Be reminded as you read that as Paul wrote this letter, he was under guard in Rome. Rome was the capital and center point of the vast and expanding Roman Empire, and one defining aspect of the Roman Empire at this time beyond their Greco-Roman philosophical ideas was their religious plurality and tolerance. Not only did Rome have a pantheon of Gods they had borrowed from the Greek and Persian empires and adopted as their own, but Rome was also adopting new pagan beliefs from every new country or region they conquered, such as Gaul and Brittania, so long as that religion helped to keep the peace and established a greater level of Roman control. By the time of Christ, the empire was overrun with countless gods and lesser deities. Here is a short list of just some of the gods of Rome: Mars, Minerva, Neptune, Hades, Jupiter, Apollo, Janus, Hercules, Quirinus, Baccus, Venus, Fortuna, Diana, Ceres, Pax, Tyche, Vulcan, Jupiter, Dionysis, and Mithre to name a few. If a person walked the streets of any major Roman city, it would have been impossible to avoid a dozen statues, temples, and shrines to these gods. At every corner, it seemed there was some idol of a god dedicated to war, harvest, fertility, or blessing. You were likely to see a line stretching for miles with people waiting to offer sacrifice, pour out libations, or light incense to appease the god most closely related to their ambitions. Every lost battle or underwhelming harvest was seen as the result of angering or failing to appease the gods which oversaw that particular aspect of daily life.

Every time Paul would have seen these idols in his travels he would be reminded of what they stood for and how the worship of these gods determined and controlled much of the life of an everyday person, whether citizen or not. For example, the Cult of Mithras, adopted from Persia, had a complex system of seven grades of initiation, where a practitioner could hope to gain eternal salvation by working their way through each of these seven levels or steps of Mithraism from Raven to Bride, to Soldier, Lion, Persian, Sun-Runner and finally the highest level of Father. Each of these seven levels of spiritual enlightenment was protected by a celestial god: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the Moon, the Sun, and Saturn. The idea of working to earn your salvation, along with working to earn some semblance of value and worth, would have been on the minds of every Roman and very much a part of how they went about each day and viewed life.

These ideas are in stark contrast to Christianity, which teaches that there is nothing you can do to earn or work towards worth, value, and salvation. Christ had taught a revolutionary idea that each of these things came as a free gift from God through Jesus Christ and could not be worked for or earned, only received. Paul's purpose in today's passage was to remind the church in Ephesus, and all Christians everywhere that the name of Jesus and the throne of Jesus is supreme over all other rulers, authorities, powers, and dominions. Meaning, all these other gods, whether real demonic spirits or hollow lifeless idols, were all subject to Christ. Then and now, they are under his feet and under his authority. The residents of Ephesus and all readers should be overjoyed as the realization of what Paul said took hold. This is great news! This means that we as the church are worshipping and serving the right God! We worship the only one who actually deserves to be worshipped. The same is true even today. We can take great joy in knowing that we serve not some lowly or semi-powerful god, or a dead god, or a fickle god that needs to be appeased. We serve the Most High, who is alive and who loves us. We serve the creator, and all other things are firmly under his feet.