You Are God’s Temple 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 16. Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you. 17. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy and you are that temple. In his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul confronts a congregation entangled in strife and division. Among the issues plaguing the church was the formation of factions, with members aligning themselves under different apostolic leaders—Paul, Apollos, or Cephas (1 Corinthians 1:12)—as if their loyalty to human teachers eclipsed their unity in Christ. In chapter 3, Paul dismantles this divisive mindset by reframing their identity: they are not mere followers of individuals but God’s field and God’s building (v. 9), a metaphor that transitions into the profound declaration of believers as God’s temple (vv. 16–17). This imagery carries theological weight, rooted in both Old Testament symbolism and the radical New Covenant reality....