But he spoke of the temple of his body.
εκεινος δε ελεγεν περι του ναου του σωματος αυτου
11 Church Fathers comment on this verse · 12 commentaries
Why, then, did He not explain this parable and say, “I am not speaking of this temple, but of My flesh”? Later, when the evangelist wrote the Gospel, he interpreted this saying. But He Himself was silent at the time.
Why was He silent? Because they would not have accepted His words. If even His disciples were then unable to understand what was said, much less could the people understand it.
Apollinarius tries to find a defense of his heresy here. Wishing to confirm that the Lord's flesh was without a soul, he says: the flesh is called a temple, and a temple is soulless. Therefore His flesh also is soulless.
Thunderstruck and dizzy man! You will perhaps make the Lord's flesh into wood and stones also, since a temple is made of them.
When you hear the Lord's words, "My soul is now troubled" (Jn 12:27), and, "I have authority to lay down My soul" (Jn 10:18), how do you understand them?
If you say that this is not spoken of a rational and intelligent soul, where will you place the words, "Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit" (Lk 23:46)?
Will you understand this too of an irrational soul? And what about this: "Thou wilt not leave My soul in Hades" (Ps 15:10)? How does it seem to you? But perish, you and those who think with you.
The word of wisdom is readily received by the wise, and knowledge of the sciences is much more easily planted in rational people. Just as seals are clearly impressed upon wax that is not very hard, so the divine word is easily planted in tender human hearts.
For this reason the hard-hearted man is called wicked. Thus the disciples, being good, are made wise and meditate on the words of divine Scripture.
They train themselves toward more exact knowledge, and from this knowledge they come firmly to faith.
If the body of Christ is called a temple, how shall the Only-begotten Word dwelling in it not be God by nature? For one cannot admit that He who is not God is called the inhabitant of a temple.
Otherwise, let them tell us: whose body, among all the saints who have ever lived, was called a temple? I think no one will point to such a saint.
Therefore I affirm, and careful examination of divine Scripture will prove it entirely true, that such honor cannot be assigned to any of the saints.
Even the blessed Baptist reached the summit of every virtue and yielded primacy in piety to no one. Through the madness of Herod he suffered beheading. Yet nothing similar is said of him.
On the contrary, the Evangelist used an expression for his remains that indicates their coarse fleshly condition. He did this, as it seems to me, with providential care, so that this dignity might be preserved for Christ alone.
He writes thus: "And sending," the murderer, that is, Herod, "he beheaded John in the prison. And his disciples came and took his corpse (πτῶμα)" (Mt 14:10, 12).
If John's body is called a corpse, whose temple will it be? True, we too are called temples of God (1 Cor 3:16; 1 Cor 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16, 19).
But this is in another sense, because of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. Moreover, we are called temples of God, not temples of ourselves.
Yet perhaps someone will object: tell me, then, how does the Savior Himself call His body a corpse? For He says, "Wherever the corpse is, there the eagles will be gathered together" (Mt 24:28).
To this we answer: it is true that Christ said this of His own body. But He speaks in the form of a parable and figuratively indicates the future gathering of the saints to Him.
This will take place when He appears again from heaven to us with the holy Angels "in the glory of His Father" (Mt 16:27).
As flocks of flesh-eating eagles quickly fly together to corpses, He says, so you also will be gathered to Me. Paul clearly expressed this to us in the words: "The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible" (1 Cor 15:52).
And elsewhere: "We shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thess 4:17).
Thus the use of comparison and likeness cannot in any way harm the true meaning of the expression.
Six, nine, twelve, ten, and eight together make forty-five. Add to this the unit itself, and there will be forty-six. If this number is taken six times, it makes two hundred seventy-six.
It is said that human conception takes place and is completed in this way. For the first six days the human being has a likeness as of milk. During the next nine days he is changed into blood.
Then, over twelve days, he is compacted. During the remaining ten and eight days he is formed until all the members have their perfect outline.
From this point, throughout the remaining time until the hour of birth, he increases in size. Thus, when one is added to forty-five days, that one signifies perfection.
For six, nine, twelve, ten, and eight, joined together, make forty-five. Therefore, adding one as was said, we receive forty-six.
When this number is multiplied by six, the number that stands at the head of this order, it gives two hundred seventy-six. That is, nine months and six days.
This period is reckoned from the eighth day before the Kalends of April, the day on which the Lord is believed to have been conceived, for on that same day He also suffered.
It extends to the eighth day before the Kalends of January, the day on which He was born. Therefore it is reasonably said that the temple was built in forty-six years.
For it signified His body, so that as many years as the raising of the temple occupied, so many days the perfection of the Lord's body continued (Jn 2:19-21).
The Jews said to Him, "What sign do You show us, since You do these things?" And the Lord answered, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Then the Jews said, "This temple was forty-six years in building, and will You raise it up in three days?" (Jn 2:18-20). They were flesh, and they reasoned in a fleshly way. But He spoke in a spiritual sense. Who, then, could understand what He said about the temple? Yet we need not seek the answer for long. Through the Evangelist it is openly revealed to us what He said about that temple: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." "This temple was forty-six years in building, and will You raise it up in three days?" But, the Evangelist continues, "He was speaking of the temple of His body" (Jn 2:19-21).
It is clear that the Lord, after being put to death, rose again after three days. This is now well known to all of us. If it is hidden from the Jews, it is because they stand outside the Church. But for us it is revealed, because we know in Whom we believe. We shall celebrate the destruction of this Temple and His raising up again in the yearly solemnities of the Resurrection of Christ. We exhort you to prepare for it. If any among you are catechumens, catechumeni, we hope that you will receive grace. The time has already come. Even now what will then be born is being brought to birth. So then, we know this.
But perhaps we shall be asked whether there is some mystery in the fact that the temple was built in forty-six years. Though much could be said about this, what we shall say now can be stated briefly and understood without difficulty.
Brethren, we have already said, if I am not mistaken, yesterday, that Adam was one man and that he himself was the whole human race. For, as we said before, if you remember, he was as though divided into parts. Now, though divided, he is being gathered together and, as it were, fused into one through spiritual communion and concord. The same Adam still groans as one wretched man (cf. Ps 34), but he is renewed in Christ. For Adam came without sin, so that Adam's sin might be destroyed in His flesh, and so that Adam might raise up in himself the image of God. Therefore from Adam came the flesh of Christ. From Adam came the temple which the Jews destroyed and which the Lord raised in three days. For He raised His own flesh.
Behold, for He was God, equal to the Father. My brethren, the Apostle says, "He raised Him from the dead." Of Whom does he speak? Of the Father: "He became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also raised Him from the dead and gave Him the name above every name" (cf. Phil 2:8-9). The Lord was raised and exalted. Who raised Him? The Father, to Whom He says in the psalm: "Raise Me up, and I will repay them" (Ps 40:11). Therefore the Father raised Him. Did He not raise Himself? But what does the Father do without the Word? What does the Father do without His Only Son? Hear that He Himself was God: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn 2:19). Did He say, "Destroy this temple, and the Father will raise it up in three days"? As when the Father raises, the Son raises, so when the Son raises, the Father raises. For the Son said, "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30).
What, then, does the number forty-six mean? Yesterday you already heard that Adam extends over the whole circle of the earth. This is shown by the connection of four Greek letters and four Greek words. If you write one below another these four words, the names of the four parts of the world, east, west, north, and south, they embrace the whole world. Therefore the Lord says that, when He comes for judgment, He will gather His elect from the four winds (Mk 13:27). If you write those four names in Greek, ἀνατολή, that is, east, δύσις, that is, west, ἄρκτος, that is, north, and μεσημβρία, that is, south, anatole, dysis, arctos, mesembria, the first letters of the words contain the name "Adam."
Why, then, do we find the number forty-six there? Because the flesh of Christ came from Adam. The Greeks use letters for numbers. When we write the letter a, they put alpha, α, in their language, and by alpha they also name the number one. When they write beta, β, as a number, which among them means b, it is called the number two. When they write gamma, γ, as a number, it signifies three among them. When they write delta, δ, as a number, it expresses four among them. In this way all letters contain numbers. What we call m, and they write as mu, μ, means forty. For when they read mu as a number, they call it tessarakonta, τεσσαράκοντα. Now consider those letters which express numbers, and you will find there the forty-six years during which the temple was raised. For "Adam" contains alpha, α, which means one. It contains delta, δ, which means four, and you have five in sum. Then it again contains alpha, α, which means one, and you have six in sum. Finally, it contains mu, μ, which means forty, and you arrive at forty-six. This, my brethren, was said by our great predecessors, and this number forty-six was found by us in their writings.
Since our Lord Jesus Christ received a body from Adam, but did not take sin from Adam, He took from him the bodily temple. Yet He did not take the corruption which had to be driven out of the temple. The Jews crucified that very flesh which He received from Adam, for Mary was from Adam, and the Lord's flesh was from Mary. And He was going to raise in three days that very flesh which they intended to fasten to the cross. They destroyed the temple which had been raised for forty-six years, and He restored it in three days.
We glorify the Lord our God, Who has gathered us for spiritual joy. Let us remain always in humility of heart, and let our joy be in His hands. Let us not be exalted, whatever success we may attain in this world. Rather, let us know that happiness itself will come to us when these earthly things pass away. My brethren, let our joy be in hope. Let no one rejoice in present things, lest he stop along the way. Let all joy be in hope of the future, and let every desire be directed toward eternal life. Let every sigh be for Christ. Let Him alone, the most beautiful, be desired. He loved the deformed in order to make them beautiful. To Him alone must we hasten, and for Him alone must we sigh. And let those who desire peace for His servant say continually, "Let the Lord be magnified" (cf. Ps 34:27).
But the priests were offended by such zeal, which rebuked them. Still more, they were offended by the rights declared by the Lord and by the independence of His action from them.
They did not wish to understand His act in this way, and approached Him with the question: by what sign will You prove that You have authority to act so?
They had John's testimony concerning Jesus. They had seen with their own eyes how rights confirmed by long-standing abuse yielded to His divine voice. Why did they need new miracles?
Was it not clear that the Lord of the temple had come into the temple? Was it not clear that this question did not arise from a desire to recognize Him as Messiah, should He prove His divine mission?
Rather, it came from a desire to remove an outside influence from themselves and to retain their age-old possession, as this is expressed in the parable.
Here the beginning was already hidden of that murderous plot against God which later developed. This prophet was superfluous to them.
They wished to remain with the former order of things and with their former power. They were ready to free themselves, by whatever means, from the mighty reprover.
All this was already hidden then in the question of the Jews. By His answer the Lord expressed the thought that their way of thinking would not restrain His activity.
Likewise, He leaves them free to do whatever their soul desires. The end of this will be that by their iniquities they will not only bring this temple to final desolation.
They will also raise their hands against Him who is greater than the temple. Yet this will not prevent the fulfillment of His great work.
Their triumph will last no longer than three days. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
The Jews referred His words to the temple in the proper sense and put a question to Him. Jesus left it unanswered, perhaps because they deliberately altered the meaning of His words.
Yet they remembered these words of the Lord afterward. Having distorted them, they turned them into an accusation against Him.
Such was the Lord's entrance into His ministry. Already then He saw its end and announced it to all in the temple.
But what could most influence His followers was the freedom, clothed with divine power and majesty, with which He rose against the trampling of the sanctuary.
This profanation was being carried out on days especially sacred in the eyes of the Jewish hierarchy. From this it was clear to all that whoever wished to follow Him need not be constrained by the opinion of the spiritual rulers about Him.
They unfortunately had reasons to be displeased with Him, because they did not wish to part with their passions.
This sovereign and free action of Jesus Christ flowed from zeal for the holiness of God's house. It also flowed from holy indignation against those who defiled it, making the house of God a house of trade.
His disciples, attentive to the words of Scripture, rightly understood it (Ps 68:10). But it angered those guilty of defiling the temple.
Christ's rebuke was expressed in deed and word. Since they could not condemn the act itself, they answered by demanding that He prove His right to act with such authority in the temple.
They asked Him for some special and extraordinary sign, a miracle. Then Jesus answered them: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
Christ, as the Evangelist explains, speaks here of the temple of His body. But the Jews understood these words literally, and therefore said to Him mockingly: "This temple was built in forty-six years, and will You raise it up in three days?"
Even if the inward meaning of the Lord's words was dark and incomprehensible to them, they still should not have understood them so externally and literally. It was obvious that Jesus Christ was not speaking here of this visible temple.
He was pointing to certain events in the moral world. Yet the Jews deliberately did not seek a deeper spiritual understanding of the Lord's words.
Later they used them as testimony against Jesus (Mt 26:61; Mk 14:58), and now they used them to mock Him.
By expressing in this form the prophecy of His death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ gives these thoughts. All Old Testament institutions and rites pointed to the coming Messiah, to His person and His work.
Their center, the temple of Jerusalem, was the symbolic dwelling place of God. It was a type of Christ's body, in which God the Word truly dwelt.
"The defilement of this temple, already begun by you," the Lord speaks, as it were, "you will extend so far that you will destroy even what constitutes its essence. You will put Me, the Messiah, to death.
But I shall rise on the third day. Soon afterward this visible temple, then deprived of its inner meaning and essence, and therefore no longer needed, will be destroyed by God's judgment.
Together with it, the whole Old Testament religious order, whose center it served, will also be destroyed. But in place of the destroyed religion I shall raise up, through My Resurrection, a new and higher religion."
We are compelled to understand this prophecy so by observing other prophecies. What is foretold of the thing prefigured is also foretold, in its essential features, of the figure itself. The three days, with regard to the figure's fate, signify in general a short period of time.
To drive out such a multitude of cattle required no little time. Christ cleansed the temple in silence, and no one dared resist Him.
Everyone already knew that John the Baptist had pointed to Him as the expected Deliverer, the Messiah. He had done this not only before the people who came to him for baptism, but even before priests sent from the Sanhedrin.
All undoubtedly expected His appearance in the temple at the feast of Pascha. As soon as He appeared, they silently submitted to His divine authority.
But when He had finished cleansing the temple of the cattle and their sellers, He approached the sellers of doves and said, "Take these things away from here." That is, He touched the interests of the high priests who traded in doves.
Then the Jews answered Him: "What sign do You show us, seeing that You do these things?"
By the name Jews, the Evangelist John means not the Hebrews in general, but exclusively the party of Jewish leaders hostile to Christ. These were the high priests, priests, elders, and members of the Sanhedrin generally.
Therefore, when the Evangelist John says that the Jews answered Him, this means that, among all present, only the Jewish leaders objected to Christ.
The testimony of John the Baptist was not enough for them. His assurance was not enough that he had seen the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus and had heard the voice from heaven: "This is My beloved Son."
They wanted a sign from Christ Himself. In reality, they imagined the Messiah in a form quite different from the form in which Jesus appeared.
They needed an invincible conquering leader who would subject the whole universe to the Jews. He would make them, the leaders of the Jewish people, kings over the conquered nations.
They saw that Jesus of Nazareth was not the kind of man to fulfill their ambitious dreams. Therefore they did not believe John's testimony.
They did not even believe their own eyes, which had seen the countless crowd of traders obey the irresistible authority of Jesus. They approached Him with temptation and began demanding from Him a sign from heaven.
This was to prove that He had authority to act in this way. The Lord refused the devil a sign when he said, "If You are the Son of God, cast Yourself down."
In the same way He refused a sign to the Jews who tempted Him. He said to them, "You ask for a sign. It will be given to you, but not now."
"Later, when you destroy this temple and I raise it up in three days, then this will serve you as a sign."
The learned Jews did not understand the words of Jesus. As the Evangelist explains, He was speaking of His body as a temple in which God dwells.
He was foretelling His death, the destruction of His body, and His Resurrection on the third day. But the Jews understood His words literally and tried to turn the people against Him.
They suggested to the people that Jesus was saying something impossible. They said He wanted to destroy the temple, the pride of the Jews, which had been built for forty-six years, and raise it again in three days.
Their efforts were vain. They did not stir up the people against Christ, and they themselves went away with hidden malice against Him.
Some interpreters of the Gospels say that the Lord, in anger, drove the merchants from the temple with a scourge of cords. This interpretation is incorrect.
The scourge of cords was made to drive the cattle being expelled from the temple, not to beat the merchants with it. The merchants submitted without objection to Jesus' mighty and authoritative look upon them.
They themselves went out after their cattle. The cattle, however, needed another kind of action.
Therefore the scourge of cords, since it was not intended for people, cannot be considered an instrument of anger. In the Evangelist's whole narrative of this event, one cannot find even a hint that Christ drove the merchants from the temple in anger.
In His words, "Take these things away from here" and "Do not make My Father's house a house of trade," one hears an authoritative and commanding tone. Yet it is also calm, and in no way angry.
In His refusal to give a sign, again one hears not anger, but sorrow that "this wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign" (Mt 16:4) in order to believe.
It had already received many signs and had believed none of them. The feast lasted eight days. The Evangelist John testifies that during these days Jesus Christ performed many miracles.
The Evangelist does not say what miracles these were. His silence may be explained by the fact that he wrote his Gospel when the first three Gospels had already been written.
In them, many miracles performed by Jesus Christ had already been described. If the Savior had beaten the sellers of oxen, and not the oxen themselves, He would also have beaten the sellers of birds.
But of them it is said: "And He said to those who sold doves, Take these things away" (Jn 2:16).
To the ears of the arrogant questioners, such an answer could sound only like incomprehensible blasphemy. Yet if they had attended more carefully to these words, they could have understood them better.
They did not sufficiently enter into the meaning of His words. They wearied themselves in vain by reasoning how one could destroy and raise again in three days a temple whose construction required incalculable wealth.
They looked at the temple with its marble arches, its wondrous silver and golden gates, and the whole majestic building that formed the national pride of the Jews. The very existence of the people was identified with the temple's inviolability.
Therefore the Jewish questioners regarded such a statement by the unknown Galilean as blasphemy, madness, and insolence. This temple had already been under construction for forty-six years and was still unfinished.
Even thirty years later, 18,000 workers were laboring to complete some of its parts. They finished their work and received their dismissal only a few years before the destruction of the city, under the procuratorship of Albinus in AD 63. Josephus, Antt. 20, 9, 6.
Moreover, the history of this temple was linked with a whole series of memories. They showed what evil fate befell all who defiled it or sought its destruction.
Antiochus Epiphanes perished shamefully and disastrously in Persia. Crassus, who plundered its treasury, perished with his army amid the waterless sands of the desert.
Pompey, who blasphemously entered the Holy of Holies itself, was killed by an Egyptian centurion. His headless corpse was cast upon the shore in Egypt.
In the eyes of a Jew, to touch this temple meant drawing upon oneself the vengeance of the Most High. By twisting Christ's answer into this external and literal sense, they expressed extreme indignation.
They saw in His words blasphemy and the gravest irreverence toward the sanctuary. Yet in this case their indignation was not without a mixture of craft and hypocrisy.
In reality the Jewish questioners partly guessed the meaning of these words. This may be judged from the later history, when after Christ's crucifixion they remembered that He had spoken of restoring the temple of His body in three days.
In fact, Christ never said this to them directly. If they pointed to it, they did so only by drawing an inference from this very figurative saying.
Indeed, "He was speaking of the temple of His body," the Evangelist John remarks. Yet he adds that His disciples themselves fully understood the meaning of these words only after Christ's Resurrection (Jn 2:21-22).
This temple was being built: the Jews understood the Lord's words literally. They thought He was speaking about the destruction and restoration in three days of the visible temple, which He had just cleansed and within whose walls this conversation took place.
Did they truly fail to understand, or did they deliberately refuse to understand and distort the Lord's words? It seems the first should be assumed. The Lord's own disciples understood the mysterious meaning of these words only after His Resurrection, and then remembered them (Jn 2:22).
Even long afterward they did not understand the Lord's sayings, when He spoke to them plainly about His death and Resurrection (Mk 9:10; Lk 18:33-34). There is nothing surprising, then, if the Jews now failed to understand His mysterious saying about the temple of His body.
They understood it as a saying about the visible temple. In time this obscure saying of the Lord was completely distorted. His enemies presented it as evidence of His blasphemy (Mt 26:62 and following; Mk 14:58).
With these same distorted words the Lord's enemies mocked Him when He hung on the Cross (Mt 27:40). Circumstances did not yet require the Lord to speak openly to the people about His death and Resurrection.
At that time He indicated this only by hints, for those who had ears to hear, eyes to see, and a mind to understand the signs of the times, and the course and force of events.
It was built for forty-six years: this refers to the so-called second temple of Jerusalem, built after the Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity. Herod, called the Great, undertook to rebuild it in more splendid form.
The reconstruction began about the eighteenth year of his reign (Josephus, Antt. XV, 1), that is, about fourteen to sixteen years before Christ. The temple proper was completed after eight and a half years (Josephus, Antt. XV, 5-6).
Yet the rebuilding of the temple annexes continued for a long time, even after Herod's death. It was completed under Herod Agrippa II, around AD 64. Thus the whole reconstruction lasted about eighty years.
When the Lord entered upon His public ministry and in that same year was in Jerusalem for the feast of Pascha, He was about thirty years old (Lk 3:23). The rebuilding had begun about fourteen to sixteen years before His birth.
Thus the Jews point out to Him that this temple had been built for forty-six years, though the reconstruction was not yet completed at that time.
These few words of the holy Evangelist John contain much spiritual teaching. Once Jesus Christ entered the temple of Jerusalem and found there those selling sheep, oxen, and doves for sacrifices, and money-changers for offerings to the temple treasury.
With a scourge of cords He drove out the sellers, cast out the articles of trade, and said, "Take these things away from here, and do not make My Father's house a house of trade."
When the Jews saw that Jesus, still little known to them, was acting in the temple with such extraordinary authority, they demanded proof. This was almost at the beginning of His preaching.
He was driving out those whom neither the priests nor even the high priest drove out. Therefore they required that, if He truly was an authorized messenger of God, He should prove His divine mission by some miracle.
"What sign do You show us, seeing that You do these things?" It must be said that the Lord usually leaves such a demand unsatisfied.
This popular demand for miracles comes more from curiosity, and even from secret unbelief, than from a sincere desire to know the truth. Therefore it does not deserve satisfaction.
Since it is impure in its beginning, it does not lead to a good end. Moreover, Jesus, meek and humble in heart, does not love to perform miracles for His own glory.
He usually performed them out of love for mankind, from which the glory of truth shone forth of itself. Yet to satisfy completely the unfeigned seekers of truth, and to leave without answer the stubbornness and deceit of unbelief, one miracle was appointed.
This was Christ's Resurrection from the dead on the third day, without any visible one to raise Him. It was gloriously accomplished after His whole frame had already seemed irreversibly destroyed by countless and most grievous sufferings.
But even of this victorious sign of His divine power, He spoke before the people mostly in parables and as though in riddles. He did this according to what His hearers could receive.
For example: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights" (Mt 12:39-40).
In like manner, after the expulsion of the sellers from the temple, He said to the Jews who demanded a sign: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
That this was not spoken simply, the Jews could have guessed from the Lord's word "Destroy." The Jews certainly would not have wished to destroy this temple, that is, the temple of Jerusalem.
But people who are carnal in life and deeds ordinarily understand everything in a carnal manner. Since the speech concerned the church or temple, the Jews understood it of that very temple.
They thought that Jesus was foretelling the destruction and rebuilding of the temple in three days. From this absurd understanding they drew an even more absurd objection.
How can one build in three days a temple that was built over forty-six years? "Forty-six years was this temple in building, and will You raise it up in three days?"
As though miracles for the eternal and almighty God could be annulled and made impossible by a paltry calculation of human years and days. When St. John wrote into the Gospel the Lord's prophecy of the three-day Resurrection, it had been spoken in a parable.
It had been wrongly understood by the Jews. Therefore, to set the true interpretation against the false and remove every misunderstanding, he added the following remark: "But He spoke of the temple of His body."
That is, the words of Jesus Christ, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," referred not to the temple of Jerusalem, but to the temple of His own body.
They meant that the Jews would destroy the temple of His body by sufferings and by death on the Cross. But He would rebuild the temple of His body by His glorious Resurrection from the dead on the third day.
"But He spoke of the temple of His body." Jesus Christ speaks of His body and calls it the church or temple of the Godhead. Why?
A fully satisfactory answer is given in the saying of the Apostle Paul: "For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Col 2:9). Where God dwells in the whole fullness of His Godhead, there, without doubt, is His temple, holy in the highest degree.
The forty-six years of which the Jews speak are reckoned as follows. The renewal of the temple that existed in the days of our Lord Jesus Christ, when He was thirty-one years old in the flesh, was begun by Herod I fifteen years before the Nativity of Christ, according to Dom Calmet.
Although Herod I's work lasted only nine and a half years, additional work continued in the temple until AD 60, that is, under Herod Agrippa. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 15, ch. 14; book 16, ch. 9; Jewish War, book 1, ch. 16. D. Calmet, Dict. de la Bible, vol. 2, p. 223, ed. 1730 in fol.
In the year when our Lord Jesus Christ first came forth to preach, forty-six years had elapsed from the beginning of Herod's works. It must also be added that, in substance, Herod I's temple was an entirely new temple (Fl. Ios., loco supra cit.).
Even the old foundations of Zerubbabel's temple, laid in 520 BC after the captivity (1 Esd 5:2; 6 and the passage cited above), were destroyed and replaced by a new foundation.
Under the Maccabees, in 163-164 BC, Zerubbabel's temple was only cleansed from defilement and renewed. It was not rebuilt anew (1 Macc 1:10, 21, 54; 4:56-59).
Concerning the fact that the Lord's disciples could understand the mysterious sacred meaning of the Lord's words only later, we note this. The disciples also understood fully the acclamations of the people who met the Lord on the Mount of Olives only after the Lord was glorified.
"His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered," John says of that meeting (Jn 12:16). The same must be understood here.
All the events of the Lord's earthly life are illumined for the disciples by the bright light of Christ's Resurrection. Their souls and minds are enlightened by receiving the Holy Spirit on the very first day of the Lord's Resurrection.
Then He breathed on them and said: "Receive the Holy Spirit" (Jn 20:22), and "He opened their mind to understand the Scriptures" (Lk 24; Acts 1:3).
Later, on the great day of Pentecost, they also received the power of the Holy Spirit for preaching and for conflict with the world.
The disciples "believed the Scripture." That is, after their spirit was enlightened by the Spirit of God, they began to understand that "not one iota, not one stroke, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished" (Mt 5:18).
At the same time they understood that the fulfillment of the Law and the prophecies had been marked out by the wisdom of God otherwise than the popular conviction had imagined.
They understood that all the popular beliefs and hopes of the Jews were only phantoms of their proud self-delusion. For the mercy of God embraced the whole world in His love and created not a Jewish carnal kingdom, but a spiritual and universal kingdom.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 9 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS