We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.
Parallel translations
- WEB in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord;
- KJV In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:
- BSB In Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
- NKJV in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord,
- NASB in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord,
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
In Christ the whole building is joined together and grows into a holy temple. It pictures the church as God's living, growing temple.
Overview
Paul develops the building image: 'in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.' The church is a living, expanding structure, joined and held together by Christ. It is no ordinary building but a 'holy temple,' the dwelling place of God, fulfilling what the Jerusalem temple foreshadowed.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- 1 Cor 3:16–17Don’t you know that you are a temple of God, and that God’s Spirit lives in you?
- 1 Cor 3:9For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.
- 2 Cor 6:16What agreement has a temple of God with idols? For you are a temple of the living God. Even as God said, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
- Eph 4:13–16until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a full grown man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
- Heb 3:3–4For he has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, because he who built the house has more honor than the house.
- 1 Kgs 6:7The house, when it was under construction, was built of stone prepared at the quarry; and no hammer or ax or any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was under construction.
- Exod 26:1–37“Moreover you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains; of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, with cherubim. The work of the skillful workman you shall make them.
- Ezek 42:12According to the doors of the rooms that were toward the south was a door at the head of the way, even the way directly before the wall toward the east, as one enters into them.
- Ps 93:5Your statutes stand firm. Holiness adorns your house, Yahweh, forever more.
- Ezek 40:1–42In the twenty-fifth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was struck, in the same day, Yahweh’s hand was on me, and he brought me there.
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Christ at the center
Every spiritual blessing is 'in Christ,' the head over all things for the church, in whom Jew and Gentile are made one new man by his blood.
How Ephesians 2:21 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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