Introduction

In this part of Ephesians Paul has been spelling out what God has done in Jesus for the benefit of these believers so that they should be AWARE of it.

He has said he is praying that they WOULD be aware of these things:

Paul is trying to address the disunity and the impurity that is plaguing their church, arising from the failure to grasp that in Christ they are protected against the dark and sinister spiritual forces that were so evident in Ephesus … the city dedicated to the pagan goddess Artemis or Diana as the Romans called her.

And to that end Paul writes:

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

You see, those people felt vulnerable in life.

They turned to Artemis and sacrificed to her to be kept safe through life’s crises … particularly the women with their particular vulnerabilities, mortality in child-birth being a very prominent case in point … feeling very vulnerable to the sufferings of the world and the malign effects of dark spiritual forces in their lives and in the world.

So Paul writes to Timothy while Timothy is at Ephesus in 1 Timothy 2:15 that it is not by sacrificing to Artemis that they should not turn as the culture they lived in did at the point of birth “But women will be kept safe through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”

What does Paul want these Ephesians to do with their feelings of vulnerability in a culture where that vulnerability was real and where the forces of darkness were resorted to in order to deal with that?

He says ““I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”

And then Paul goes on to remind them that their vulnerability is more than met in God by reminding them of how that incomparably great power which works for us who believe:

i)               Raised Jesus from the dead … that’s powerful

ii)              Seated Him at God’s right hand in Heavenly Glory

iii)             Put everything under His feet, and now

iv)             Made Him the ruling power over everything for the benefit of the Church

All four of these are illustrations of God’s incomparably great power being exercised FOR us who believe … and Paul’s pastoral priority in getting the Ephesians to avoid going to things that are NOT wholesome is that they should be aware of the things he is praying for them.

That is the way to counter things like rivalry rather than unity, impurity rather than purity and colluding with the forces of darkness to protect them in their strongly felt vulnerability, rather than taking their stand against those forces of darkness by putting on the full armour of God … which are the proper responses to the vulnerability that human beings feel in their human weakness.

That immense power God uses for the church is something they need to be aware of, then evidenced by God’s raising Jesus from the dead to sit in Glory, not just at the table but on Heaven’s throne.

And having seated Him there, this power God’s exercising on behalf of the church is seen thirdly by putting all things under Jesus’s feet.

1)   All things under His feet

A) All things

The language Paul uses here is apparently a reference to the Greek translation of Psalm 8:6.

In the psalm, ‘all things’ refers to sheep, cattle, birds, fish … these are the living things God says that Adam must rule over all the living creatures on the earth.

By New Testament times the rabbis were teaching that Adam’s right to the rule the world had been transferred to Israel, but Paul (who identifies Jesus and thereafter His Church as the New Israel) applies this Kingly reign over ‘all things’ to Christ.

What we’ve got here, then, is a strong declaration that Jesus is the universal ruler of all.

‘All’ here means all … not just the wildlife and the livestock.

Paul also cites Psalm 8 in 1Cornthians 15:27 to convey a similar idea … the major difference being that in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul speaks of the final subjugation of all powers at the end of time whereas Paul uses it here to speak about the subjection of the demonic powers that has already happened in the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.

This illustrates beautifully the ‘already – not yet’ perspective on the Kingdom of God that permeates the New Testament.

So all things including all the forces of darkness that make these `Ephesians – and ourselves – feel vulnerable in this present evil age but they need to stay aware that Christ has already defeated the principalities and powers through His death and resurrection … but we still await the final consummation when He will completely subjugate every rebellious power that preys upon His people … both Heavenly and earthly.

B) His feet

In our day and age this sound a bit odd, but the ‘under the feet’ thing was pretty big in earlier days in Israel.

We see this idea at work when Joshua defeated the five kings of the Amorites at Gilgal then trapped them in the cave at Makkedah.

When Joshua had assembled his armies outside the cave, he gave orders to bring the five kings out of the cave, and we read in Joshua 10:24-26:

“When they had brought these kings to Joshua, he summoned all the men of Israel and said to the army commanders who had come with him, “Come here and put your feet on the necks of these kings.” So they came forward and placed their feet on their necks.

Joshua said to them, “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous. This is what the Lord will do to all the enemies you are going to fight.”

Then Joshua put the kings to death and exposed their bodies on five poles, and they were left hanging on the poles until evening.”

You see, the foot on neck thing is a piece of long standing imagery in Israel for subjecting to humiliating, decisive and devastating defeat leading to the authority of the victor over the vanquished.

And the idea here is that God puts the enemy of men’s souls under Christ’s feet.

C) PUT there

We are vulnerable, but God (Who is operating in our interest) is certainly not and we need to stay aware of that.

He has taken the forces of chaos in Creation and He has PUT them in their place … defeated and under the authority of the Lord Jesus awaiting their destruction as surely as the five kings under the feet of the leaders of Israel outside the cave at Makkedah as they awaited their own certain destruction.

That’s not the way things had been going in Creation as the Ephesian church experienced it.

Quite the opposite.

There has been a distinct and disastrous rebellion in the Heavenly places and that rebellion is still reflected in the sons of disobedience.

Let’s be honest, pockets of resistance still persist to this very day.

But fundamentally, authority over the rebel state has been established and all things have been got a grip on.

You couldn’t reason or negotiate with the forces of darkness, so they had to be defeated and now the rebellion has been subjugated.

Cosmic rebellion, spiritual treason had affected the full created orders of things as experienced at Ephesus.

NO MORE!

All things have been PUT beneath His feet … 

There’s this phenomenal truth over in Colossians 1:13-15 that some of us might need to hear again … it says:

“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 

having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

It is not a TREATY that’s been struck with the forces of anti-God.

It is a subjugation of their implacable hatred … and still they hiss at us every day from beneath His feet.

And still we listen to them and pay attention to them as if they were legitimate, persuasive and were located elsewhere.

Paul prays that these Ephesians will be and stay aware of the relevant reality.

And the fourth and final way listed here that God has made known His unsurpassed power in Christ is by making the Lord Jesus the ruling authority over Heaven and Earth for the benefit of the Church.

2) Head over all things

It is the benefit of what God has done in Christ to the Church in a vulnerable situation that Paul has been trying to illustrate for the Ephesians in these four descriptions of the awesome power of God a work.

They are all illustrations of God’s awesome power ‘for us who believe’.

And it is all ‘for the Church’.

Paul is praying that God’s people, in their vulnerability, will be able to get hold of the total VASTNESS of God’s power which is for their benefit.

So here’s the last of the four illustrations.

It used to be considered, in darker days, a heresy punishable by death to commit blasphemy by ‘attributing to God corporeal parts’.

A) Head over

Jesus … now installed on Heaven’s throne … fulfils the role of ‘Head’ of all things.

It used to be considered, in darker days, a heresy punishable by death to commit blasphemy by ‘attributing to God corporeal parts’.

Now, don’t misunderstand, ordinary Christians for at least the first three centuries

of the Church believed God to be corporeal … a being with a body

The belief was abandoned (and then only gradually) as

Neoplatonism became more and more entrenched as the dominant worldview of Christian thinkers … and we have Augustine and Origen to thank for that.

Plato was impacting Judaism too through big names like Maimonides … and by the early medieval period, many scholars such as Rav Hai Gaon (a medieval Babylonian rabbi, theologian, scholar, and judge who served as the gaon (head) of the important yeshiva at Pumbedita … modern Fallujah which you may remember from the Iraq war … but this guy was there during the early eleventh century) … Rabbinical teachers like him also started to teach that OT passages with reference to God having body parts should be read metaphorically.

While adopting this approach in most cases, Rabbi Sa’adia Gaon also suggested a theory of “created Glory,” which asserted that God would sometimes create a visible entity to give prophets a visual affirmation of their experience, as in the case of Ezekiel’s visions.

Well that all gets pretty heavily impacted here after the Reformation when a significant turning away from Plato and Aristotle to Scripture takes place … although the old ways did prove pretty hard to shake off.

Jesus is described here as not just HAVING a head, but of being the head … pretty much certain to be a metaphorical reference but hold my coffee because we’re going to be coming back to God and His body parts pretty swiftly

Notice that there is no aversion to corporeality in v. 22, but probably in this context of supremacy and authority we’re looking at a metaphor … a picture to portray a very real reality.

This is a word that was often used metaphorically in a range of contexts.

κεφαλή (kefalē) 'head' can be a human head the head on a body … the blob that gives your hat a home and stops your neck from fraying.

It refers then metaphorically … picture language … to the top stone in a building.

By extension, then, this word κεφαλή comes to mean someone or something in the primary place, the point of origin … and now you may well think that now we’re getting warmer.

You see, here the old Jewish scholar from Fallujah, Rav Hai Gaon, starts coming into his own.

The use by Paul of this metaphor ‘the head’ (κεφαλή) is linked to ‘the body’ (σῶμα) to produce a compound image which Paul goes on to spell out in 4:15-16.

It is an image often used in the Greek of Paul’s day as well as in his Judaism.

Whether in Plato, Gallen and the medical writers of the Greek world, in Hebr5ew texts or in the Hellenised Jew Philo, in each instance where this metaphor is used there is an unequivocal sense that leadership and authority are entailed.

In addition, in some instances there is an extended sense in which ‘the head’ is also the preserver and/ or supplier of the body.

In the writings of the medical writer Gallen, from Pergamum, the head functions as the command and supply centre for the body.

Jesus has been appointed the primary One.

The head of the corner, the chief corner-stone, Mt. 21:42; Lk. 20:17; 

Metaphorically the head, superior, chief, principal, one to whom others are subordinate, 1Cor. 11:3

b) Everything

So now Paul is going to underline that God has made the Lord Jesus head ‘over everything’ …  ὑπὲρ πάντα … everything means everything as we’ve seen but Paul is particularly concerned to assert Christ’s authority over the principalities and powers, which he’s spelled out a few lines before.

Paul asserts this directly, of course, in Colossians 2:10 where he says “He is the head over every power and authority” … 

Here again Paul asserts Christ’s lordship over the spiritual forces in the world using the term ‘head’ to express that it is not Artemis … nor any other of the pantheon of their deities … that have any clout when it comes to dealing with a person’s vulnerability.

Clinton E. Arnold: “God has given Christ a great victory over the powers of darkness and now possesses full authority over them for the benefit of the Church.”

So the big point that crowns them all is that the Christ Who has this status of ruling over the powers, authorities and whole universe is given to the Church.

3)   For the Church

a)    The Church is His body

“appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body …”

The Church is the body of Christ in Romans 12:4-8 and also in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31.

In both those places Paul uses the metaphor to stress the church is a coming together of diverse and interdependent members.

But when he uses the metaphor in Ephesians and Colossians he adds the idea that Christ is the leader and head of this diverse and interdependent community of Christ’s people.

Now, we’re just going to notice this body theology at this point and also the idea of the Church being the fulness of the One Who fills everything in every way … as we’re going to come back to what that has to tell us about the Church next time, because it is very important for us to be clear about the place of the Church in the big scheme of things.

b)    The Church is His ‘fulness’

Conclusion

We look out onto our world and all too often the enemy seems to have the upper hand.

We, like the Ephesians, probably do need to experience an expansion of our understanding and a modification of our awareness of God’s power as being available to us.

You see, Paul’s central concern for the Ephesians as he sought to strengthen them inwardly in such a way as to counter the disunity, immorality and sense of impotence in the face of their experience of vulnerability up against the dark forces at work in the world was to expand their awareness of the power of God that was available to them in Christ.

Their church was born in a city full of idols made by Demetrius the metal worker and his mates where people who had practised sorcery, when they were converted, brought scrolls with their incantations and so on written on them put them in a pile and burned them as an act of repentance … 50,000 drachmas-worth of them.

The city the church lived in, whose culture they’d come out of, was a dark place filled with idolatry and witchcraft.

Like our culture it was a place where it was easy to feel – even just beneath the surface where you wouldn’t say it but might live as if you believed it – that Christ might not be powerful enough to take care of us and protect us.

The power Paul wants those Ephesians to be AWARE of is as relevant to our church now as it was to theirs then.

The Church exists in a transforming and unique relationship with the risen, exalted and reigning Christ, and through that the Church both receives God’s power over the enemies of souls and is very adequately empowered to represent the ongoing presence and ministry of Christ on earth … His Gospel ministry, His redemptive ministry, His Kingdom priorities.