“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and the Holy Spirit dwells in you?”

1 Corinthians 3:16 (ESV)

If the Apostle Paul asks the question in his time, it is probably a question that deserves to be asked of every generation since then.

Do you not know that God is in you by the Holy Spirit?

Believers in Jesus Christ are not some kind of drone bee – sent to work outside the dwelling place of God while others bask in his presence, something like the courtyards of the Temple in Jerusalem where only the privileged could enter the inner courts and only one priest at a time could enter the Holy of Holies.

At the death of Jesus on the cross the curtain in the temple was torn in two. God is no longer hidden behind a curtain but is personal and accessible to all believers.

Is there the sense that it might be just too presumptuous to assume such a thing and maybe even we are too unworthy, and unholy, for God to take any kind of notice of us?

God’s statement is true!

 Do we need to wean ourselves off generations of negative propaganda perpetrated by the enemy of God and His church? God is not aloof. God wants to have the kind of personal relationship with each one of us as a Father and child.

Does the church need to shake off the mantle of deception and emerge into the light of God’s presence in us and the power of the Holy Spirit?

God does not play favourites or exclude anyone who comes to Him in faith, neither does he deny the fulness of the Holy Spirit to anyone who asks in faith.

 But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance. (Galatians 4:5-7. The Message)

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. ²⁴ Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.

²⁵ “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:23-27 ESV)

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love^[a] toward all the saints, ¹⁶ I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, ¹⁷ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, ¹⁸ having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might. Ephesians 1:15-19 (ESV)

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. 1 Corinthians 7:19