1:22a

God put everything under His feet: The clause God put everything under His feet is a figure of speech which comes from Psalm 8:6. It means that God has given Christ control of all things, and all things are in his power.

In many languages this figure of speech will not be clear if it is translated literally. If this is true for your language, it may be better to say something like this:

God has put all things under the power of Christ (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
God caused all things to be under Christ’s authority

1:22b

made Him head over everything for the church: There are several ways to understand this clause:

(1) God made Christ head/leader of everything for the benefit of the church (God’s people). For example:

He has made Christ the head of everything for the good of the church. (God’s Word)

(Berean Standard Bible, New International Version, Revised Standard Version, New Living Translation (2004), God’s Word, Contemporary English Version, New Century Version)

(2) God gave Christ to the church (his people). For example:

…he gave him to the church as head over all things. (NET Bible)

(NET Bible, Good News Translation, New American Standard Bible, Revised English Bible, King James Version)

(3) God made Christ the head/leader of the church (his people). For example:

He…made him, as he is above all things, the head of the Church. (New Jerusalem Bible)

It is recommended that you follow interpretation (1).

head: Here, Paul used the word head in a metaphorical sense. It means that Christ is the “leader,” “ruler,” or “chief” over everything.

Paul also used the word head in a metaphorical sense in 1:10b, 4:15b, 5:23a and 5:23b. You should translate it in a similar way in all these places.

church: The word church refers to all believers in Christ throughout the world. Be careful to avoid any translation that would mean a church building. You can say:

his people/group
-or-
all his followers

See church in the Glossary for more information.

© 1999, 2019 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.