The Sword Room

Finally–this will be the final post of the series–headship requires that men treat their wives with understanding and honor:

You husbands, likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman; and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered (1 Peter 3:7).     

What does it mean for a man to live with his wife in an understanding way? I can tell you it takes work. Most wives seem to have ample knowledge of their husbands as well as insight into their thoughts and behaviors. They seem more naturally skilled at empathy, whereas men must work hard to listen. Women pay attention to what goes on around them, while men are masters at tuning out what they wish to ignore. Men understand women far less than vice-versa, and for this reason they must work harder than women in that area. Women want to be understood, which is why they are forever telling us men that we don’t get it. They are more than willing to tell you what they are feeling and thinking if they know you are listening—and even when they suspect you aren’t.

  In my opinion, when Peter says women are weaker vessels he is referring to more than physical weakness. Here I think he might be hinting at the emotional sensitivity of females in general. Have you ever noticed how a wife can freely and often bluntly speak her mind to her husband? For example, she tells him his choice of clothes looks terrible? He responds by shrugging it off, asking what she thinks would look good, and changing the ensemble accordingly. However if the roles were reversed and he told her an outfit she had selected looked bad, she might interpret his comment to mean that she was unattractive. When she disagrees with his opinion or tells him an idea of his sounds bad, he is less likely to turn his focus inward and see himself as stupid—or assume she sees him as stupid. I have heard it said that the effect of a wife’s criticism of her husband can be likened to the ripples created by throwing a pebble into a pond, whereas the effect of a husbands criticism of his wife is more like the ripple created by a large boulder. This goes for dads and daughters too. Just recently I was dealing with a family in which the dad yells angrily at his kids when he is frustrated. His teenage sons blow it off because they know he never backs up his threats with any kind of action. But his sixteen year-old daughter is very hurt by her dad’s tone. I will need to spend some time with this man and help him find more effective ways of communicating with the girl.

A good husband listens to his wife; he realizes God put her there because he needs her. He will be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger. He will listen with both ears, not just for the literal sense of what she says, but to genuinely understand what she is thinking and feeling. If and when he does speak he will remember his mother’s wisdom—that it isn’t what you say but how you say it that matters most. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger (Proverbs 15:1). The wise old preacher who did our premarital sessions back in 1976 told me that any man who refuses to listen to his wife is an idiot. His counsel has served me well over the years—although I won’t lie and say I have always heeded it. I pass it on advisedly to you younger men, for it cannot be improved upon.

Like it or lump it, God’s method is men. God created a man to be the head of the human race. When that race fell into sin, God foretold of another man who would one day crush she serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). The Old Testament tells us that from that time onward God operated through patriarchal system of laws, covenants, and religious observances led by men. God used men to record His mighty deeds in Scripture in both testaments. In the fullness of time He sent a mediator—the man Christ Jesus (1Timothy 2:5). All twelve apostles of Christ were men, and they reinforced the concepts of male headship in the home and male leadership in the church. Men are God’s method, and there is no backup plan.

If we believe in the true and living God of the Bible and it is our desire to glorify and enjoy Him, we can no more ignore His pattern of male headship than we can refuse to eat and drink and expect to live. Ours is not the option of making the rules as we go and then expecting God to rubber stamp our aberrations from His Word. Here is why I spent no time discussing the intricate dynamics of marriage and family relationships; for to have done so would have been like building a beautiful house on quicksand. Manliness is next to godliness, and the sooner we admit it the sooner we will seek to purge ourselves from the insidious contagion of godless feminist dogma. We will then be free to focus our attention not on the niceties of political correctness, but on hard biblical truth, developing strong male leaders to stand in the gap in our homes and churches. That is the only solid foundation on which to build, under the Lordship of Christ.

I understand the Genesis account to be the pattern of a truly Christian view of male headship, in tandem with the analogy of Christ and the church. Under the headship of Christ believers are given much freedom: the Lord does not tell us which car to drive or what clothes to wear or which brand of hotdogs to buy at the supermarket. We are to submit to His authority, as expressed in Scripture, but in so doing we are submitting to someone who loves us and was willing to die for us ( Ephesians 5:22-33). Christian wives are likewise to respect the spiritual headship of their husbands (1 Peter 3:1-6); and they are to focus their attention on the family and home (Titus 2:4-5). But we must not forget that in every passage where female submission to male headship is commanded, equal time is given to the responsibilities of husbands. As we will see in a moment, filling the sandals of Christ as heads of households is a tall order to fill.

But first a disclaimer: in submitting to male headship in the home and male leadership in the church, women are not bound to serve as doormats or second-class citizens. They are not required to submit to men in the church just because they are men. And in the home wives are to operate in complementary roles to their husbands, which means they must be treated as equals. They are not to be bullied or bossed, but rather listened to and respected. When their husbands cheat on them sexually they have just as much biblical basis for divorce as does a defrauded husband. They are likewise free of bondage when deserted by unbelieving husbands who want out of the marriage.

What about a wife who is being beaten by her husband? I have seen cases in which wives were commanded to return home bruised and battered after approaching the church leadership for help. They were told to submit to the authority of their husbands, “trust God,” and identify how their words and behaviors were triggering his rage! I say that if you are married to a man who uses you as a punching bag you have biblical grounds to divorce him. In Exodus 21:26-27 male and female slaves who were physically assaulted and injured by their masters were immediately freed from all obligations to that master. Arguing from the lesser relationship to the greater I would maintain that if God would nullify the contract of a master and slave based on battery and physical injury, then a wife who bears the wounds of domestic violence in the greater marriage relationship is free to separate or dissolve that contract pronto. I would add that she ought to call the police and have him arrested as well, for he is breaking the law. She should get a restraining order to keep him from her and the children if need be. And if the male leadership of her church does not support her efforts she should find another congregation.

The biblical responsibilities of male heads of Christian households are many, but I will close out this chapter with a highlight of just three of the most important of them. First, as the spiritual heads of their households husbands must see themselves, as Job did, as the patriarchs and priests of their homes. They are the gatekeepers of godliness, and when they snooze everyone loses. Most husbands are careful to make sure their homes are secure and their families physically protected as they sleep at night. But spiritually they must be alert and on the front lines of the battle by attending to their own sanctification, otherwise the home will be riddled with spiritual breaches through which the enemy will gain entry. Men must model a consistent and healthy devotional life. They must know God’s Word and let it inform their theology and influence their daily thoughts and behaviors.

 They must not leave their wives in the position of having to lead by default due to their sloth. In many if not most evangelical homes the wives take the lead in praying for meals, selecting which church the family attends, praying with and for the children, and screening the information flow into the home. If we are to truly glorify the God of Scripture in our homes, this trend is the first thing that must change. Marriage encounter weekends, couples retreats, books, and videos on how to run a Christian marriage and family will all be largely beside the point if they do not biblically address the spiritual headship issue first and foremost. Men’s groups which merely encourage them to get in touch with their feelings and stand around the campfire holding hands, singing choruses, and eating s’mores will continue to produce spiritual wimps. Men need straight no-nonsense instruction and mentoring in the area of male headship.

Men are also obligated biblically to support their families financially: But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially those of his own household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8). Those who aspire to be married heads of households must take this charge seriously, for to ignore it places the offender in a position worse than that of the unbeliever. Our society is glutted with adult males who act like boys, sleeping until noon and staying up late at night watching movies, playing video games, smoking dope, drinking beer, surfing the internet for porn, and impregnating women. Many of them are milking bogus Social Security and workmen’s compensation claims, or they are being carried by working wives and girlfriends who parent and enable them in their lifestyle of laziness. A great any others are languishing in jails and prisons. Women should stay clear of such men, and young men should postpone marriage until they are ready and able to support a family. Opportunities are not as plentiful as they once were, so young guys need to work both hard and smart as they prepare for their future. In these tough spiritual and economic times one might well consider the counsel of Paul: I think then that this is good in view of the present distress, that it is good for a man to remain as he is (1 Corinthians 7:26). Just remember: God is sovereign, and marriage was His idea. If you make it your ambition to glorify and enjoy Him as a responsible husband He will provide for your needs.

The problem of dead-beat husbands is almost always an issue of won’t rather than can’t. Young men, make it your ambition to mirror the love of Christ in your marriages, and more times than not you will see your wife blossom. Treat her with respect and honor today, even if you have not done so for awhile. Surprise her.

Once the biblical concept of male headship is seen in a comprehensive and balanced way, it actually looks more attractive to women and less appealing to men. Men like the authority part of headship, or what they think that part is. But responsibility is always the flip side of authority, and to function properly in any leadership or headship role you can never have more authority than responsibility. In fact I would go so far as to say that the scales of Scripture weigh more heavily on the side of responsibility in the matter of male headship.

We have already seen in the early chapters of Genesis that God placed the man in the garden and established his headship before the fall. The man was given a general charge to tend the garden (2:15) and the freedom to eat from any tree therein with the lone exception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (vv. 16-17). Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him” (v. 18). It is often assumed that when Adam named the animals he saw that each male had a female counterpart, and he became lonely; ergo God’s declaration that it was not good for him to be alone. This might have indeed been the case, although Scripture says the woman was created not as a companion to remedy the man’s loneliness, but a helper “suitable for him.” She was to be, literally, a helper corresponding to him. That is she was to complement and complete him.

Consider the implications of all this. God declared that it was not good for the man to be alone because he needed help in tending the garden and exercising dominion over the animals. He could not do it alone—was not designed to do it alone. God created another human being ontologically equal as a bearer of the divine image (Genesis 1:27) but functionally different in those key areas where the man was incomplete. This strongly suggests that, like two pieces of a puzzle that fit together properly, she possessed intelligence and competency in areas where he lacked, and vice-versa. In other words she was in some areas smarter and more capable than him. She was the perfect helper and mate.

So much for the good-old-boy mentality that says women run purely on emotions and men are more rational and intellectually superior. The only area in which, generally speaking, men are superior to women is brute strength. Women possess greater intelligence and ability than men in key areas, their brains are able to process information differently, and they are typically more aware of their emotions. Nothing in the creation story even hints that Adam was superior to Eve in terms of his essential being or constitutional makeup.

Nor is their any trace of the traditional baggage we have attached to gender roles. Adam and Eve were to work together side-by-side in complementary roles. Nothing is said about it being the woman’s job to do all the housecleaning and preparing of meals. Because they were naked she could not have been left in charge of doing laundry; and because the first humans did not slaughter and eat animals there was no need for her to have been responsible to cook Adam’s meals and have them on the table when he got home. God nowhere commands her to wait hand-and-foot on her husband and run his bathwater for him. There is no evidence that she was prohibited from making certain decisions without running them past her husband for approval. Because there was no sin in the world his ego would not be threatened when she offered helpful suggestions of a much more sensible and practical nature than his ideas. Far from being offended, he would have welcomed her valuable input.

The primary focus of Adam’s headship seems to have been spiritual in nature. He was given the initial freedom to eat from every tree in the garden, and the lone prohibition was given to him before the creation of the woman. Apparently Adam was made responsible to reiterate God’s command to the woman, for it seems that in approaching her, the serpent questioned her knowledge of it (Genesis 3:1). Her answer (v. 2-3) adds a second prohibition not originally given: You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die. After Adam had stood passively by and allowed her to transgress and had partaken himself, God approached him and blamed him because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you (v. 17). The woman had no doubt offered the man some very helpful and practical advice up to this point, advice which he was wise to heed. But when she strayed outside her God-given parameters she was not only disobeying God’s direct command, she was also choosing to trust Satan’s word over God’s; and she was seeking autonomy from her husband’s spiritual headship in the interest of her own self-actualization (3:5-6). Nevertheless the buck stopped with Adam as the head of the relationship and the human race.

The bottom line is that male headship is spiritual and involves a high level of responsibility. It does not negate the ontological unity of the genders or imply that men are in any way more intelligent or valuable than women, or that they are to lord it over their wives.

The necessary radical change in our thinking about gender roles will be difficult given that Masculinity has been re-defined by many in our culture according to feminine (and feminist) expectations. Men are taught to be more sensitive and to relate to one another as women do by opening up and sharing their feelings. They are encouraged to get in touch with their inner wimp and appreciate long walks on the beach at sunset, chick flicks, and candlelight dinners. Hunting and fishing and contact sports are looked upon as barbaric. Men are more angry and aggressive, we are told, because they were raised to bite their lip and hold in their pain instead of processing it. They need to open up more, get in touch with their feminine side, and become androgynous and egalitarian in their thinking about gender roles.

The evangelical church has gotten sucked deeply into this sink hole. The average congregation is sixty to seventy percent female, and the other thirty to forty percent is made up largely of children and old people. The few younger men who are present have been dragged there by their wives, and if you watch you will see them fidgeting, twiddling their thumbs, and staring blankly out the window. They don’t want to be there—and who can blame them? What man wants to stand holding hands with total strangers singing fluffy songs about falling in love with Jesus and listening to twenty-minute sermonettes about little lost puppies?

Right down to the soft carpet, flowers, and fuchsia-colored paint, the average church caters to the nines to the feminine desire for intimacy and security. Wimped-out men’s movements, such as Promise Keepers, far from being a help, have perpetuated a milk-toast kind of masculinity. If and when marriage, family, and gender roles are discussed, political correctness rules the day. If the concept of male headship is mentioned at all in the churches, it dies the death of a thousand qualifications, rationalizations, and outright denials. The interpretive sleight of hand used in this connection is without parallel in the cults.

It does no good at all to offer such watered-down pabulum—in fact it is destructive because it increases the size of the already existing man-vacuum, a void which women are all too willing to fill. The problem is they can’t fill it. God did not ordain that they should fill it, did not create them to fill it, and is not pleased when they circumvent His will in attempting to fill it. Sure, women are smart, often far more intelligent than men. They are often much more competent as managers than men. They are diligent and dependable as workers more times than not. You need not remind me of that—I have been married to a very capable woman for four decades. But she can never be the head or even the co-head of our marriage relationship. God created her to be a helper and not a head. If I were to drop dead today ours would still be a household, but it would be an incomplete household. And a church without male elders overseeing it, while still a church, is incomplete and less than ideal. Selecting female elders because it seems smart or practical is nothing less than rebellion against God. You would be better off with no elders, for at least that situation is not without biblical precedent.

If we really want to glorify and enjoy God and rebuild our faith in Him, we must reclaim the biblical concept of male headship in the home and male leadership in the church. If that rubs you wrong, then take it up with the Lord. He inspired the sacred writers to describe Him throughout Scripture with masculine nouns and pronouns. All the biblical books were written by men. The patriarchs were all men. The heads of the tribes of Israel were men. Jesus Christ was born and lived as a man. The apostles were all men. And God’s Word not only stipulates that church elders be all-male, but also forbids women to teach or exercise spiritual authority over men (1 Corinthians 14:34-35; Timothy 2:11-15).

It is no use arguing that male headship and leadership in biblical times were accommodations to the sexist culture of the day, for Paul appeals to creation and not culture as the basis for male headship and leadership in both of the above-cited passages. In other words, as long as men are men and women are women, the biblical pattern will be in effect. Nor is it helpful to appeal to our pagan insistence on equity and “fairness.” God does not need our approval or permission to insist that we follow the rules as He wrote them. When women object that they feel a leading from God to exercise headship over their husbands or function as elders and pastor-teachers in the church, they need to believe God’s Word instead of their emotions. And save all the “what if?” questions because I will touch on a couple of them in a future post.

The New Testament reaffirms the original gender roles given at creation (Ephesians 5:22-23; Colossians 3:18-19; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:1-7). These distinctions, like those in the Godhead, are functional and not ontological. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). Husband and wife both bear the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and when both are believers they are fellow heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7). Functional distinctions in no way destroy ontological equality.

Paul might just as well have said there is no such thing as a child or parent in Christ, or that there is neither policeman nor civilian in Christ. Suppose you are stopped for speeding by a law officer who happens to be a believing member of your church. What would happen if you said, “I do not have to stop for you or heed your instruction? You are no better than me. We are spiritually equal in Christ.” What happens when the Christian teenager rebels against parental authority because he thinks (perhaps rightly so) that he is smarter than his mom and dad? Can you imagine Jesus refusing to do the Father’s will based on an appeal to their equality of being?

You will object that Christ’s subordination to the Father’s authority is unique because there is no sin in that relationship. Think about what you are saying for a moment. You are maintaining that the problem is not with the concept of headship per se—otherwise it could not exist in the Godhead. You are identifying the problem as sin, and with this I will heartily agree. God predicted immediately after the fall that the original gender roles would be perverted by sin: men would abuse their power and women would desire control in their relationships with men (Genesis 3:16). From that time onward men have abused their God-given power and authority and shirked their responsibility as heads of homes. Women have sought autonomy and power in the interest of so-called fairness and equity. The functional distinctions and gender roles instituted in Eden have gone haywire because of sin, not because there is something inherently wrong with those roles and distinctions themselves. To argue otherwise would be like rejecting the God-ordained concept of parental authority because some parents sinfully abuse their power to the detriment of their children.

Male headship in the marriage relationship is the ideal. God instituted marriage as the foundation of the family and the family as the building block of society. He alone defines these institutions and writes the rules for their operation. Marriage is the lifelong covenant of companionship between two consenting adults of the opposite sex. God-ordained marriage is the matrix of childbearing and parenting. Husbands and wives are to operate in complementary roles under the headship of the husband. Male authority in the home, like all God-given authority, exists not to destroy others but to build them up (2 Corinthians 10:8). Marriage is to be a glorious reflection of Christ’s relationship with His Bride (Ephesians 5:32).

Of course we live in a fallen world where God’s ideals are not always realized. Nor am I so brazen as to say households without husbands are not real families. Husbands and fathers are often derelict in their duties, leaving single mothers and grandparents to support and parent their offspring. Wives opt out of marriages sometimes to escape abuse or simply to be free from responsibility. Extra-marital affairs are the rule rather than the exception these days, and many marriages crumble as a result of such unfaithfulness on the part of one or both spouses. A single-parent family is indeed a family, but it is not an ideal family. A set of grandparents raising kids is a kind of family, but it is not after the pattern established by God. This is not to deny that there are many godly single parents and grandparents raising kids. Jesus was not married, so there are exceptions to every rule. But we have become a society of exceptions, and the church has followed suit.

The fact remains that when these kinds of less-than-ideal families become nearly as common as traditional nuclear families in a society, the very building blocks of that culture are doomed to crumble and bring down the whole structure, like buildings in third-world countries that are not reinforced and earthquake-proof. When this kind of domestic deterioration is mirrored in the church, the result cannot be anything but disaster. The divorce rate is about sixty percent nationally, and nearly a third of all children are born out of wedlock. (Among some ethnicities the figure is seventy-five percent.) These statistics are reflected almost across the board in the churches, resulting in a surplus of females, children, and seniors in the pews and a lack of younger men. The future outlook is bleak for the American church. Something must be done to reverse the trend.

You think that title must be a joke, right? In our modern culture men are the joke. If you watch much television you have no doubt noticed a common theme in sitcoms and commercials: the idiot man who needs his wife or girlfriend to bail him out. Who can deny the fact that many men are bumbling imbeciles, capable of nothing more than eating, sleeping, defecating, urinating, fighting, playing video games, laughing at the humor of Jackass movies and Larry the Cable Guy, masturbating, getting drunk, smoking dope, gambling, feeding on porn, and impregnating women dumb enough to have sex with them? The suggestion that manliness is next to godliness would be laughable in the extreme.

Except that it isn’t really all that funny. Our prisons are full of men, whereas women outnumber men in our universities. Most violent crimes are committed by men. Men are the ones who start and fight wars. Men are the ones who get women pregnant and leave them to raise their offspring alone—either that or they find responsible women to parent them and care for them. Men seem to be the ones who foster hatred and perpetuate racism and sexism. One might almost think the world would be a better place if, with a few exceptions, men were altogether eradicated from the face of the earth. Men are the root of most if not all evils. You’ve heard of gay pride parades; well, it seems as if a few male shame parades are called for these days.

Against the prevailing attitude the mere mention of the following biblical statements is cause for either hysterical laughter or the rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth:

But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ…he [Man] is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake (1 Corinthians 11: 3, 7-9).

Before you click out of this blog I suppose I should explain where I’m going with all this. I have been reflecting deeply these past weeks on how to glorify and enjoy God in a comprehensive and all-encompassing manner—lifestyle worship, if you will. My mind went initially to the area of personal sanctification because that seemed like the first logical step. Once one has taken heed to himself he will be prepared to glorify God in the areas of marriage, family, church, and the world at-large–that was pretty much my reasoning. The more I thought about it and discussed it with others the more I felt presence of an enormous elephant in the room.

I speak of  the hot-potato issues of gender roles, male headship, and functional distinctions between men and women in marriage and the church. It is standard procedure among many evangelicals these days to write off clear biblical statements of these roles and distinctions as culturally conditioned and products of our fallen state. I’m sorry, but truth trumps political correctness. As I will show, headship and hierarchy within marriage are reflections of relational dynamics within the Triune Godhead and were introduced into the human race before sin perverted and distorted them. I will show further that any attempt to sidestep these roles and distinctions is a tampering with God’s pattern. If we want to glorify and enjoy God ours is not the option of re-writing the relational rules and remaking marriage, family, and church according to the prevailing winds of coolness and “fairness.” We must build  our faith in the God of the Bible on the solid rock of Scripture, not the shifting sands of popular opinion.

The Corinthian passage cited above tells us that God (the Father) is the head of Christ. What does that mean? The answer to this question is crucial, for the Father’s headship of the Son is the model after which male headship in the marriage relationship is patterned. First off, headship does not mean that Christ is inferior in His essential nature to the Father. All Christians agree that there is ontological equality (equality of being or essence) between all three persons of the Godhead. That is to say, all share fully in all the attributes of deity. The question is: can functional distinctions involving subordination coexist in a relationship between equals?

With respect to the persons of the Triune Godhead the answer would seem to be in the affirmative. In Philippians 2:5-11 we are told that Christ existed from eternity in the form of God and that he did not consider this equality with the Father a thing to be grasped or clung to. The Son willingly subordinated Himself to the Father’s eternal plan to save sinners by becoming an obedient servant, even to the point of taking on human flesh and dying on a cross. It is in this context that we must understand Jesus’ statement in John 14:28 that, the Father is greater than I. Likewise Paul’s assertion that God is the head of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:3). When all has been said and done in the drama of human history, the Son Himself will be subjected to the One who has subjected all things to Himself, that God might be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28).

When God created the first man and placed him in the garden He established his headship before the introduction of sin; and this headship was not a new innovation, but was a reflection of the existing headship within the Trinity. Adam was created first, and then Eve (Genesis 2:7, 18-23). Eve was created from the man as a helper for him, and not vice-versa (2:18). Adam was given authority not only to name the animals, but also the woman (vv. 19-23). God named the human race after the man and not the woman (Genesis 5:2). Satan approached and tempted the woman first in an attempt to reverse the God-ordained gender roles (3:1). However, after the fall God confronted Adam first as the head of the relationship (3:9). Adam (not Eve) was the federal head or representative through which sin was passed to all his posterity (Romans 5:12). To be sure the fall brought about a distortion and perversion (but not a removal) of the established gender roles (Genesis 3:16-19).

Come back tomorrow for more…