Is your body a temple?

For as long as I can remember, I've been taught that (for a Christian) the Holy Spirit lives within you, and your body is a temple. That's not entirely incorrect, but Ephesians 2 alters the picture.

Paul is talking to Gentiles, reminding them how they used to be outsiders to God's covenant with Israel. They were not included in the promise and had no access to God, but Jesus destroyed that division through the cross. By establishing a new covenant, not based on law, with all people, He reconciled both groups to God (see verse 16). Paul specifically states in verse 18, "through Him we both [Jews and Gentiles, the former insiders and outsiders] have our access in one Spirit to the Father."

The remainder of the chapter explains how the Gentile believers are now "fellow citizens" and part of "God's household." This is the important distinction (verses 20-22): built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (with Jesus as the cornerstone), fitted together as a holy temple that they are now a part of.

I am not a temple. My body is not a temple. Neither is yours. As we join together as one body of believers, we all become part of the new temple. Or, as Paul puts it, "a dwelling of God in the spirit."

This is not to say the Holy Spirit doesn't dwell within you personally. He's pretty special, and he can live in you and in me at the same time. But God in all his fullness dwells in us collectively. In the same way that Jesus was fully man and fully God so that the fullness of God dwelled in a human body and walked the Earth, that is how God dwells in the unified body of all believers from all backgrounds who are united in Christ. No one of us can hope to contain that or attain that, but as a whole, that is exactly what we are. That is why the Bible repeatedly says we are his body and why it is so important for us to be ONE body. We serve the same purpose that Jesus' physical body did; we are a dwelling place for the fullness of God on Earth.