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Defilement & Unity

by Phillip Ross  
7/28/2009 / Bible Studies

Paul has established that the Spirit of God dwells with believers. He makes an analogy to the Old Testament Temple by saying that believers are the Temple. It is important that we understand who Paul refers to here. The Greek word translated as "you" is a second person plural present indicative. That means that the best translation is y'all. It is a plural term and indicates that the people of God are the temple, not simply an individual believer.

Peter built upon this theme when he said, "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" (1 Peter 2:5). Yes, the Spirit of God inhabits believers as they are born again, and each believer must protect the purity (or health) of his or her own body as part of the discipline of faithfulness. But the analogy primarily applies to the corporate nature of the church as the body of Christ. The purity of the church must also be protected.

Paul speaks of this in 1 Corinthians 12:12-ff, "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free -- and all were made to drink of one Spirit." Just as individual bodies are not divisible, which is the root meaning of individual, so, the church is also individual -- not just specific churches, but the Church Universal is individual -- whole, complete, without division. Christians are bound together in a bond of love and fellowship with one another across the face of the globe and throughout the centuries. Christian unity is not something to be achieved, rather it is something to be realized. It is already the fact of the matter in that Christian unity has been decreed and is in the process of realization.

This bond of love and fellowship between believers is not based upon how we feel about one another, or on what we think about each other. How we feel about each other and what we think about each other are secondary concerns or less -- minor concerns -- because the love of Christ is stronger than whatever appreciation or disdain we may have for other believers. The bond of Christian fellowship is not based on our love or respect for one another, but on Christ's love for His people -- all of His people. Our feelings for each other are not the bonding element of Christian fellowship.

Nor are Christians bound together by their understanding of biblical doctrine. Doctrine is not the bond of Christian fellowship, either. Christ is. Our bond is not doctrinal or denominational, but personal. Jesus Christ is the bond of Christian fellowship. Christians have Christ in common, and all Christians are growing into "the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes," said Paul in Ephesians 4:13-14.

I am not disparaging the value of right doctrine, nor the importance of the love of the brethren -- both of which are biblically mandated. Doctrine is important and we are called to love and honor one another in Christ. We are stewards of the temple of God, which is no longer a building made of stones, but is now in Christ a church made of believers (1 Corinthians 3:16, 1 Peter 2:5).

"If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple" (1 Corinthians 3:17). The KJV translates it, "If any man defile the temple of God." The Greek word translated "defile" means to pine or waste, to shrivel or wither, that is, to spoil or to ruin by moral influences, to deprave, corrupt or destroy. I prefer "defile" to "destroy" because it better suggests the process that leads to destruction. It tells us that contamination of the purity of the church can be lethal. It tells us that moral contamination or moral synthesis produces death.

But is the Church of Jesus Christ morally or doctrinally pure? No, not yet. But it is growing in purity over time as it grows in faithfulness through the sanctification of its individual members, in spite of what it may seem. The growth of the church is like the growth of the stock market in that there are cyclic fluctuations but an overall increase. Because we are not pure, because we are still sinners wrestling with a boatload of sin in our personal and corporate lives, and yet are members of Christ's body nonetheless, the purity of the church is retarded by our spiritual immaturity. I am equating spiritual immaturity with moral depravity because we are all saved from sin into Christ's righteousness. We are growing in faithfulness and in understanding in as much as we trust and depend upon Jesus Christ and the Word of God and not on the foolishness of men.

At the same time, we cannot deny the moral demand that Paul lays at our feet in this verse. Inasmuch as we defile the church, God will defile us. It appears that God will give back to us what we give to Him. If we give Him love and honor and praise, He will give us love and honor and praise. But if we give Him hate and dishonor and spite, He will give those very things right back to us. Being made in the image of God means that there is a reflectivity in our relationship with our Creator. The positive side is that we reflect His character inasmuch as we are true to His Word. But the negative side is that our failure to reflect His character results in the defilement of the church, and leads to our own eventual destruction.

Phillip A. Ross founded http://www.Pilgrim-Platform.org in 1998, which documents the church's fall from historic Christianity. Demonstrating the Apostle Paul's opposition to worldly Christianity, he published an exposition First Corinthians in 2008. Ross's book, Arsy Varsy -- Reclaiming the Gospel i

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