How I Used Truth - Lesson 1 - Annotation 6
Explain how your body can be called a temple of God. What takes place in a temple?
6. The body of each one of us is a temple of God because God's Presence is within it as the life principle. A temple is an edifice dedicated to the worship of a deity -- any place where the divine Presence resides. At the center of our being, the first phase of our threefold nature (i.e., spirit-soul-body), is a "Holy of Holies" (Heb. 9:3). This is where God lives as the life, substance, and intelligence that causes and sustains the body.
In a temple there is worship in which purification of the human and consecration to the divine take place. In our being, this purification and consecration must take place in order to allow worship of God. In our soul or consciousness all our thoughts and feelings (having come forth as aspirations and desires) should bow in worship and adoration of the divine Presence that abides within. Thus our mind (consciousness) and our body will be worthy of being the habitation "of the living God" (II Cor. 6:16).
As we become conscious of the Christ Presence and Power within us, our mind and body are purified and redeemed of all that is contrary to the God-nature. We consciously accept the Truth and understand how we are created in the image and after the likeness of God. It is only at this stage that we are truly able to present our body "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service" (Rom. 12:1). It is with this deep understanding that the Christ power within shall "fashion anew the body . . . that it may be conformed to the body of his glory" (Phil. 3:21). Knowing the sacredness of our body as "a temple of the Holy Spirit" (I Cor. 6:19), we will stand forth as the image-likeness of God. In each of us, as in Jesus, "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. 2:9).
In his writings Paul says,
"We are a temple of the living God| even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (II Cor. 6:l6).
We have also the words of Jesus attesting to the body of man as being God's temple, for we read,
"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. But he spake of the temple of his body" (John 2:19, 21).
Sometimes in our spiritual study we are so engrossed in Jesus' teaching concerning the state of the soul that we overlook His teaching concerning the body. The number of physical healings Jesus performed indicates His realization of the body as an instrument for the expression and manifestation of God-perfection. Charles Fillmore caught this truth for himself for he spent many hours of prayer for his own healing. His conviction of the need to have the body worthy of the divine Presence within is brought out in the following words:
“When Jesus came teaching that the body is the temple He brought to man the revelation of the Enduring temple. . . Jesus Christ taught the beauty and continuity of the body temple. This was one object of His ministry. He first proclaimed that His mission was to preach and to heal, and all of His work was to demonstrate perfection of the temple, to establish the true worship of the living God throughout the body, which is God's temple" (Metaphysical Bible Dictionary 650, 651).
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Preceding Entry: How is Jesus both the Elder Brother and Saviour of mankind?
Following Entry: What could be considered the distinction between a Christian life (as popularly accepted) and a Christ life?
