1 Peter 2:4-10 The Temple of His Body

It does not make sense to talk about Jesus by himself — in isolation.  He is never apart from God the Father.  He is always, as John says, “in bosom of the Father” (the ESV says “at the Father’s side,”).  According to Colossians, he is “the image of the invisible God”; as Jesus tells Philip, "whoever has seen me has seen the Father"(John 14:9).

At the same time, Jesus is always inextricably connected to us.  For the Word to be “made flesh” means that he shares in our humanity, just as our baptism means our participation in his death and risen life.  Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s matchless communion prayer, known as “the Prayer of Humble Access” captures this element of mutual participation in the petition that “we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.”

Today’s passage from 1 Peter stresses not so much the Incarnation itself, as the “extension of the Incarnation” in the life of the Church — which is our common life in Christ.  When Peter speaks of our being “living stones built up as a spiritual house,” he is referring to the Temple – not the temple whose remains can be seen in today’s Jerusalem, but the temple that is Christ’s body. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” says Jesus to the authorities in Jerusalem, and then John tells that “he was speaking about the temple of his body” (John 2:21).

When we participate by faith and baptism in Christ, we become part of that temple.  “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?  If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple....do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?”  (1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 6:19). 

In these two passages, Paul is not saying that my individual body is a temple of the Spirit. In each case, the word for “you” is plural.  Together, we are joined to Christ; together, we become part of the temple of his body, the Church – as 1st Peter says, ”living stones” of a “spiritual house.”

The event of the Incarnation — of the “Word made flesh” — does not come to end with Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of the Father.  Through his body, the Church, Christ is still Emmanuel, still “God with us.”  Just as God dwelt in the midst of his people in the Temple in Jerusalem, Christ remains among his people who are “living stones built up as a spiritual house.”