John 2:22
When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
John 2:22 belongs to Jesus' Passover visit to the temple, when worshipers from near and far filled its courts and sacrifices were bought and sold. The temple's service was supported by the annual half-shekel collection, and the changing of foreign money for the required temple coin had become an opportunity for fraud and extortion. The cleansing in which the verse falls announced His Messiahship and began His work.
News of that cleansing spread to Galilee and helped prepare people to receive Him. Many resented the priests' arrogance and hoped He would prove to be the Deliverer who could drive such rulers out. The day after He cleansed the desecrated courts He spent the entire day healing the sick and relieving the afflicted with pitying compassion, turning away no suppliant. He instructed the people, reasoned with the scribes, and silenced haughty rulers by wisdom. Nicodemus, having witnessed these miracles and words and searched the prophecies, sought Jesus privately by night on the Mount of Olives for fuller understanding of His mission and evidence that He was the promised One sent of God.
The hidden meaning of His saying about destroying the temple and raising it in three days was not intended to be discovered at the time, so neither the skeptical Jews nor even His disciples understood it then. His words had a double meaning, referring both to the temple at Jerusalem and to His own material body as the earthly temple of the Son of God. When He was risen from the dead His disciples called His words to mind and then understood correctly that He had spoken of His own body and its resurrection. What had not been understood when He spoke became clear through later events.
They also remembered His connected saying that He had power to lay down His life and to take it again, showing He knew beforehand the path He had entered even unto the end. Remembering His fulfilled words, they believed the Scripture and the word He had said, which confirmed their faith. That fulfilled word strengthened their belief and gave evidence of His divinity. His death fulfilled what the temple sacrifices had foreshadowed as the final offering for sin, so the sacrificial services no longer had value before God. The tearing of the temple veil at His crucifixion signified the end of that ceremonial system.
The temple was an object lesson of God's purpose to dwell in His created beings, and through the Son's incarnation and saving grace the human heart can again become God's temple. Since His body is described as a temple, care for the body through health reform promotes spiritual life and expresses reverence for what belongs to God.