6. The Temple of His Body

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A temple is a place where God dwells. Where then was the true temple of God? Was the great temple in Jerusalem with all its physical grandeur the true temple? The answer to this question must have seemed obvious to the Jews; but Our Lord was just about to suggest that there was another temple. Pilgrims were going up to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, and among them was Our Lord and His first disciples, after a brief stay in Capharnaum. The temple was a truly magnificent sight, particularly since Herod had almost completed rebuilding and adorning it. A year later, the Apostles themselves, on Mount Olivet, would be so struck by its glittering appearance as it shone in the morning sunlight that they would ask Our Lord to look at it and admire its beauty.

It was naturally a problem for anyone who came to offer sacrifice to get hold of the materials of sacrifice; then too, the sacrificial victims had to be tested and judged according to Levitical standards. Accordingly, there was a flourishing trade in sacrificial animals of all degrees. Gradually, the sellers of sheep and doves had been pushing themselves closer and closer to the temple, choking the avenues that led to it, until some of them, particularly the sons of Annas, actually gained entrance to Solomon’s porch, where they sold their doves and cattle and changed money. Every visitor to the feasts was obliged to pay half a shekel to help defray the expenses of the temple; since no foreign money was accepted, the sons of Annas, so Josephus tells us, trafficked in the exchange of coins, presumably at highly profitable rates. A couple of doves were sold at one time for a gold coin which in American money would be worth about $2.50. This abuse, however, was corrected by the grandson of the great Hillel, who reduced the price to about one-fiftieth of the above price. All kinds of currency from Tyre, Syria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome circulated around the temple, thus leading to a thriving black market among the money-changers. The situation was bad enough for Christ to call the temple a “den of thieves” in fact, the Talmud itself protested against those who had so defiled this holy place.

Considerable interest was aroused among the pilgrims when Our Lord first entered the sacred enclosure. This was both His first public appearance before the nation and His first visit to the temple as the Messias. He had already worked His first miracle at Cana; now He came into His Father’s house to claim a Son’s right. Our Blessed Lord, finding Himself in this incongruous scene, where prayers were mingled with the blasphemous bidding of the merchants, and where the clinking of money chimed in with the braying of cattle, was filled with zeal for His Father’s house. Out of some cords lying around, which were probably used as leashes around the necks of the cattle, He made a small scourge. With this, He proceeded to drive out the cattle and the profiteers. The unpopularity of the exploiters and their fear of public scandal probably prevented them from putting up any real resistance to the Savior. A wild scene ensued with the cattle rushing hither and thither, and the money-changers grabbing what coins they could as the Savior upset their tables. He opened the cages of the doves and released them.

Take these away, do not turn My Father’s

house into a house of barter.

JOHN 2:16

Even those most friendly to Him must have wondered as they saw Him, with uplifted scourge and flaming eyes, driving forth men and beasts as He said:

My house shall be known among all nations

for a house of prayer.

Whereas you have made

it into a den of thieves.

MARK 11:17 

 

And His disciples remembered how it is written,

I am consumed with jealousy

For the honor of Thy house.

JOHN 2:17

The part of the temple out of which Our Lord drove the traders was known as the Porch of Solomon, the eastern side of the Court of the Gentiles. This section should have served as a symbol showing that all the nations of the world were welcome; but the traders were defiling it. He was now making it clear that the temple was meant for all nations, not for Jerusalem alone; it was a house of prayer for the Magi, as well as for the shepherds, for the foreign missions as well as for the home missions.

He called the temple “My Father’s house,” affirming at the same moment His own filial relationship to the Heavenly Father. Those who were driven out of the temple did not lay hands on Him, nor did they reprove Him as if He had done something wrong. They merely asked for a sign or a warrant which would justify His actions. As He stood in lonely dignity, among the scattered coins and scurrying cattle with the pigeons flying this way and that, they asked Him:

What sign canst Thou show us as Thy warrant for doing this?

JOHN 2:18

They were bewildered by His capacity for righteous indignation (which was the other side of the joy-bringing character manifested at Cana), and they demanded a sign. He had already given them a sign that He was God, for He told them that they had profaned His Father’s house. To ask for another sign was like asking for a light to see a light. But He gave them a second sign:

Destroy this temple, and in three days

I will raise it up again.

JOHN 2:19

The people who heard these words never forgot them. Three years later, at the trial, they would bring them up again in a slightly distorted form, accusing Him of saying:

I will destroy this temple that is made by men’s hands,

And in three days I will build another.

MARK 14:58

They remembered His words again as He hung on the Cross:

Come now, they said, Thou Who wouldst destroy the temple

And build it up in three days,

Come down from that Cross, and rescue Thyself.

MARK 15:29

They were still haunted by His words when they asked Pilate to take precautions in guarding His grave. They understood by then that He had been referring not just to their temple of stone, but to His Body.

We have recalled it to memory that this deceiver,

While He yet lived, said, I am to rise again

After three days.

Give orders, then, that His tomb shall be

Securely guarded until the third day;

Or perhaps His disciples will come

And steal Him away.

MATTHEW 28:63–63

The theme of the temple was echoed again in the trial and martyrdom of Stephen, when the persecutors charged that

He was never tired of uttering insults

Against the Holy Place.

ACTS 6:13

He was actually throwing down a challenge when He said to them: “Destroy!” He did not say, “If you destroy….” He was challenging them directly to test His kingly and priestly power by a Crucifixion, and He would answer it with a Resurrection.

It is important to note that in the original Greek of the Gospel, Our Lord did not use the word hieron, which was the usual Greek name for the temple, but rather naos, which meant the Holy of Holies of the temple. He was saying in effect, “The temple is the place where God dwells. You have profaned the old temple; but there is now another Temple. Destroy this new Temple, by crucifying Me, and in three days I shall raise it up. Though you will destroy My Body, which is the house of My Father, by My Resurrection I shall put all nations in possession of the new Temple.” It is very likely that Our Blessed Lord pointed to His own Body when He spoke in this way. Temples can be constructed of flesh and bone as well as of stone and wood. Christ’s Body was a Temple, because the fullness of God was dwelling in Him corporally. His challengers immediately responded by asking:

This temple took forty-six years to build;

Wilt Thou raise it up in three days?

JOHN 2:21

They may have been referring to the temple of Zorobabel which had taken forty-six years to build. It was begun in the first year of the reign of Cyrus in 559 B.C., and completed in 513, the ninth year of Darius. It is also possible that they may have been referring to the alterations of Herod, which had perhaps been going on for forty-six years at that point. The alterations had begun about the year 20 B.C., they were not completed until A.D. 63. But as John wrote:

The temple He was speaking of was His own body;

And when He had risen from the dead

His disciples remembered His saying this.

JOHN 2:22

The first temple of Jerusalem was associated with great kings, like David who prepared for it, and Solomon who built it. The second temple harked back to the great leaders of the return from captivity; this restored temple with its costly magnificence was linked with the royal house of Herod. All of these shadows of temples were to be superseded by the true Temple, which they would destroy on Good Friday. The moment that it was destroyed, the veil that hung over the Holy of Holies would be rent from top to bottom; and the veil of His flesh would also be rent, revealing the true Holy of Holies, the Sacred Heart of the Son of God.

He would use the same figure of the temple on another occasion when talking to the Pharisees:

And I tell you there is One standing here

Who is greater than the temple.

MATTHEW 12:6

This was how He answered their request for a sign. The sign was to be His death and His Resurrection. Later on to the Pharisees He would promise the same sign, under the symbol of Jonas. His authority would not be proved by His death alone; it would be proved by His death and His Resurrection. The death would be brought about both by the evil heart of man and by His own willingness; the Resurrection by the almighty power of God alone.

At this moment, He was calling the temple His own Father’s house. When He left it for the last time three years later, He did not call it His Father’s house any more, because the people had disowned Him; rather He said:

Behold, your house is left to you,

A house uninhabited.

MATTHEW 23:38

It was no longer His Father’s house, it was their house. The earthly temple ceases to be God’s dwelling place when it becomes the center of mercenary interests. Without Him, it was not a temple at all.

Here, as elsewhere, Our Blessed Lord was proving Himself to be the only One Who came into the world to die. The Cross was not something that came at the end of His life; it was something that hung over Him from the very beginning. He said to them: “Destroy,” and they said to him, “Crucify.” No Temple was ever more systematically destroyed than was His Body. The dome of the Temple, His head, was crowned with thorns; the foundations of it, His sacred feet, were riven with nails; the transepts, His hands, were stretched out in the form of a Cross; the Holy of Holies, His Heart, was pierced with a lance.

Satan tempted Him to an apparent sacrifice by asking Him to fling Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Our Lord rejected this spectacular form of sacrifice. But when those who had polluted His Father’s house asked Him for a sign, He offered them the sign of a different kind, that of His sacrifice on the Cross. Satan asked Him to cast Himself down; now Our Blessed Lord was saying that He would, indeed, be cast down to the obloquy of death; His sacrifice, however, would not be a piece of pointless exhibitionism, but an act of redemptive self-humiliation. Satan proposed that He expose His Temple to possible ruin for the sake of exhibitionism, for the sake of display; but Our Lord exposed the Temple of His Body to certain ruin for the sake of salvation and atonement. At Cana, He said that He was going to His “Hour” in the temple He said that that Hour of the Cross would lead to His Resurrection. His public life would fulfill the pattern of these prophecies.

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