God the Spirit

1 Corinthians 3:16-17

Introduction

We have been looking at the nature of God, looking at God the Father and then God the Son. Now we look at God the Spirit. I find this more of a challenge. When we hear Father, certain concrete images come to mind. When we hear Son, certain concrete images come to mind. But what about Spirit?

What even is Spirit? We use spirit in so many different ways. We might say that someone has a spirit of joy. We might think of spirits as demons, as ghosts, or just the immaterial part of ourselves. Speaking of ghosts, at one point it was common for us to call the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost. I’m thankful that is not used as much as we consider ghosts to be the spirits of dead people which is not what the Holy Spirit is. 

Often we can find some clarification when we turn to the original languages but both the Hebrew and the Greek words can be translated as spirit, but equally wind or breath. Now we are left even more confused about God the Spirit.

So why do we even talk about the Spirit as a person of the Trinity? What we find from the Scriptures is that what is done to the Spirit is considered the same thing as what we do to God. But could this not just be the power of God? Some think so and yet the Bible says we can both grieve and lie to the Spirit, something you cannot do to just a source of power. So the Spirit is both God and is personal. Along with the Father and the Son, we have the Trinity.

But that still does not give us a very good picture of the Spirit. In some ways this is ironic because for all persons of the Trinity, it is the Spirit that we have the most direct access. People talk about having Jesus in their heart, which the Bible never mentions. We are told, however, that God puts his Spirit in us. We are called to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Instead of giving a lecture on the Holy Spirit, I think it would be more helpful to look at the work of the Spirit in a specific way. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians has a lot to say about the Holy Spirit. The passage that we are going to look at looks at only one particular aspect of the Spirit, but one that the Church needs to hear today.

Temple of the Spirit

I have mentioned before that I was not raised Baptist. I grew up Anglican and became Pentecostal in my early twenties. Some people react to the radical change with those two traditions. They are indeed very different. But the differences go beyond how expressive they are in worship. Here is one difference that I noticed right away and it concerns smoking tobacco. The Anglican Church that I grew up in had no problem with smoking. In fact, for much of the time that I attended that church, people could smoke inside the church building and many did. No one would have thought anything wrong if a priest smoked. But when I got to the Pentecostal church, I found out that smoking was one of the worst things that you could do. The concern was not specifically about health issues but about sin. Some thought you needed to at least be trying to quit in order to go to heaven and smoking could limit the opportunities to participate in the life of the church. Being someone who often asks questions, I asked why smoking was considered sin and not just unwise. I was told that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and so damaging them with smoking is a very bad sin. I noticed, but did not say, that people could eat KFC every day and wash it down with a couple of litres of pop and no one would consider it wrong at all.

Yes, the  Bible does talk about us as the temple of the Spirit. While a later passage does refer to individuals, the passage from 1 Corinthians 3, which many people quoted is actually using “you” in the plural. What Paul is actually saying is the Church is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

When we hear temple language, we should think of the Jerusalem temple, as that was Paul’s tradition. That temple was not simply a physical location that facilitated public worship. It was believed that God’s presence literally dwelt within the temple and that made things so holy that one part of it could only be visited by the high priest, and even then only once a year. 

So does that mean that church buildings operate in the same sort of way? Many people think so. You might hear people say: “I can’t believe you just did that in church!” The problem is that when Paul was writing, there were no church buildings. Biblically, the church is never a building. A church is the people. If a congregation loses a church building, that does not affect their identity as the church.

The question we have to ask is, why is Paul reminding the Corinthians that they are a temple and that the Holy Spirit is within them? If we look at the first chapter of this letter, we find that Paul is not just writing this letter because he wanted to say hello. Paul writes this letter because there was a specific problem within the Corinthian church. That problem was that they had factions and these factions were tearing apart the church. Each faction probably thought they were doing the Lord’s work. But the division within the church was creating tremendous damage. What Paul is arguing here is that the church is a temple indwell by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit desires unity. The church is not just some organization or social club that people can hijack for their own needs. When people divide the church, they are actually grieving the Holy Spirit which is binding the church together. This is why Paul uses such harsh language here.

Spirit, Unity, and Today

Do you think that the problem of factions and division were limited to the Corinthian church? We know that churches continue to struggle with these things today. The common denominator is that churches are made up of human beings.

Having been part of many churches over my life time, I have definitely seen divisions and some sharp disagreements over certain issues. I have not seen as much factions, that is groups of people who organize around a certain person or issue, but I have been to churches just after there was a blowup from those factions.

The question that I ask as I talk to my colleagues who have had negative experiences in churches is, why do some people seek to cause divisions? I may be naive but I believe that for most people, they are not seeking to damage the church or to create problems. I believe that 99% of the time that it comes down to people who have strong convictions about the way things should be done.

Sometimes I think about what life will be like after I retire. We will eventually land in a church and we will be part of that congregation, not as pastors but as laypeople. I know that I will have strong opinions on preaching, music, use of liturgy, types of outreach, use of money, and many other things. Is having strong opinions sinful? Absolutely not. We are divided not by those who have strong opinions and those who don’t. Rather, we are those who are vocal about those opinions and those who are silent? So, is it wrong to admit what our opinions are? I would say no, even if it sometimes causes tensions.

The destroying of the temple of God in which the Holy Spirit dwells is not about admitting that we have convictions on certain issues. I would actually say that a red flag would be if people were not comfortable sharing their convictions.

It comes down to how we treat people with other convictions and how we serve in the church when not all of our opinions are implemented. But what if you really believe your convictions are the best thing for the church? Wouldn’t compromising by not continually fighting for that best way be wrong? Actually, I would argue that a certain amount of compromising is required for any healthy relationship. We simply cannot have our own way all of the time. In any relationship. It is especially true when it comes to the church.

Conclusion

Now you might be a bit confused. This sermon is supposed to be about the Holy Spirit and I have been speaking about the church. Is this a bait and switch? The truth is that we are not given information about the personality of the Holy Spirit. The concept of Spirit is not near as easy to understand as the Father and the Son. We really know the Spirit by the work of the Spirit. That work is tied primarily to the church. Do you know when the church began? It was not when Jesus called the disciples. It was on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out. We are told in Acts 2 that the Spirit was poured out on men and women, old and young, slave and free. Those were some of the traditional divisions within society. We also see the Spirit poured out on Jews and Samaritans and Gentiles, groups that did not get along. The work of the Spirit has been to create unity out of diversity. The Corinthians struggled with that. So does the modern church. When we gather to worship God in Jesus Christ, we do that not as any organization. The church is the temple of God in which the Holy Spirit dwells. The Spirit works for unity. Working against the Spirit destroys the church.