The Fool Who Built Alone

On Divine Architecture and Human Folly: A Reflection on Ephesians 2:14-22 & Luke 12:16-21

The Lord tells of a rich man whose land produced abundantly. He reasoned within himself: “What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?” His solution was expansion—tear down the existing barns, build larger ones, store everything, secure years of ease. “Soul,” he says to himself, “you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” God’s response is immediate: “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?” The man stored up treasure for himself but was not rich toward God. He built alone, for himself, toward death.

Paul writes to the Ephesians about a different kind of building. Christ “has broken down the middle wall of separation” between Jew and Gentile, “having abolished in His flesh the enmity.” He has created “one new man from the two, thus making peace.” This is not mere reconciliation of groups who were previously divided. It is the creation of something that did not exist before—a new humanity, a single body in which the dividing wall has been demolished. And this new humanity is itself becoming a building: “You are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” Not individual structures scattered across the landscape, but a single temple where divine presence dwells.

The rich fool’s reasoning reveals the pattern of life lived alone. “What shall I do?” he asks himself. Not “What shall we do?” Not “How can this abundance serve others?” The entire conversation happens inside his own head. He identifies the problem (insufficient storage), devises the solution (bigger barns), projects the outcome (years of ease), and congratulates himself on the plan. At no point does he consider that the abundance might be for distribution rather than accumulation, that his land’s productivity might serve purposes beyond his own comfort, that he is part of a larger body whose needs his surplus could address. He treats himself as a self-contained unit—soul and goods and barns, all oriented toward private security. This is the dividing wall internalized: I and my needs over here, everyone else over there, a barrier of self-interest separating what God intended to unite.

The inner work required to move from the fool’s solitary building to participation in God’s corporate construction demands facing what accumulation protects against. The rich man hoards because he fears insufficiency. He builds bigger barns because he cannot trust that enough will remain enough. He stores for “many years” because he has not faced his own mortality. The conversation with his soul attempts to secure against the future—eat, drink, be merry—but it is a conversation conducted entirely in his head, avoiding the reality that his soul will be required this very night. He performs the role of wise planner while denying the truth that no amount of stored goods can purchase another day of life. Moving from head to heart would require feeling the fear beneath the accumulation, acknowledging the mortality he is trying to barn away, recognizing that security comes not from private storage but from participation in the body God is building.

Paul’s vision of the new humanity operates on completely different architecture. The foundation is “the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.” Individual believers are not separate structures but living stones being fitted together, “joined together” and “growing into a holy temple in the Lord.” The language is corporate, participatory, communal. No one builds alone because what is being built is a single dwelling place for God. The Ephesians are “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” The abundance one receives is for building up the whole. The gifts one possesses are for strengthening the body. The dividing wall that previously separated Jew from Gentile—the wall of ethnicity, law, custom, religious practice—has been demolished not so that individuals can now build private barns on either side, but so that all can be built together into the structure God is raising.

The cosmic reality: Christ’s work on the cross does not merely reconcile individuals to God. It creates a new humanity, destroys the enmity embedded in human division, and makes peace between groups previously at war. This is not therapeutic reconciliation where wounded parties learn to coexist. This is ontological transformation—the creation of something genuinely new. “One new man” means a corporate reality that transcends and includes both Jew and Gentile, neither absorbed into the other but both transfigured into a third thing that did not exist before. When Paul says “He has made both one,” this is not metaphor. The resurrection power that raised Christ from death is creating a new human species, a new temple, a new dwelling place where heaven and earth unite. The rich fool’s barns cannot participate in this work. They are monuments to isolation, tombs for accumulated grain, structures that will outlast their builder by moments only. The temple God raises will endure because it is built on the cornerstone that death could not hold.

What this reveals about God: He is the architect and builder. Human beings do not construct the dwelling place where divine presence will rest. They become the materials from which it is built. The rich fool’s error is not merely selfishness or greed. It is the assumption that he can secure his own life, build his own future, create his own safety apart from the structure God is raising. He treats himself as contractor, architect, owner, and sole beneficiary. He will store, he will build, he will secure, he will enjoy. God is absent from the entire plan. When God speaks—”Fool! This night your soul will be required”—it is not arbitrary judgment but recognition of reality. The man has spent his life building what cannot save him. He has accumulated what he cannot keep. He has spoken to his soul as though it belonged to him, when in fact it will be required by the One who granted it. God reveals Himself as the owner of what the fool claimed to possess, the architect of what the fool tried to build alone, the judge of what the fool thought he controlled.

The ancient pattern: Solomon built the Temple as a dwelling place for God’s name, the location where heaven and earth would meet, where sacrifices would be offered, where the glory would descend. But Solomon knew what he built: “Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” The physical structure pointed beyond itself to the reality it could not contain. The First Temple gave permanent architectural form to what the patriarchs experienced at sacred sites—Bethel, Mamre, Sinai—where God manifested His presence. These were not places human beings constructed to summon God. They were places God chose to reveal Himself, and human beings built altars in response. The pattern is always divine initiative, human response, corporate participation. The rich fool reverses this. He builds in response to his own perceived need, for his own benefit, in isolation from both God and neighbor.

Paul’s temple imagery recovers the ancient understanding. Believers are not individual shrines scattered across the landscape. They are living stones being fitted together—”joined together,” “built together”—into a single dwelling place. The Greek word translated “dwelling place” is the same word used for the innermost sanctuary, the Holy of Holies where God’s presence dwelt between the cherubim. What was accessible once a year to one man is becoming accessible to all who are incorporated into Christ. But the access is corporate. The presence dwells in the body, not in isolated individuals. The rich fool builds barns for private storage. God builds a temple for communal indwelling. The fool says to his soul, “You have many goods laid up.” God says to the new humanity, “You are My dwelling place, the location where My Spirit rests.”

The dividing wall Christ abolishes is not only ethnic or religious. It is the wall of self-interest that keeps human beings building alone. The hostility between Jew and Gentile expressed a deeper hostility—the refusal to recognize the other as fellow member of one body, the insistence on private advantage over corporate good, the building of barriers to protect accumulated goods rather than distributing them for mutual upbuilding. When Christ creates “one new man from the two,” He is not merely bringing enemies to the peace table. He is forming a human species that operates on different principles—not accumulation but distribution, not private storage but shared abundance, not individual security but corporate participation in the life of God. The rich fool cannot imagine this. His entire plan assumes he is alone with his goods and his barns and his soul. He does not know he is being built into something larger, or that his abundance was given not for storage but for contributing to the construction.

The night the fool’s soul is required, his barns remain full and his plans intact. He built well by his own standards. The structures are solid. The storage is ample. But the builder is taken, and everything he stored passes to others. Paul’s temple, by contrast, endures because its builder is God. The apostles and prophets provide the foundation. Christ Himself is the cornerstone. The Spirit dwells within. Human beings contribute to this construction not by accumulating private goods but by allowing themselves to be fitted together with others, joined into the structure, built into the dwelling place. The rich fool stores grain that will rot. The Ephesians are becoming part of an edifice that will stand when heaven and earth are shaken, because what God builds cannot be torn down and what God inhabits will not be abandoned.