Stumper Question for Jehovah’s Witnesses, #20

To what was Jesus referring to by the term “this temple” in Jn 2:18- 19? See Jn 2:21.



Jesus did not explicitly state what he was referring to; however, many years later when his apostle, John, wrote his account of the life and works of Jesus Christ, he explained that Jesus was talking about the temple of his body.

The question, though, that truth seekers should consider is what did Jesus mean?

Jesus made his remark in answer to the Pharisees and Jewish priests who demanded a sign from him in response to his having thrown the moneychangers out of the temple courtyard, demanding that the Jews stop making his Father’s house into a marketplace. In answer Jesus said to tear down this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews, of course, imagined him to be speaking about Herod’s Temple, which they explained to Jesus took men 46 years to build. The Jews betrayed their utter lack of spirituality, imagining that the stone temple had any permanence. 

Jesus’ body was accepted by God as a sacrifice.  After Jesus was resurrected on the third day, as he foretold he would be, Jesus became the foundational cornerstone of what is to be a spiritual temple —a new organizational arrangement that would eventually entirely replace the temple-centered, Jewish religious system. And Jesus himself is the Melchizedek-like high priest who officiates within the spiritual temple. It is not that Jesus’ physical, fleshly body is in anyway worshiped, but it was his life as a perfect man and his obedience into death that made it possible for sinful humans to be accepted into this temple-like system, over which Jesus Christ himself presides.

Because Jesus is the focal point of the only form of worship that is now acceptable to Jehovah God, he may be thought of as the temple.


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