2 Corinthians 6:16 Commentary and Bible Study

You would think this the crowning argument. The temple of God in Jerusalem. Of course, soon it would be no more, the Romans would invade and it would be destroyed forever as the Old Testament order ended. But while it stood, there was one thing, even if it was only one thing, that the Jews were very zealous and careful about – you could not have an idol in the temple. Twenty years before the apostle Paul wrote this letter, the Roman emperor commanded that his bust, his statute, be put in the temple, and there was the biggest outcry Jerusalem had ever seen. You cannot do that. You cannot have an idol, a false god in the temple. And the apostle Paul uses this illustration as an argument. ‘What agreement hath the temple of God with idols?’ Of course no agreement at all, it is blasphemy.‘What agreement… for ye are the temple of living God.’ The Corinthian church is now the temple of God. The physical temple is the Old Testament, but in the New Testament each church is a temple of God. In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul says each individual Christian is a temple of God. It is used both ways.