1. 1 Corinthians 3:9.-‘Ye are God’s husbandry (Revised Version margin ‘tilled land’), God’s building.’ Without pressing the change of metaphor, it is, however, to be noted, as indicating the intensity of the Apostle’s thought, how his mind grasps first one method of increase and then another. The Kingdom grows like the organic development in the vegetable world, where outside substances are incorporated and assimilated into the organism itself. Or it grows as a building from the foundation; stone is laid upon stone, according to a preconceived plan, till the whole is complete. Under his metaphor St. Paul describes the Church as God’s, and the leaders of the Church as His instruments (‘the saints build up the fabric’). In this light the factions of Corinth are manifested. They have not grasped the Divine idea of the Church, and therefore they are rebuked: ‘I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal’ (3:1). With a tender smile of blame he calls them ‘babes in Christ,’ who have not grown into the height and freedom of their calling as God’s fellow-workers (συνεργοί). Kindled with his metaphor, the Apostle rises to the thought of the gradual upbuilding of the Church (by transformation and accretion) through the ages, by many builders, and with varied material, but all on the once-laid foundation, to the glory not of the builders, but of the hand that guided and the heart that planned (cf. Longfellow’s poem The Builders, and O. W. Holmes, The Living Temple and The Chambered Nautilus).

2. 2 Corinthians 5:1.-‘We know … we have a building (οἰκοδομήν) from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.’ The punctuation in Authorized Version is wrong, and the sense of Revised Version would be more explicit if it read ‘We have in the heavens a building from God, an house not made with hands, eternal’ (so Alford, do Wette, Meyer, and most Moderns). The house to which St. Paul looks forward is not heaven itself, though it is in the heavens, and comes from God as His gift. The Apostle is here moving among the conceptions of what he calls ‘the spiritual body’ (1 Corinthians 15:42-45), adumbrating in his paradox thoughts which are really unspeakable. Cf. also Philippians 3:21 ‘the body of our humiliation … the body of his glory.’

3. Ephesians 2:21.-‘Each several building (πᾶσα οἰκοδομή) fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple’ (Revised Version margin ‘sanctuary’). Authorized Version has ‘all the building,’ and the difference ought to be carefully noted in point both of grammar and of thought. The weight of the best Manuscripts favours the omission of the article, and Meyer translates accordingly ‘every building.’ Moule (Ephesians [in Cambridge Bible for Schools, 1886]) and Ellicott (Com. in. loc.) contend that the article is implicit; the latter calls its omission ‘a grammatical laxity,’ and the former is of opinion that the law of the article is in some respects less precise in the NT than in the classics. This does not appear to be made out, and it is safer to abide by the established usage than to allow an ad sensum interpretation (which really assumes the point in dispute). Westcott (Ephesians, 1906) prefers to abide by the classical use (cf. Expository Times xviii. [1906-07] 2 for a note on the similar expression in Ephesians 3:15). πᾶς without the article = ‘a various whole,’ and this is the Apostle’s thought. ‘The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient temples commonly were, in process of construction at different points over a wide area’ (Findlay, Ephesians [Expositor’s Bible, 1892], 146). Uniformity is not necessary to unity. The true catholicity is found in Jesus Christ Himself, the chief corner-stone, and not in external uniformity. The reading adopted in Revised Version may be claimed as an incidental testimony to the early date of the Epistle. In point of fact, in the 2nd cent. the desire for formal unity would have rendered impossible the text ‘each several building.’ ‘The Church swallowed up the churches’ (Findlay). But here in the Apostolic Age, with the variety of circumstance, attainment, and social aspect in the churches, the essential idea of unity is nevertheless preserved, for ‘each several building’ is destined to be ‘fitly framed together.’ Each serves to make up the ideal temple of God, which is being built for ever. Each is a true part of that mystical body of Christ, the habitation of God through the Spirit.

4. Hebrews 9:11.-‘But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building’ (Authorized Version ); better Revised Version ‘but Christ having come a high priest of the good things that are come (Revised Version margin), through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation (οὐ ταύτης τῆς κτίσεως).’ The tabernacle is immaterial and spiritual as contrasted with the heaven and the earth. F. Field (Notes on the Translation of the NT [= Otium Norvicense, iii.], Cambridge, 1899, p. 142; || Farrar, Hebrews [in Cambridge Bible for schools, 1883], p. 139f.) would translate ‘not of ordinary construction.’ ‘Human skill had nothing to do with its structure, for man’s work finds its expression in the visible order of earth, to which this does not belong’ (Westcott, Hebrews, 1889, p. 258). For the different meanings assigned to ‘tabernacle’ and their bearing on the true humanity of our Lord, see Tabernacle.

5. Revelation 21:18.-‘The building (ἐνδόμησις) of the wall thereof was jasper.’ The word is passive and denotes the structure, what was built in. Cf. ‘I will make thy battlements jasper’ (Isaiah 54:12 [Septuagint ]). Some clear stone is intended, and not our modern jasper, which is generally red or brown.

W. M. Grant.

Bibliography Information
Hastings, James. Entry for 'Building'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/b/building.html. 1906-1918.

Bible Dictionaries Building

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

Bible Dictionaries
Building