Christ is risen!
Indeed He is risen!
So the Jews answered and said to Him, “What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said. (John 2:18-22)
The above passage is a perfect cautionary example of why interpreting the Scriptures literally (even the sayings of Jesus) can lead to misunderstanding God. This is not to say a passage should never be interpreted literally, but a warning that even the most apparently straight-forward sayings of Christ can be misinterpreted.
In another Gospel passage in which the temple is being discussed, we encounter the same theme of the people misunderstanding Jesus:
And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.'” (Mark 14:57-58)
As in the above passage from John 2, those who heard Jesus speak are confused by what Jesus means when He speaks about the temple, this time however they realize He is speaking in some spiritual sense (a temple “not made by hands”) but they do not comprehend to what temple He is referring. Their literalist understanding however causes them to bring legal charges against Jesus rather than to try to grasp his meaning and intent.
The great Jerusalem Temple was certainly made by hands, though it too has a spiritual dimension for it was built based upon a heavenly pattern revealed to Moses by God (Exodus 25:8-9; Numbers 8:4), a heavenly or divine prototype (Acts 7:44; Hebrews 8:5). Christ enters this heavenly Holy Place (which Moses saw) only once He has a body (is incarnate), the temple not made by hands, an act that means salvation for the human race:
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the Holy Place… thus securing an eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:11-12)
St Gregory of Nyssa comments:
Taking a small clue from Paul., who has partially revealed the mystery involved here, we shall say that by this symbol Moses was instructed in anticipation of that Tabernacle which embraces the universe: and this is Christ, the Power and the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), Who being in his own nature not made by human hand, received a created existence when he was to build his tabernacle among us. . . . It is God, then, the Only-Begotten, Who encompasses in Himself the entire universe, Who has built His own tabernacle among us. (FROM GLORY TO GLORY, p 132)
Thus, these three are the same one reality: 1] what Moses saw of the heavenly temple, 2] the Jerusalem Temple which was built upon the pattern of what Moses saw, and 3] our Lord Jesus Christ Himself (a temple not built by hands). This cannot be comprehended through a literal reading of Scripture, but only when we open our hearts and minds to the spiritual reality being revealed to us. And we each also personally participate in this same spiritual reality for the temple/house “not made with hands” applies to our bodies as well:
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2 Corinthians 5:1)
Fraternized 