What Makes the Powers and Principalities Marvel?

How can we navigate conflicts in the church in order to bring ultimate glory to God? In this video, Scott Aniol reminds us that there is no perfect church because churches are made up of sinners. Churches are filled with people of different backgrounds, life stages, cultures, and opinions that can cause conflicts. However, we should recognize that God designed the church to bring glory to Himself. God created the church so that through it, the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to heavenly beings. What makes heavenly beings marvel is when God brings together people from all sorts of backgrounds and situations, and for people like that to aggressively pursue unity and like-mindedness together because of their common faith and unity in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Aniol points out that pursuing unity in the gospel, unity in Christ, will bring God ultimate glory. Paul discusses this in 1 Corinthians 12, where he uses the metaphor of a body to describe the diversity but unity of the body of Christ. In verse 13, Paul says that this is God's design in the church: to take people of different giftedness and different backgrounds, all of whom are sinners now forgiven because of their faith in Jesus Christ, and through spirit baptism, unite them together in one body with a unified goal of pleasing the Lord and a unified faith in Jesus Christ. This supernatural unity causes heavenly beings to marvel, and it brings ultimate glory to God. In conclusion, conflicts are inevitable in the church because we are all sinners, and we come from different backgrounds and life stages. However, we should strive for unity in Christ and the gospel. Pursuing this unity brings God ultimate glory and causes heavenly beings to marvel. As Paul wrote, "For just as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12), and "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:13).