1 Corinthians 3:16 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Know ye not that ye are the temple, &c.— "I told you that ye are God's building, 1 Corinthians 3:9. I now observe more than that;—Ye are the temple of God, in which his Spirit dwells." Many of the first ancient writers represent a holy mind as the temple of God, and speak in the highest and strongest terms of the obligations men are under to keep his temples inviolate and unpolluted. Indeed, we cannot conceive a more forcible argument for internal purity, than this, which leads us to consider our bodies as the temple of God, inhabited by his ever-blessed and most holy Spirit. The word rendered defile, in the next verse, more properly signifies destroy, and should be so read, to keep up the contrast. See Elsner, Wetstein, Calmet, and Ostervald's useful treatise "on Uncleanness."