if we were making a temple of timber and stones, we could only make it for
SERMON 217 179 as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so too the Son gives life to whom he will (Jn 5:21)? An act of the same power, the same divinity. So if the Son also works wonders, how does the Father alone work them? But if it was said about both of them, then Father and Son are one God. Add the Holy Spirit; add him, don't exclude him, or you may be excluded yourselves.
It's the body of Christ that is Gods temple
4. Let us worship God, whose temples we are;6 because, brothers and sisters, if we were making a temple of timber and stones, we could only make it for God. If we were pagans, we would make temples for the gods; because we would be making temples for false gods, as the unbelieving nations made them, who were estranged from God. Solomon though, insofar as he was a prophet of God, made a temple of timber and stones, but at least for God; for God, not an idol; for God, not an angel; for God, not for the sun, not for the moon; for God who made heaven and earth; for the living God who made heaven and earth, and who stays in the heavens, he made a temple from the earth, and God did not disdain it, on the contrary, he ordered it to be made.
Why did God order a temple to be made for him? Didn't he have anywhere to live? Listen to Saint Stephen, when he suffered: Solomon, he said, built him a house; but the Most High does not live in temples made with hands (Acts 7:47-48). So why did he want to make a temple, or have a temple made? To be a figure of the body of Christ. That temple was a shadow; the light came, and put the shadow to flight. Look now for the temple which Solomon made, and you will find a ruin. Why is that temple a ruin? Because what it signified has already come to pass.
Even the very temple which is the body of the Lord fell into ruin; but it rose again, and rose again in such a way that now it can certainly never fall into ruin anymore. Anyway, when the Jews said to him, What sign are you making, that we should believe you ? he said to them, Pull down this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Now he was speaking to them in the temple built by Solomon,7 and he said, Pull down this temple. But they didn't hear what he really meant by this, they didn't understand what this meant, they thought he was talking about that temple. Anyway, they answered him, Forty-six years this temple took to build, and will you raise it up in three days? About that the evangelist immediately remarks, But he said this about the temple of his body (Jn 2:18-21).
So it's the body of Christ that is God's temple. What are our bodies? Members of Christ. Listen to the apostle: Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? (1 Cor 6:15). What was he showing us by saying your bodies are members of Christ, but that our bodies and our head, which is Christ, together are the one temple of God? Let us trust the body of Christ and our bodies to be the temple of God, and we will be; because if we don't believe, we certainly won't be. So since our bodies are members of Christ, listen to something else the apostle said: Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit in you, whom you have from God? (1 Cor 6:19).8