What Does 1 Corinthians 3:17 Mean?
If anyone ruins the temple of God, God will ruin him, for God's temple is set apart, and you are that temple.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.THE KEY
The same verb names both the corruption of God’s temple and God’s response to the corrupter: corruption meets ruin.
THE MEANING
The reader belongs to a people who together are God’s temple, set apart in the present. The warning is severe: whoever ruins that shared dwelling meets God’s ruin.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The shared life of the assembly is ordinary, disposable space, so damage to it carries no weight.
THE ROOT
φθείρει
phtheirei
GROWS FROM
φθειρ-
phtheir-
To spoil, corrupt, ruin, or decay.
“ruins” in this verse is phtheirei. The verse uses forms of the same verb for what a person does to God’s temple and what God does to that person. English gives the two actions different words; the Greek echoes one action back as its consequence.
ALSO GROWS
phthora: Corruption, decay, or ruin
φθορά
This noun names the state of ruin produced by the corrupting action in the verse.
diaphtheirō: To corrupt utterly, spoil, or destroy
διαφθείρω
This related verb makes explicit how the same word family can describe corruption reaching the point of destruction.
ἅγιος
hagios
GROWS FROM
ἁγι-
hagi-
Set apart; sacred.
The word for set apart describes God’s temple and, through “which temple ye are,” the people together. The assembly’s shared identity is part of what makes the warning against its ruin so severe.
ALSO GROWS
hagiazō: To set apart or consecrate
ἁγιάζω
This verb shows the action related to the temple’s set-apart identity.
hagiasmos: Setting apart or consecration
ἁγιασμός
This noun names the state of being set apart that the word “holy” carries here.
THE PATTERN
God’s dwelling is set apart, and harm to what is set apart carries severe consequence.
Therefore as I live, says the Lord GOD, Surely, because you have made unclean my set-apart place with all your loathsome things, and with all your recoiling things, therefore I will also diminish you. Neither shall my eye spare, nor will I have pity.Or have you not seen that your body is a temple of the Set-Apart Breath within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?The nations swell, and your anger comes, and the season of the dead comes to be judged, and to give the wage to your servants the prophets, and to the set-apart ones, and to those who stand in awe of your nature, small and great, and to rot those who rot the earth.THE THREAD
The nations swell, and your anger comes, and the season of the dead comes to be judged, and to give the wage to your servants the prophets, and to the set-apart ones, and to those who stand in awe of your nature, small and great, and to rot those who rot the earth.The Greek verb φθείρω (phtheirō, to corrupt or destroy) appears twice in both verses: those who ruin the earth are themselves brought to ruin. Revelation widens the warning from God’s temple among the people to the earth itself.
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