"Your Body is a Temple"

“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

One of the problems with English translations of this verse is that our language does not differentiate the singular “your” from the plural “your”.

In the Greek of this verse the “your” is plural (ὑμῶν) while “body” (σῶμα) is singular. Paul is here speaking into a group of individuals about their communal body and not to their individual bodies. The same is true in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 2 Corinthians 6:16.

In no place does Paul (or any other New Testament writer) describe an individual Christian’s body as being a temple. If he had, he would have written “Your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit”.

The only time an individual is referred to as a temple is Jesus whose body is a temple (John 2:19-21; Revelation 21:22). The Church (universal) is also referred to as the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27; Romans 12:5; Ephesians 4:12; 5:23; Colossians 1:18). Therefore, the Church (an aggregate of individual believers) = the body of Christ = a temple of the Holy Spirit.