Scholarly Companion · Early Christian Literature. This work is outside the seventy-book Holy Bible and its twenty-seven-book New Testament. Browse the companion collection. Translation and historical interpretation remain subject to specialist review.
Epistle of Barnabas 16
A Temple Not Made with Hands, but in the Heart
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The Temple Made with Hands
16:1I will also speak to you about the temple: how those unfortunate people, wandering astray, placed their hope in the building as though it were God’s house, rather than in their God who made them.
16:2For, almost like the nations, they confined Him to a sacred place in the temple. But learn how the Lord speaks in abolishing it: “Who measured heaven with a span or the earth with a handful? Was it not I?” says the Lord. “Heaven is My throne and earth the footstool of My feet. What sort of house will you build for Me, or what place is My rest?” You have learned that their hope is futile.
16:3Again He says: “Look, those who tore down this temple will themselves build it.”
16:4It is happening: because they went to war, it was torn down by their enemies. Now the very servants of their enemies will rebuild it.
16:5Again it was revealed that the city, temple and people of Israel were to be handed over. For Scripture says: “In the last days the Lord will hand over the sheep of the pasture, their fold and tower to destruction.” It happened as the Lord spoke.
The Temple God Builds
16:6Let us examine whether there is a temple of God. There is, where He Himself says He makes and prepares it. For it is written: “When the week is being completed, a temple of God will be built gloriously in the name of the Lord.”
16:7I find, then, that there is a temple. Learn how it will be built in the Lord’s name. Before we believed in God, the dwelling place of our heart was corruptible and weak, truly like a temple built by hands, because it was full of idolatry and a house of demons through doing everything contrary to God.
16:8“But it will be built in the name of the Lord.” Attend, so that the Lord’s temple may be built gloriously. Learn how: having received forgiveness of sins and hoped in the name, we became new, created again from the beginning. Therefore God truly dwells within us, in our dwelling place.
16:9How? His word of faith, His call of promise, the wisdom of righteous ordinances, the commandments of the teaching; He Himself prophesies within us and dwells within us. Opening for us, who were enslaved to death, the door of the temple—which is the mouth—and granting us repentance, He brings us into the incorruptible temple.
16:10For the person longing to be saved looks not toward the human speaker but toward the One dwelling and speaking within that person, and is astonished at Him, having never before heard such words from the speaker’s mouth, nor ever personally desired to hear them. This is the spiritual temple being built for the Lord.
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.