The community and the common Spirit ("Called, Gathered and Gifted," ch8/ Extract offered in celebration of publication day

Since the church has been defined by Paul as a “gathered assembly”, the next concern is to show how this assembly gains unity from the presence of the Spirit (1 Corinthians ch3 vv16-17). 

Paul describes the believers as the “Spirit-governed”, the PNEUMATIKOI. In their understanding of God, that should separate them from the “natural-mind--governed”, the PSYCHIKOI, who are simply baffled (ch2 v14). In their relation to each other, that should separate them from the “flesh-governed”, the SARKIKOI, who are full of “jealousy and strife” (ch3 v3). The failure of the Corinthians to live up to the standard of “freedom from strife” compels him to press the point more emphatically. 

Therefore Paul asks;

V16 “Do you not know that you [in the plural] are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

That’s really a condensed version of a much longer implied argument, which ought to be spelled out in detail. 

1. In principle, each member of the Christian community has received the Spirit. 
2. It follows, in principle, that the Spirit is present in every member of the community. 
3. In other words, the Spirit is present, in principle, in the whole community as a group. This is the real point of the declaration that “God’s Spirit dwells in you people”.  

This is a very important consideration, because it means that the Spirit is present as a bond of union between the members of the community. In modern times, the idea that a group of people “share a common spirit” is used metaphorically. It just means they have the same aims and ideals. But if the one Spirit present in each individual is an objective reality, then the link between them is also an objective reality. There is an invisible, non-physical connection which binds them together as one group. 

Moving on to the next part of the argument;  

4. Earlier in the chapter, Paul was comparing the church to a building. 

5. But we have already established that the Spirit of God is present in the body of the church. 

6. The result of combining those two ideas is that the church is a building occupied by the Spirit of God. 

7. But the Spirit of God is God.

This premise needs to be one of the links in the chain, in order to make Paul’s conclusion possible.

We’ve already seen it in the argument of ch2 vv10-11. 

8. Combining the last two statements, the church, as a metaphorical building, is a building occupied by God. 

9. But being “a building occupied by a god”, in one sense or another, is what constitutes a temple. 

10. Therefore the church, the Christian community, is the temple of God. 

V17 “If anyone destroys God’s temple, then God will destroy him.”

Then Paul takes that conclusion and follows through the consequences; 

10. “You people are God’s temple” was the point established in the previous verse. 

11. But the temple of any god is “holy”, the sacred property belonging to that god, and jealously guarded. 

12. Therefore the Christian community, the church, is also “holy”, the property of their God. 

13. Any god would be angry with a man who destroyed one of their temples. The ancient world would have understood this point better than we can. We need to have some sense of the importance of a temple before we can grasp the enormity of the offence. 

14. It should be expected, then, that God would be angry with anyone who destroys his temple, the church. 

15. So the warning that God would “destroy” that man should not come as a surprise. 

16. And what is meant by “the destruction of God’s temple”?

In other contexts, this could have been about God’s response to the persecution of the church. In the context of this present letter,  Paul’s main concern is clearly the divided state of the Corinthians. 

17. The logic must be that the division of the church is the destruction of the church. At least, if you break up the unity, the unity no longer exists. 

18. In other words, if you divide the church., you are committing one of the greatest religious crimes known to the ancient world, the act of sacrilegious destruction. You have destroyed the temple of God 

19. Therefore anyone who breaks down the unity of the church is inviting his own destruction 

20. So now, Corinthians, do you understand why allowing division to appear in the community is such a bad idea? 

The presence of the Spirit in the church should be the bond of union in the church. Conversely, the prevalence of disunity will be one of the symptoms that people are not acting in accordance with the Spirit. 

A divided church is one which has been taken over (on both sides) by those governed by “the flesh”, the quarrelsome SARKIKOI