Ephesians 3:9-10

My job is to make clear to everyone just what the secret plan is, the purpose that’s been hidden from the very beginning of the world in God who created all things.

This is it: that God’s wisdom, in all its rich variety, was to be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places–through the church!

Well this is interesting.

There was a big mystery, kept a secret since the foundation of the world, that would display God’s majestic and many-sided infinite wisdom.

Angels wanted badly to look into this way long ago, but couldn’t.

Angels knew about God’s power, and that He was choosing a people for Himself through whom He would bless the world.

But the wisdom that would bring all different sorts of people together under the single banner of Christ, they did not see coming.

Jews and Gentiles worshipping God together in unity under Christ was a very big deal at the time Paul wrote this.

When we come together, us many disparate people groups, under Jesus, worshipping Him and praising God, it preaches to angelic beings, displaying the rich variety and many-sided wisdom of God.

It is when Christ is the obvious reason people are getting together that preaches to the world, to authorities, to powers in heavenly realms. When you look around the room and realize that these people would not be getting together for any other reason, because they do not have anything in common, or much at all drawing them together—that actually testifies of God’s wisdom to angels, both holy and fallen.

This is what Christ does.

Spirit recognizes spirit, and people are drawn together by that cosmic force way more powerfully than “Oh, I like tennis too.”

There are many groups and clubs and parties out there drawing people together for something. Generally, they draw those who have a similar look, income, cultural background, etc. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. But it’s really something unique and powerful when every kind of person is drawn to a single cause and unified.

I’ve participated in this kind of thing a few cool times—praying with Ukranian brothers and sisters in Christ in Zhytomyr was an amazing experience of the one Spirit. And with the dads at our daughters’ school, where we laugh how it was definitely God who got us all in the same room together, because otherwise, we would not be hanging out!

If a church is drawing only certain kinds of people, then I guess either Christ is not the draw, or people are not going for Christ first and foremost, or some combination thereof.