Reigning Over Us

Ephesians 1:22

We are now at the penultimate verse in Ephesians chapter one. As stated in the previous article Inevitable the remainder of this chapter primarily focus on the power of God. Therefore, this verse and the following verse will, for the majority, focus for on just that.

In Ephesians 1:22, Paul writes, “and He puts all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church.” “He” in this verse is referring to God. We know that specifically because of verse twenty which says, “which He worked in Christ…” The verse continues talking about what God did. He raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him (Jesus) at His right hand.

We know as well from verse twenty that “His” is referring to Jesus. The verse then can be read that God put all things under Jesus’ feet. What does that mean? The first thing that we can conclude is that God has the power to put all things under Jesus’ feet. If He didn’t then it wouldn’t be His to give. The power that the devil has on the earth is only because God has allowed it. We know this from Job 1 where we see the devil has to ask permission from God to attack Job. The same is true for us today. The devil is the one who attacks us but only with God’s permission. And we know that if God has given the devil permission to attack us it is for a purpose.

God decided to put all things under Jesus’ feet, but why? One reason could be because Jesus can sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus was tempted as we all are. He can understand the difficulties and the temptations that the world throws at us on a daily basis. He did not sin, but He dealt with the painful pull that the world offers. We give in to our sins sometimes which relieves this pull; Jesus did not have any relief because He never sinned. But my point is, He understands the pain and therefore He has been given the power to rule over the earth.

Jesus is also our Mediator. He makes requests to God for us. He is our High Priest, the reason that we can have instant access to God and not need to go to the High Priest like the Jews did in the Old Testament. These are additional reasons that God put all things on the earth under His feet.

One more poetic reason (though probably not actually a reason) is that Jesus refused Satan’s offer to rule over the earth when He was tempted in the wilderness (Luke 4). Of course, it was not Satan’s to give, but it is poetic to see that Jesus did what was right, died on the cross instead, and was then gifted the rule that Satan had promised, but instead He was gifted it by His Father, God.

Jesus is also head over the church which we will look at this more in our last article. From what we see today we can see that God is in absolute control, and Jesus is our ruler, our mediator, and the One who brings our requests before God. It is a beautiful relationship that we are blessed to be able to be apart of, and one we should never take for granted.

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