1 Corinthians 3:16-17 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”

Church politics is a destroyer. It attacks the very thing God is trying to build. From time to time some church still uses the word “temple” in their name, but our church buildings are not temples in the biblical sense of the word. The Old Testament temple built by Solomon was a place where God promised to live with his people in a special way at all times. No one imagined that the temple contained God with limits and boundaries he could not escape. They knew God was everywhere. But at the temple God promised to hear their prayers, receive their sacrifices, and give them his grace and blessing. The temple was a place where God could say to his people, “We are a family. I am your Father. You are my children. Here is the place where we can meet together. This is the place where I live with you.”

God doesn’t have a building like that on earth anymore. He doesn’t use a building to be present with his people, not in the way he used Solomon’s temple. He uses our bodies. Every believer is God’s temple, the place he lives with his people, the voice where God can be found with his grace and blessing.

You are God’s temple, and isn’t that a humbling and encouraging expression of God’s grace to us? What does it say about the depth of his love?

When we are hurt, and someone apologizes to us, we may genuinely forgive them. We don’t dwell on the pain or loss we suffered. We don’t live with a more or less constant grumble against that person haunting our inner thoughts. Still, don’t we sometimes end up with a distance between us that wasn’t there before? Maybe we hold them at arm’s length, not because we hate them, but because we have lost some trust and we aren’t eager to get hurt again. It is even better when our forgiveness leads to a friendship completely restored, and we find each other together again on a regular basis.

God’s grace to us goes further still. He doesn’t stop at spending a little time with us now and then. So complete is his forgiveness that he makes our bodies and souls a permanent place to live. He makes us his temple, his home, even though he knows where these bodies have been, what they have done, and the sinful foolishness they are going to do in the future. He is along for the ride through good and bad because “you yourselves are God’s temple, and God’s Spirit lives in you.”

Church politics destroys that temple. It wounds the faith of young believers, sometimes wounds that faith to death. And where faith is gone, the Holy Spirit is missing, too. God’s temple has fallen.

An article on young atheists ten years ago in The Atlantic magazine recalls an interview with a college student named Phil who was president of his church youth group, loved his pastor, and especially loved his youth leader. But during his junior year in high school the church wanted to attract more young people by asking the youth leader to teach less and play more. The youth leader disagreed with this strategy and was dismissed. He was replaced by a younger and much more attractive youth leader who, according to Phil, ‘didn’t know a thing about the Bible.’ But the youth group grew. It also lost Phil, who ended up an atheist.

There are thousands of wounded former Christians whose faith has fallen victim to this sort of thing. “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him,” Paul warns. That’s not to say this sin can’t be repented and forgiven, but like all sin it can destroy our own souls as well as the souls of those we offend.