The Purpose of the New Humanity

Last week, we learned that in two events - the Cross and Pentecost - God established a "new humanity" that the Bible calls the Church. But what is God's purpose in doing so? Today, we learn that God's sovereign decision to allow sin into the world, and then to defeat it in Christ, accomplishes something in the spiritual world. The faithfulness of the church actually demonstrates the "manifold wisdom of God" to the spiritual world. It turns out that God has chosen His Church as a demonstration of His goodness and glory to angels, demons, and Satan. The apostle Paul insists that we need to understand this in order to understand the significance of the prayer he stops praying in v. 1 and resumes again in v. 14.