The Painted Door Church - Chicago

The Painted Door Church is church family that gathers in Chicago, IL. We are a people who share the same story; we are sinner, saved by grace. We draw our name from the Exodus account in the Hebrew Scriptures, when God spared his people from judgement, passing over all homes that had the blood of a spotless lamb painted across their doorways. Jesus is the new spotless lamb, his death on a Roman cross sparing the people of God from judgment once for all. He reconnects us to our Maker and to each other and invites us to participate in his grand work of restoring all things.

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The Painted Door Church - Chicago

What is a Person?/ John 17:1-11

July 28, 2019 • Pastor Mark Bergin

We often think of ourselves as individuals, separate entities with individuated definition who then interact with one another in meaningful ways. Yet both the book of nature and the book of Scripture indicate otherwise. The more our scientists study the functions of the natural order, the more they discover how all things are contingent, how everything is interwoven, interdependent, interrelated. Scripture, likewise, testifies that in Christ all things hold together. The whole of the universe is a complex web of relationships. Nothing exists on its own. And why would we expect any different, given that the God of this universe is himself a web of relationships? He is Trinity, three in one. His world echoes this reality, nowhere more than among those who bear his image. Our very being, our personhood, is bound up in relationships. We are relationships. Therefore, when we reject or misuse relationship with God or others, our personhood is malformed, even lost. But in embracing relationship with God and others, we discover the path to fullness of personhood, even sharing in the divine life.