directed by the Spirit of God.
• When you come to Jesus Christ by faith, a new birth takes place. You receive God's Spirit, who from then on lights up your whole life. “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
• The preacher illustrates this with a concrete picture : you had an old engine, dirty, clogged with grime, sputtering off course. God fitted you with a brand-new engine, clean, purring like royalty, steering you onto the right path. It's a fundamentally radical newness.
• This living Spirit inside you gradually encourages you to strip off your old fleshly habits and take on a mindset pleasing to God : no more lies, but words of truth ; no more anger, but gentleness and patience ; no more foul words, but words of grace and peace ; no more judgment and slander, but compassion and forgiveness ; no more aggression and pride, but kindness and humility ; no more rivalry and division, but unity around Jesus Christ.
• That's the work of sanctification produced by the Holy Spirit. It's a normal upheaval. Your old, corrupted nature no longer matches the dignity of your new identity in Christ.
• Yet Paul tells the Corinthians, “You are still fleshly : for insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren't you fleshly, and don't you walk in the ways of men?” What if we asked ourselves that same question in our churches today? Do we truly, deeply understand all the things God has given us?

2. You Are Holy, Set Apart to Celebrate God's Glory

• Verse 16 : “Don't you know that you are a temple of God, and that God's Spirit lives in you?” Do you really know it? Not just in your head, but in your heart?
• Verse 17 : “If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is holy, which you are.” This is serious. You are God's holy temple through the precious blood of Christ. His presence truly dwells in you.
• Appearances are deceiving. You may not be great, not noble by the world's standards. You may look like a perfectly ordinary person. Maybe you don't feel like much. The truth is that your Father has made you his saint, his sacred, cherished one, so he might be celebrated by his presence in you. You shine in the world. You are precious to your Father. You carry the fragrance of Christ. When the Father looks at you, he sees the Christ you carry.
• Humility should never hide what the Father has made you. That's the truth. And the devil, as we know, tries to make you forget that you belong to the high household of God.
• On the street, you are holy. In the kitchen, you are holy. At the office, on the train, you are holy. With your spouse, you are holy. This is an enormous grace. You are sacred to God, and he cherishes the Spirit he placed in you.
• You can no longer do just anything : the royal Spirit lives in you. You are holy legally, by the blood of the new covenant, yes ; but you still need to become it in practice, in your thinking, your actions, your everyday life. That's sanctification : becoming what you already are by grace.

3. Together, Complementary, Under the Same Spirit's Direction

• Look at your brothers and sisters in Christ as sacred, royal people, in the service of God, just like you. No jealousy. No rivalry. Each one has received a spiritual personality, gifts, talents to serve. One sows, another plants, another waters, another leads, another shares deep, encouraging words, another gathers the harvest, another organizes, another serves in the small things. And it is God who makes it grow.
• Each one is complementary. Each one is a member of Christ. Each one has value. Is everyone standing at their post?
• Look at a construction site : building a fine structure requires different trades. The electrician is not the mason. The plumber is not the carpenter. And when the building is finished according to the rules of the craft, according to the architect's plan, it's beautiful.
• Look at an orchestra : the trumpet player is not the pianist. The guitarist is not the drummer. Yet all of them follow the chords, the tempo, and the well-played ensemble produces a magnificent harmony. If a single musician plays out of tune, he throws off the others and destabilizes the whole. And in a great orchestra, every musician keeps their eyes on the conductor.
• In the church, our conductor is the Spirit of our beloved Jesus Christ. Together, we form the body of Christ, united to him. What matters is not taking sides for Paul, for Apollos, for some preacher, or for the author of some book : it's uniting to the Spirit and the mind of Christ, who coordinates everything.
• If someone exercises a gift you don't have, rejoice. Because you have a gift others may not have. Each one is equipped by the Father to serve, and everything comes from God. Rejoice that the Holy Spirit distributes the riches of God so that everyone can be at work and at ease.

4. Watch How You Build : Fire Will Test Your Work

• Paul says it plainly : “For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 3:11) The foundation is laid once for all. But watch carefully what you build on top of it.
• “But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or stubble; each man's work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man's work is.” (v. 12-13)
• When you build, you don't set a post in sand : you pour it on solid reinforced concrete. You don't rest a big beam on a wobbly stone, but on a solid support. This is serious : our Father is going to test the soundness of our lives. We will all go through it.
• Are you building with gold, with wood, or with straw? Have you truly built with the wonderful Word of God? Have you produced the good fruit of the Spirit that was given to you? Your service in the church, your work for the Lord, your testimony : has it been careful, deep, useful, resting on the right foundation?
• For the one who has sought to do well before the Father, and whose sturdy work survives the fire, there will be a reward. “In addition to salvation, I will entrust you with much ; enter into the joy of your master.”
• For the one whose work was not built on the foundation of Christ and is consumed, he will lose his reward. He will still be saved, but as one escaping through a fire, in humiliation and confusion. Yet our Father wants you, at that moment, to be assured, at peace, joyful before his presence.

5. Feed on the Spirit : Or You'll Go off Track

• Paul rebukes the Corinthians for still being “on the bottle” : he could only give them milk, because they couldn't handle solid food. The strengthening Word of God can only be received and absorbed through the Spirit of God.
• Do you still need milk, or are you feeding on solid things? Do you truly understand the truth of God's Word in its depth? Or are you still stuck on elementary things, while your Father wants to open his wonders to you?
• How do you regularly feed yourself? Through the Word? Through studying it? Through the depth of God's wonders? Through the Spirit's training that pushes you forward in faith? Through praise and gratitude to the Father, to the Son, in the fight of trials, in learning to love? How do you celebrate your God, not only at church, but at home?
• Without deep, personal prayer, don't expect much. Jesus says it himself : “But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)
• Ephesians 5:18 encourages you to be “continually filled with the Spirit” : constantly, through praise and an inner music of gratitude and honor rising to your Father. It's a way of life. And when you neglect it, you risk going off track, drifting back to your fleshly ways.
• The preacher returns to Ephesians 4:13 : the Father longs to bring you to full maturity in the knowledge of the Son of God, as an adult formed in the image of Christ. Not as a baby, but as an adult in the faith. And the weakest among us has every chance to grow with the Father for the best, because the Father loves to show his power in our weakness.
• “No one knows the things of God, except God's Spirit. But we received... the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.” (1 Corinthians 2:10-12) It's not the wisdom of the world, nor ten years of doctoral study, that gives you access to these wonders. It's his Spirit. The Holy Spirit in you is God opening his door to you.

Key Takeaways

• You are God's temple. The Spirit of the Creator of heaven and earth truly lives in you, on the street, in the kitchen, at the office, in bed. This is an enormous grace, and the devil wants you to forget it.
• You are holy legally, by the blood of the new covenant. You still need to become it in practice. That's sanctification : becoming what you already are by grace.
• Your church is not a fan club (for Paul, for Apollos, for some preacher). It's an orchestra where every musician watches the conductor : the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Every gift counts, every place counts, no one is extra.
• The foundation is laid once for all : Jesus Christ. But the way you build on it will be tested by fire. Gold, silver, precious stones, or wood, hay, stubble?
• You cannot grow spiritually without continually filling yourself with the Spirit. No secret prayer, no solid food, no inner praise? You will go off track. It's as simple as that.

Personal Application

1. Today, in which room of your house, in which corner of your daily life, do you most easily forget that you are God's temple? What would remembering it actually change?
2. Look at your church (or your home group) : is there a brother or sister whose gift makes you uncomfortable, wounds your pride, stirs up jealousy in you? What do you want to lay before God about that this week?
3. If fire tested today what you have built on the foundation of Christ (your service, your words, your testimony, your home), what would hold up? What would go up in smoke?
4. When did you last close the door of your room to pray to your Father in secret? Can you set a specific appointment with him this week?
5. Are you still on the bottle, or are you starting to digest the solid food of the Word? What passage will you study in depth this month to stop skimming the surface?

Scriptures Cited

• 1 Corinthians 3 (central text of the message)
• 1 Corinthians 3:16 · “Don't you know that you are a temple of God?”
• 1 Corinthians 3:11 · the foundation of Christ
• 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 · the work tested by fire
• 1 Corinthians 2:9-12 · the things of God revealed by the Spirit
• Galatians 2:20 · “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
• Matthew 6:6 · prayer in secret
• Ephesians 5:18 · “be filled with the Spirit”
• Ephesians 4:13 · reaching the measure of a mature man
• Revelation 2 · rebukes and encouragements to the churches

FAQ

What does it actually mean that “I am God's temple”?

It means that if you have received Jesus Christ by faith, the Spirit of God (the Spirit of the Creator), truly lives inside you. Not above you, not beside you. In you. Your body, your life, your thoughts become the place where God shows himself. This gives you dignity (you are “holy,” set apart for him) and responsibility (you can no longer do just anything with this temple).

What's the difference between the person of the flesh and the person of the Spirit?

The person of the flesh leans on the wisdom and principles of the world : rivalry, jealousy, strife, taking sides, pride, appearances. The person of the Spirit is indwelt and directed by the Spirit of God : truth, patience, compassion, forgiveness, humility, unity around Christ. The move from one to the other is called sanctification, and it's a progressive work produced by the Holy Spirit, not by your willpower alone.

What does “the work will be tested by fire” mean?

Paul describes a coming judgment where what you've built on the foundation of Christ (your service, your choices, your testimony, the way you love and serve), will be tested. What is solid (gold, silver, precious stones : what God produced through you) survives and earns a reward. What is superficial (wood, hay, stubble : what you built according to the flesh) goes up in smoke. Salvation itself is not at stake if the foundation is Christ, but the reward is.