The great purpose of Christianity is to make men like Jesus Christ.  As He is the image of the invisible God we are to be the images of the unseen Christ.  The Scripture is very bold and emphatic in attributing to Christ’s followers likeness to Him, in nature, in character, in relation to the world, in office, and in ultimate destiny.  Is He the anointed of God?  We are anointed—­Christs in Him.  Is He the Son of God?  We in Him receive the adoption of sons.  Is He the Light of the world?  We in Him are lights of the world too.  Is He a King?  A Priest?  He hath made us to be kings and priests.

Here we have the Apostle making the same solemn assertion in regard to Christian men, ’Know ye not that ye are’—­as your Master, and because your Master is—­’that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’

Of course the allusion in my text is to the whole aggregate of believers—­what we call the Catholic Church, as being collectively the habitation of God.  But God cannot dwell in an aggregate of men, unless He dwells in the individuals that compose the aggregate.  And God has nothing to do with institutions except through the people who make the institutions.  And so, if the Church as a whole is a Temple, it is only because all its members are temples of God.

Therefore, without forgetting the great blessed lesson of the unity of the Church which is taught in these words, I want rather to deal with them in their individual application now; and to try and lay upon your consciences, dear brethren, the solemn obligations and the intense practical power which this Apostle associated with the thought that each Christian man was, in very deed, a temple of God.

It would be very easy to say eloquent things about this text, but that is no part of my purpose.

I. Let me deal, first of all, and only for a moment or two, with the underlying thought that is here—­that every Christian is a dwelling-place of God.

Now, do not run away with the idea that that is a metaphor.  It was the outward temple that was the metaphor.  The reality is that which you and I, if we are God’s children in Jesus Christ, experience.  There was no real sense in which that Mighty One whom the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain, dwelt in any house made with hands.  But the Temple, and all the outward worship, were but symbolical of the facts of the Christian life, and the realities of our inward experience.  These are the truths whereof the other is the shadow.  We use words to which it is difficult for us to attach any meaning, when we talk about God as being locally present in any material building; but we do not use words to which it is so difficult to attach a meaning, when we talk about the Infinite Spirit as being present and abiding in a spirit shaped to hold Him, and made on purpose to touch Him and be filled by Him.