“As Paul was dictating his letter, there stood in Ephesus the magnificent marble temple of Artemis (‘great is Diana of the Ephesians’), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and in whose inner shrine there was a statue of the goddess. At the same time in Jerusalem there stood the Jewish temple built by Herod the Great, barricading itself against the Gentiles, and now also against God, whose shekinah glory it had housed in its inner sanctuary for centuries, but whose glory as revealed in its Messiah it had sought to extinguish. Two temples, one pagan and the other Jewish, each designed by its devotees as a divine residence, but both empty of the living God. For now there is a new temple, a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. It is his new society, his redeemed people scattered throughout the inhabited world. They are his home on earth. They will also be his home in heaven. For the building is not yet complete. It grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Only after the creation of the new heaven and the new earth will the voice from the throne declare with emphatic finality: ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men.’” (John Stott)

“Paul is thinking here not of the building up of wrong things, but of the building up of inadequate things. It is possible to present to others a version of Christianity which is weak and watered down—a one-sided view which has stressed some things too much and others too little, and in which things have got out of balance; a warped perspective in which even the greatest matters have emerged distorted… When we speak for Christ, we must speak as if Christ were listening, as indeed he is. A test like that will rescue us from many a mistake.”
(William Barclay)