What Does John 2:21 Mean?
But he spoke of the temple of his body.
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
But he spake of the temple of his body.THE KEY
Jesus’ body is named as the sanctuary itself: God’s dwelling is disclosed in embodied life.
THE MEANING
The verse presents Jesus’ body as the sanctuary where God’s presence is encountered. The temple is a living body, and its destruction is not the last word: this sanctuary is raised.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that God can be encountered only inside a sacred building.
THE ROOT
ναός
naos
GROWS FROM
ναίω (naíō), the lexical base traditionally associated with ναός
to dwell, inhabit
“temple” in this verse is naos. The Greek word ναός names the sanctuary, the dwelling place. Calling Jesus’ body the ναός reveals more than a likeness to a building: his embodied life is the sanctuary where God dwells.
ALSO GROWS
naos: sanctuary, temple
ναός
This is the word John uses for Jesus’ body, presenting it as the place of divine dwelling.
naopoios: temple-maker; maker of a shrine
ναοποιός
This compound carries the same sanctuary word: the body Jesus names is the dwelling itself, not something made by human hands.
THE PATTERN
God’s dwelling is revealed among people through sanctuary, embodied presence, and living bodies.
And let them make me a set-apart place, that I may pitch my tent among them.And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.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 THREAD
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 Greek words for “body” (σῶμα, sōma) and “temple” (ναός, naos) recur here together. John’s clarification about Jesus opens into the same image of embodied life as sanctuary.
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