18 "So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken."
John 2:18-22
Christ's action was therefore symbolic, expressing His desire that the temple should be the temple, that His church should be the church and do its proper job, and for this, purging was needed. Judgment must begin at the house of God, and in His coming it did. Indeed, the old order was purged and overthrown, and displaced - and replaced by a new thing. This is the force of the reference to His resurrection in 22, which is the basis of all moral and spiritual resurrection in the individual and in the Church. Our Lord's words in 19, 'Destroy this temple', were misconstrued to mean that He was threatening to destroy it. He did no such thing. It was they who, even then, were destroying the temple, by dragging in all the alien things that had robbed it of its testimony. They did not know what they were doing, but they were putting to death any possibility of spiritual ministration. This has, of course, an application in personal life also, because our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and we can destroy that temple by what we do to our lives and with them. But the wonderful thing is - and this is the note of hope in the passage - that Jesus claims to be able to raise up the fallen temple once again. He can both restore in us all that we by our sin have destroyed and reconsecrate what we by our sin have destroyed and reconsecrate what by our profanity we have polluted and make our hearts worthy temples for His presence. Not only so: He can also restore life to the dead and lifeless thing that is His Church , renewing its face and filling it with His Spirit, to make it fulfil its God-given function in the world. This is the difference Jesus makes!