A Holy Sanctuary

By Hollie Wells

During the recent Christmas season, I had the opportunity to sing with an interfaith choir. It was a neat experience to be able to come together with fellow Christians to praise the Lord’s birth, and something I noticed when I was at their meeting house was that they called the inside of their chapel, “the sanctuary.” I don’t often think of that word in terms of religious buildings. I didn’t really think much of it, but I took a subconscious note of it. 

A bit later, I was reading the definition of temple in the Bible Dictionary. It states there that “a temple is literally a house of the Lord, a holy sanctuary.” There that word was again! I had never thought of the temple in that way before and God was teaching me through my recent experience. Because I found this descriptor so interesting, I decided to look further into what that word means and how it can be applied to the House of the Lord. 

Place of Worship 

The first definition in the Mirriam-Webster dictionary is “a consecrated place.” A place where worshipping or services for worship take place. Certainly temples are a place where worshipping occurs. Inside, we participate in the highest and holiest of ordinances available to men and women on earth. We plead silently and aloud in prayer and pondering. We learn of Christ and His doctrine, and we serve God’s other children by helping them do the same. Temples are set apart literally as places of worship when they are dedicated by those holding priesthood keys. 

Refuge and Protection 

The temple is a place where the world is shut out. Noise is replaces with quiet, rushing is replaced by pondering, chaos is replaced with peace, contention is replaced with chariity. The temple is a place where we can escape the world and escape worldliness. The dictionary cites the example of wildlife sanctuaries, where endangered species are brought to be protected from predators and other natural forces that could harm them. Similarly, we are gathered into the temple to be nurtured as God’s peculiar people and to be preserved here on a hostile telestial world. 

Immunity from Law 

In the last definition, it describes a sanctuary being above or immune to certain laws. This was an interesting last definition to ponder. All I could think of was how Esmerelda claims “sanctuary” in the cathedral when she is being hunted down in the movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame. So how is the temple a sanctuary in this sense? Surely it is not to say that there are no laws, principles, or statues that need to be abided by (quite the opposite, actually!). After some pondering, I learned that when we enter into temple covenants and live faithfully by them, we can have immunity from the eternal law of justice, the curse of Adam. We are partnered with Christ who unchains us from the physical law of death that separates families. The temple is the key to that kind of sanctuary.