The apostle Paul was the first celebrity church planter. One of his most infamous plants was a church in a culture that glorified obsession with themselves. Sex, recreation, fashion, and creature comforts were triumphed as common virtues even among Christians. They saw themselves as special people because that was part of their culture. In his letters to them he kept asking a single question in several different ways. Do you guys look like your culture more or Jesus more?

Paul wrote to these Corinthian believers that they were far more special than they realized because they were the temples of God. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul gives us a wonderful revelation on how we are to look at ourselves. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” Many pastors that I have heard focus on the specialness of being called God’s temple. Regrettably, it has been reduced to a feel good statement and for many is nothing but a second rate “Christian t-shirt” slogan. Paul on the other hand was trying to get them and us to not focus on our feelings about what we were being called but on realizing how God is going to treat us as his temple. We should take what we do and how we do it very seriously. God does. God is interested in the idea of us doing justice daily. In doing it in a way that shows loving kindness. Another way of phrasing that is to love kindness that exudes mercy and grace in how we live and interact. God is interested in us living humbly because we represent him however imperfectly to the whole world. How does your temple look to your world? Does it look more like Jesus or more like a 21st century believer?

In Matthew 21:12-13 we see Jesus zeal in relation to a temple of God’s built with earthly hands. “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” In Psalm 69:9 It says of Jesus “For zeal for your house has consumed me.” If Jesus had that type of zeal for a temple built by Herod a pagan, how much zeal does he have for those who are his being built up by the very Spirit of God?

This should be a terribly humbling thought. If God sees us as his temples and Jesus showed such zeal for a temple built by hands then shouldn’t we make sure that our temples are worthy of him? Sadly we often don’t because we don’t want to look at ourselves honestly. We refuse to look at the idols that we are building. We refuse to see the injustice we do, the lack of loving kindness, and the refusal to walk in humility with our God Jesus. If we aren’t walking in daily humility then we aren’t with Jesus. We may belong to Jesus, we may know Jesus, but we aren’t with Jesus in the fullness that he desires to be with us. This should terrify us. Sadly often it doesn’t.

Does this terrify you? Does not walking with Jesus in the fullness he desires bother you? If not shouldn’t it?

Part 2 of 5, part 3 coming Tuesday at 12:01 A.M. E.S.T.