ONE | TAPESTRY (EPH. 3:1-13)

Speaker: Pastor Tristan Sherwin

'It’s certainly not the first time in this letter when Paul describes God as an expert craftsman. Paul has been stacking metaphor upon metaphor.[ix] But no matter the metaphor Paul adopts, the final work is the same: God’s eternal intent has been to take many differing things — all the peoples and ethnicities of the world — and bring them all together to be one people, one family, under Jesus.

This, Paul says, is what God’s eternal work throughout history has been about, and now this explosive and new, yet ago-old-project, has come to pass through Jesus Christ.

Not in any way that erases or bleaches these ethnicities. And neither in a way that makes any ethnicity subservient to or superior to any other. But where each, woven beside the other, sets the other in a more beautiful light, forming a counter-cultural scene that makes the watching world take note.

The church is, and is supposed to be, God’s declaration over every power that delights in division.'

Tristan shares his notes on his own blog. You can read the full notes here: ONE | TAPESTRY (EPH. 3:1-13)