It Starts Small

¹⁶ Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God lives in you? ¹⁷ If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is holy, and that is what you are.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17

“Body” in 1 Corinthians means several different things. Paul sometimes uses the word to refer to the physical body of an individual. He emphasizes its significance in the context of moral behavior and spiritual integrity.

¹⁸ Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. ¹⁹ Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, ²⁰ for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.

1 Corinthians 6:18-20

For example, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 shows Paul imploring his readers to shun sexual activity with workers in pagan temples. He believes that engaging in such acts harms the individual. It also dishonors the sanctity of the body, which is considered a temple of the Holy Spirit. He has the physical human body in mind. This illustrates the idea that our bodies are not merely vessels. They are intimately connected to our spiritual lives. He urges the Corinthians to recognize the importance and holiness of their physical forms in relation to their faith.

For Paul, members of the body of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 12) have an individual existence.

The body can also be corporate. The word refers to a collection of human bodies or human beings. It means something like, “the community” or “individuals as they work together.” Paul often considers this larger, corporate reality. He keeps it in mind when he writes to the Corinthians about “the body” or “your body.”  

Bible readers embedded in individualistic cultures have not always recognized the corporate nature of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17. In these verses, Paul’s emphasis is on the good of the collective. In English, we lack an easy way to distinguish “you,” referring to one person, from “you,” referring to multiple people.

Yet in Greek, Paul and his readers were able to distinguish the two easily. In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul uses “you all” for the plural in Greek. He says, “Do you all not know that you all are God’s temple?” God’s Spirit dwells in you all. The church members together are the temple in which God has chosen to dwell. God makes the congregation, and not just its individuals, holy by God’s presence.

© Kimberlee Smith 2025 http://www.itstartssmall.com All rights reserved.