At the king's command they removed from the quarry large blocks of quality stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple…In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built. (1 Kings 5:17; 6:7)
[You are] built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:20-22)
Notice that these two passages are complementary and an analogy can be seen between Solomon's temple in the Old Testament, that was built of quality stone, and the current temple being built consisting of believers. Right now Jesus Christ is the perfect cornerstone who following the prophecies and doctrines laid down by the people of God before his arrival here on earth, made the foundation of the structure rock solid. Each Christian believer can be thought of as a single stone that together with all the saints and Christ makes up the Church.
While we may not have been “quality stones” when we were placed into the structure, our imperfections are covered by the blood of our Lord and Savior and therefore made to be holy components of the whole.
So here we can see that God expects us to understand that each of us is to be not only a holy receptacle for the Holy Spirit, but is also a holy part of the complete body of Christ.
