Jesus answered and said to them, "You must destroy this sanctuary and in
three days I shall raise it." 20. Therefore the Jewish leaders
said, "This sanctuary was built in forty-six years, and You will raise it
in three days?" 21. But He was talking about the sanctuary of
His body. 22. However, when He was raised
from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this, and they believed in
the Scripture and in the message which Jesus spoke.
From the Glossary:
Sanctuary is the name of that part of the Temple and also the Tabernacle that
was set apart for the Lord God. It consisted of two rooms, the first being the
Holy Place. The Holy Place held the lampstand, the table of the Bread of the
Presence and the Incense Altar. This was where the priests ministered to the
Lord. To enter the Holy Place the priest needed to be sanctified first. Any
priest entering the Holy Place who had not already dealt with sin would have
been struck dead at the doorway.
The second, or inner room, was called the Holy of Holies or the Most Holy
Place. The Holy of Holies held only the Ark of the Covenant except on Yom
Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the Altar of Incense was placed in it.
Only the High Priest could enter and he could only enter on Yom Kippur. In this
room the High Priest interceded for the people, for the Lord God to forgive
their sins and his sins.
The temple had an outer court where sinners, even heathens, were welcome and
an inner court which had the altar where people would deal with sin. Only
a priest could enter the Sanctuary and then only after he had dealt with sin, by
making the appropriate offerings, washing, and wearing the holy garments.
When Jesus said "Tear down this temple and I will rebuild it in three
days, speaking of His body," in John 2:19-21, He did not say
"temple" but He said "sanctuary." Most translators say
temple, but sanctuary is correct. The Greek word is naos, meaning
sanctuary. The word for temple is hieron. No one can deny
that Jesus’ body was without sin and was holy.
We too have bodies that are sanctified by the blood of the Lamb, so our
bodies are called sanctuaries. We are not to be like the temple or tabernacle,
with an area where sin is welcome. This why Paul wrote that our bodies are
sanctuaries of the Holy Spirit in I Corinthians 3:16, 17, 6:19, and II
Corinthians 6:16, and John was told to exclude the outer court when he measured
the sanctuary. (Revelation 11:2)
An interesting point is that in the Gospels and Acts there are many
references to the temple, but after those books the word hieron, for
temple, is only used one time. That is in I Corinthians 9:13 in a reference to
the temple. So, from the book of Romans on, now you know that with one exception
wherever you see the word temple in another translation the author was actually
talking about the sanctuary. Now you also know that your body is a sanctuary,
requiring you to walk in repentance every day, because sin must be dealt with
prior to entering the sanctuary.