1 Corinthians 3: 16-17:
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
The “you” in these verses is the second person plural, as “y’all”. The Church is the Body of Christ filled with the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12: 12-13) and the Christian’s body. The word “temple” in the Greek is naos which designated the Holy of Holies. The Temple can be destroyed by desecrating the Temple with the practice of sinning without contrition and repentence. The Corinthians were ‘hooking-up’ with prostitutes and justifying themselves that this was okay. The ravages of sexually transmitted diseases, though not mentioned in 1 Corinthians, were known back then, and yet pales in comparison to the spiritual ravaging. Such sin desecrates the Temple, body and soul. The Apostle Paul is emphatic in his Gospel statement: “…you yourselves are that temple”. We have been made sacred by the blood of Christ preached into these bodies and souls by the Holy Spirit through the Word of the Cross.
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6)
“…you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1 Peter 1)
Below is a quote from Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” and is a great illustration of the Scripture above. The quote is from the beginning of the story in which a mother and her daughter go to pick-up two younger female cousins from their convent school, Mount St. Scholastica. The girls are into boys and clothes and are quite silly. On the car ride, in the back seat, the two cousins keep on giggling as they keep on calling each other, “Temple One” and “Temple Two”. When the daughter and her cousins are conversing about someone else, the Mother has finally had enough with this silliness coming from the back seat:
“…she said, “That’ll be about enough out of you,” and changed the subject. She asked them why they called each other Temple One and Temple Two and this sent them off into gales of giggles. Finally they managed to explain. Sister Perpetua, the oldest nun at the Sisters of Mercy in Mayville, had given them a lecture on what to do if a young man should—here they laughed so hard they were not able to go on without going back to the beginning—on what to do if a young man should—they put their heads in their laps—on what to do if —they finally managed to shout it out—if he should “behave in an ungentlemanly manner with them in the back of an automobile.” Sister Perpetua said they were to say, “Stop sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!” and that would put an end to it. The child sat up off the floor with a blank face. She didn’t see anything so funny in this…
Her mother didn’t laugh at what they had said. “I think you girls are pretty silly,” she said. “After all, that’s what you are—Temples of the Holy Ghost.”
The two of them looked up at her, politely concealing their giggles, but with astonished faces as if they were beginning to realize that she was made of the same stuff as Sister Perpetua. Miss Kirby preserved her set expression and the child thought, it’s all over her head anyhow. I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost, she said to herself, and was pleased with the phrase. It made her feel as if somebody had given her a present.”
Concordia and Koinonia 
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