On those house-build TV shows, once your house is built, the cameras come back in and you are invited to be amazed at the gleaming white open plan kitchen, or the fabulous views from the window.
Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.”
Ephesians 3: 8-12[NIV]
Tucked away in this passage we see the “manifold wisdom of God” being made known to the heavens through the Church. The Church becomes God’s show home, where he shows his watching angels the beauty of his restored creation. We are all familiar with Joseph and his coat of many colours (Genesis 37). When the Hebrew was translated to Greek possibly around 200 BC, the scholars used the word ποικίλος (poikilos) for multicoloured. The word Paul uses in Ephesians, that the NIV translates manifold is πολυποίκιλος (polupoikilos) – much variegated, many sided, greatly differing colours.
John Stott writes that the word “was used to describe flowers, crowns, embroidered cloth, woven carpets….The church as a multiracial, multicultural community is like a beautiful tapestry.” And J.I Packer would add ”.. and a multi-repair shop, where disordered and broken down lives made ugly by sin are being reconstructed in Christ like shape. The wisdom of God, … that directs the power that quickens the spiritually dead and makes new creatures of them in a new and lovely fellowship of holiness and love.”
Father – Build your Church.
Guy Mowbray
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