31 What Does 'Head' Mean? Ephesians and a Husband’s Responsibility

Krisan Marotta: Welcome back to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krissan Marata, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. We are studying 1 Corinthians 11, verses 2 through 16 today. This is the 31st talk in our series on 1 Corinthians. It's the fourth in a series of four on this passage, and it's the second of two talks on this particular topic. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, and you can also find them on my website. Just go to Wednesdayintheword.com slash 1 Corinthians 3.1. In the lecture notes, you'll find links to everything mentioned in the talk as well as an outline so that you don't have to take notes if you're listening while you're driving or doing dishes or whatever. And while you're looking at the lecture notes, take a minute to check out the rest of the website. There is no charge, no spam, no ads on it, just lots of Bible study materials. Glad to have you along. This is our fourth and last week looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 2 through 16, which is the infamous passage on head coverings. Even though there is a lot more we could say and a lot more we could talk about, we are gonna move on next week. In the first podcast on this passage, I gave you the bottom line. I went straight through the passage explaining my conclusions and how I think the passage makes the most sense. In the second podcast, we talked about the cultural background that informs Paul's advice and what we know, what information is missing, and how some of it is contradictory. Then in last week's podcast, we began tackling the question, what does Paul mean by head? And we spent most of our time looking at Genesis chapter 2, which Paul appeals to in his argument. This week we're going to continue that discussion. We're going to continue looking at Paul's use of the term head, but this time we're going to look at Paul's other letters in the New Testament. Now, if you have done any reading on this question, you know that this is a hugely controversial topic. Many forests have given their lives in service of this debate, and some people have written entire books on this question. I am going to summarize the debate, I'm giving you my conclusions, but I do not have the market cornered on truth, and I do not have the final word. As I've said in the previous podcast, almost everything I say here is debated. I am not going to start each sentence with the words I think, but I could, and I probably should, because that's implied. I do not mean to suggest in presenting the material this way that I have the market cornered on truth or understanding. I don't. These are my conclusions after copious research and many hours of study. And this is my best shot. I am fairly confident that this is a solid and good understanding of the passage, but I realize I could very well be wrong. This is a very difficult passage. There are lots of things we aren't even going to touch on, like linguistic and translation issues. And while I realize that I could be wrong on every passage I teach, there is a higher than average probability that I'm wrong here because this is just a really difficult passage. As we study it, we have to keep making these interpretive choices, and they're like a fork in the road, and at each one we can just take a different fork from someone else, and we can just keep diverging. It is just that difficult. All right, remember this situation in Corinth, as best I understand it. In their culture, married women kept their heads covered as a sign of respect for their husbands. Also, in their culture, when men prayed or preached in public worship, they removed their head coverings as a sign of respect for God. Before Christianity, Jewish women did not participate in the synagogue service, they watched and observed from a separate area. But that has changed in the Christian church. Now they participate right alongside men. And now we have this conflict of symbols. What's a married woman to do when she stands up to pray or to teach? If she removes her head covering as a sign of respect for God, that is seen as disrespectful to her husband. If she keeps her head covering on, that was a symbol of respect for her husband, but it is disrespectful to God. So we have this clash of cultural practices. And I understand Paul to be saying wives should keep their head coverings on because that symbol speaks loudest in their culture. I do not think he is making a binding, timeless, universal principle that women should have head coverings at all times. He's saying in your culture, you Corinthians have assigned meaning to whether or not a woman or a man has a head covering on when they're praying or prophesying. And you have this conflict of symbols and practices in your culture. Let's think about the message you're sending your culture and make sure we're sending the best one or the one that is most consistent with the gospel. In the last podcast, I argued that Paul sees a lack of symmetry in the roles of husbands and wives in marriage, and that he argued for those roles because of his understanding of Genesis 2. When a wife stands up to speak in a public worship service, she has an additional consideration that her husband doesn't have. All her husband has to consider is how to respond to the headship of Christ and how to show appropriate respect for that in his culture. But the wife has an additional consideration. Not only does she have to respond to the fact that Christ is her head, she has to take into consideration that her husband is her head, as we talked about last week. So she has this additional role. And in this particular situation, the symbols of respect for those roles are in conflict. And the question that Paul is answering is how do we resolve that conflict? Which one has more weight? In the marriage, the husband is head in a way that the wife is not. That's the lack of symmetry in these particular roles. It's not a lack of symmetry in their image, their type, their dignity, their worth as human beings, or their value or equality before God. In all those areas, they are the same. Rather, as we talked about last week, the husband has a responsibility that the wife does not have. He is the one who will ultimately be held accountable in a way that she won't. She has a different responsibility. She is to help him advise and give him wise counsel to meet that responsibility, but she will not ultimately be held accountable in the same way he is. Now in the last podcast, I defined husbandheadship as the concept that God assigned the husband responsibility for the marriage and resulting family, and I defined it being a helper as recognizing who is responsible and granting him the freedom to follow his conscience. And I argued that this is the concept Paul has in mind when he appeals to the creation account in his argument. I'm not going to go through all that now. If you want to go back and listen to it, you can find that in the previous podcast. In the last podcast, we looked at Genesis 2 and we talked about this concept of husbandheadship within a biblical marriage. And in this podcast, I want to look at Paul's use of the word head in the New Testament. Now I do realize that entire books have been written about this word and this topic, and the debate can get really complex and detailed. I'm going to do my best to give you a summary, but it is hard to capture the debate in one talk, and I apologize in advance if I fail to do justice to your position. This is my best understanding, and I am simplifying and I am shortening for the sake of time in a podcast, and I realize that I am not necessarily giving a full blown defense of every position. Everyone agrees this is a metaphor. Paul is not speaking literally. When he says the husband is the head of the wife, that's not a physical reality. That's in contrast to when he says you should have something on your head. That use of head is a physical reality. And there he's talking about a veil, a scarf, or shawl of some kind. The debate is over what he means by the metaphor. When he's using this term metaphorically, what's the metaphor about? You can generalize the views regarding this issue into three basic positions. There's hard complementarian, which is the most restrictive view. There's soft complementarian, which is less restrictive and tries to stake out the middle ground, and then there is egalitarian, which is the least restrictive. And I'm going to put a link in the lecture notes to a summary of each of these positions. I don't want to take time to go through them and how they understand the passages in this podcast. It just gets too complicated. The one point all three major positions agree on is that men and women are created equal before God and both are created in his image. They do understand the passages differently, they reach different conclusions, and therefore they have different practices in their churches. And again, I have a summary of each of those positions on my website, plus links to books and websites that will give you more detail on each position. On the egalitarian side, some argue that the metaphorical use of this word means source. So that when Paul says head, what he means is source, like the head of a river is the source of the water, the point from which it all comes. And they argue that Paul's idea is that Adam is the source of Eve because she was made from one of his ribs. And Paul does refer to the fact that Eve was made from Adam in this passage. They argue that the order of creation does not imply any kind of authority, it is merely and only the idea that woman was made from man. They argue that source is the common metaphorical use of this word head, and that it is the way we should always understand the metaphor, unless there is good reason in the passage or the context not to. Now again, whole books have been written on that, so I am simplifying it. That evidence fails to persuade me. In fact, I don't really think there's good evidence that this word means source at all. I think it rarely, if ever, means source, but that is a topic of great debate. On the complementarian side, they argue that this word head means to have authority over. So the head chef is the boss, the head teacher is the one in charge. The head of a company is the one who gets the last word, and everyone else has to do what he says. And therefore, when Paul says the husband is the head of the wife, Paul is saying he has authority over her and she has an obligation to submit to him. And the hard complimentarians emphasize this concept of the authority of the head. The soft complimentarians say yes, it does mean authority, but they emphasize more the responsibility aspect. They say Paul's primary purpose is not to say that the husband is the boss of his wife, but rather he has a responsibility that she does not have, just like the head chef has a responsibility the other chefs don't have, and so on. Again, there are books and websites devoted to these arguments. I have a resource page which I will link to in the lecture notes if you want to explore the issue further. The views are difficult to summarize in a couple of paragraphs, and within each side there are nuances and flavors. Different scholars may arrive at the same conclusion and thus be classified as the holding the same view, but they reach that conclusion by different interpretive paths. So there are lots of nuances and flavors within these debates. My good for nothing view is that while it is helpful to go through Greek literature and look at the uses of the word head in Greek literature, I think it is more useful to look at how Paul uses this word. His use of the word carries more weight with me. And Paul uses this head body metaphor in a number of places in his writings. So my interpretive decision is that the place we should look to try to understand him is his other uses of this metaphor. It is language he uses a lot, and I assume that his thinking doesn't change from letter to letter. He refines his thinking, but I don't see vast theological shifts between his letters. And different letters might emphasize different aspects of this metaphor, but the metaphor seems to have a common core. Paul talks about Christ being the head and the church being the body. And let's look at that first and try to figure out what is he saying when he talks about Christ being the head of the church. And the first place we see this is in Ephesians 1. In a list of many great things that Christ has done for us, Paul says this. This is Ephesians 1, verses 22 and 23. Speaking of God, Paul says, And he put all things in subjection under his feet, and that his feet is Jesus. And he gave him, that's Jesus, as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. So here we see this metaphor of head and body. God gave Christ as head over all things to the church, and the church is his body. Christ is the head, and we are his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. We collectively belong to Christ. We are his people. He is like our metaphorical husband and we, his followers, are his bride. Christ has saved us for himself. It's like we are a gift that God has given to Christ to make his life everything it was intended to be because God intended Christ to rule over all creation. Headship here is in the context of all things being put in subjection under Christ's feet, so there is this implication of authority and responsibility. But notice the final phrase that modifies what it means to be his body. He says the fullness of him who fills all in all. That word translated fullness is a verb that does have the bare kind of root concept idea of filling up. But it also has this idea of fulfilling or completing or making whole. The church, Christ's body, is the fulfillment of him who fills all. The church is the completion of him who completes everything. Christ is the one who completes everything. His role is to enter the world, save his people, right every wrong, and rule over a new creation with righteousness, justice, and goodness. He solves the problem of our sin and death and futility, and he brings everything into subjection under his rule so that creation might find fulfillment and completion in him. The world has not yet become what it ought to be and what it will be. When Christ returns and establishes his rule over all creation, when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that he is Lord, then everything will have been fulfilled, everything will have been completed and made that which it was intended to be. We his people are the fulfillment of the one who fulfills all. We're the completion of the one who completes everything. The Bible says over and over again that this story of creation is all about Christ. Our purpose is to be among his people. We are the people he will rule over as king. We are the people he redeemed with his sacrifice. We are the ones he came into the world to rescue, and we are the ones who will be made clean and holy through his sacrifice. We're his body, we are part of him. There's a sense in which by himself he would be incomplete because we complete and fulfill the role he was given in redemption. His completion arrives when he stands as King of Kings and Lord of Lords over a new creation with a people washed, clean, and holy who confess that he is Lord. That's our role. Our role is to be among those people. His body, the church, completes the one who completes everything else. So Jesus' role is to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer and Savior of mankind. Our role is to be his body. There is a lack of symmetry in those roles. Christ has a responsibility, well, lots of them, that we don't have. He's the redeemer, the savior, the rescuer, the king. Our role is to be his body. And similar to my analogy with the dishes in the last podcast, our role depends on and is a response to his role. I think one of the reasons that Paul uses this metaphor of head and body is they are one unit. We're in this together. My body is part of me. When we're described as the body of Christ and He is the head to us, we are the body to Him. We are part of Him. We are one unit. His life is intended to be one of serving, calling, saving, and establishing His people. We belong to Him. That's, I think, why He uses this metaphor of body. We are part of Him. Yes, Christ rules over everything, and all things are going to be put in subjection under His feet. But God gave Him the church as His body. He has established this relationship where we are His and we belong to Him and help Him fulfill His role and we complete Him who completes all. Now remember, we're looking at this to try to understand Paul's use of the term head. Nowhere does Paul say that wives are the body of their husbands the way the church is the body of Christ. He does not make that comparison. He uses other metaphors to talk about the relationship between husband and wife, and we're going to get to those. But here we see Jesus' role as head is he's the Christ, he's the Messiah, he's the redeemer and rescuer of his people. Our role is a response to his role, that we complete his role as he completes all. So he has responsibilities we do not have, and our role is a response to and depends on his role. Later in Ephesians, Paul returns to this head metaphor. This is Ephesians chapter four, verses fourteen through sixteen, and here he's speaking of the church four fourteen. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by whatever joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Here he's talking about how Christ as head is the source of growth for his body. The head is giving growth to the body, and that growth is being worked out through the various joints or parts of the body. The context here is teaching. How are you going to become mature and wise? You grow in wisdom by listening to the doctrines and teachings of Christ. Christ is the source of truth. Christ is the head of the body and the various parts of the body administer that truth and the teachings of Christ. He's just re talked about the apostles, the evangelists, the preachers, and teachers, and he's saying they teach the truth that Christ taught to the rest of the body so that the body grows in wisdom and maturity. Christ laid the foundation. The apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor teachers passed that foundation of truth onto the rest of the body so that it grows. So Christ had a responsibility that the leaders in the church do not have. He established the foundation. He gave us the truth. The pastors, teachers, apostles, prophets, and evangelists equip the saints. They have a different role and responsibility. They are to pass on that truth so that the body grows to wisdom and maturity. Again we see their role depending on Christ doing his role. Christ is the head in that he is the source of the truth and the wisdom that the body needs to grow, and the various leaders he names then teach that truth to the rest of the body so that it grows. Paul uses the same idea in Colossians two eighteen. This is Colossians two verses eighteen through twenty one. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why as if you were living in the world do you submit yourself to decrees such as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch? In this context, the issue is whose doctrine are you listening to? Don't let others defraud you or trick you. Don't submit yourself to these foolish decrees. Rather, hold fast to the head, the source of truth and wisdom which holds the body together and grows it to maturity. The idea here I think is what makes us the people of Christ. We all believe the same gospel. We hold fast to the same set of truths. Well, who set those truths? Christ. Christ had the responsibility of teaching us truth. And growth comes from his truth working its way out through the joints and ligaments to the various parts of the body. So again, in this context in Colossians, the issue is teaching. What are you listening to? And why are you listening to this nonsense about do not handle, do not taste, and self-abasement and the worship of angels? Christ has taught us truth, and the body grows when the parts of the body hold fast to the teachings of Christ. So again we see Christ as the one who laid down this foundation of truth. That was his responsibility, that was his job. Our job and response is to continue teaching that truth. Later in Ephesians, Paul draws an analogy between Christ as the head of the church and the husband as the head of wife, and this gets us closer to what he's talking about in first Corinthians. This is Ephesians 5, verses 22 through 24. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Notice here that the concept of head is much broader than the idea of a boss. He says as Christ is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body. Christ's role and responsibility was to be the Messiah. He gave himself dying on the cross to make us his people. But he himself, he alone is the savior. His role is to be the savior, our role is to be his people. But I think Paul makes this distinction. He's clarifying Christ alone is the savior. That's not the point of similarity in my metaphor. The husband is not the savior of the wife. So he's not arguing that the husband is the savior of wife. He says, no, that's part of the difference. He Christ alone is the savior. Then he's going to go on and explain Christ had a responsibility to fulfill, and that responsibility was to be the Messiah, to save us, to redeem us, and to sacrifice himself for us. We submit to him because we are his, we belong to him. We gratefully and humbly submit to him because he is our savior, and that role belongs to him and him alone. In a similar way, though, he appeals to wives to submit to their husbands as head in the marriage, not because the husband is your savior, not because the husband is your lord and master, but because he has a responsibility to fulfill and he needs your respect and wise counsel to fulfill it. Just as you honor Christ's role as your savior and submit to him, so in obedience to God, honor your husband's role as head and grant him the freedom to follow his conscience. Now there's a lot more we could talk about on this issue of submission and the role of wives and the role of husbands in marriage, but our purpose here in this podcast is to look at what Paul says about headship. So I don't want to go into what submission and being a helper looks like. I do have other talks on that topic on my website, and I'll put links to those for you. Paul's going to go on to explain what he wants husbands to learn from this analogy. Jesus willingly took on the role of being our Savior, accepting that responsibility made him our head. How did Christ exercise his headship? Similarly, husbands, when you accept the role of head of a marriage, that headship looks like loving your wife the way Christ loved the church. This is Ephesians chapter five twenty five through thirty two. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. Paul's speaking to husbands here, and he wants them to learn something from this analogy of Christ as the head of the church. Christ is head because he accepted this responsibility of dying to save his people. And I think part of Paul's point here is husbands, when you said I do, you accepted the responsibility of the welfare of your family, as we learned from Genesis two, which Paul quotes in this section. Do you want to know what exercising that responsibility looks like? What is your role as head look like? Well, Jesus is your example. Look at how he handled his headship. Being the head means you love your wife as Christ loved the church. His goal was to sanctify her and redeem her so that he could present the church to himself in spotless holy glory. His agenda was not to be boss, not to rule with an iron fist, not to always get his own way or to have his people serve him like slaves. His agenda was the salvation and the welfare of his church. His agenda was that his church reach full maturity and wisdom and holiness. His agenda was to lay down his life for his people so that they might become his people. I think Paul deliberately picks this analogy of a body because head and body are one. They are part of each other, they belong to each other. You can't separate the two without harming both of them. You hurt any part of the body and you hurt the body. You nourish the body and you nourish the head. They're one unit. Being head does not mean you get to lay down the law. Being head means you're the one who is responsible, and you're responsible for the family growing in wisdom and maturity and holding fast to the doctrines and teachings of Christ. Just like as a church body, we're to grow in wisdom and maturity and hold fast to the gospel of Christ. Christ set that goal for us. The head of a marriage is not free to set a new goal of, say, his own comfort, ease, or welfare. Christ sets the goal. The husband is to help implement it just like all the members of the body implement it. So as we saw in the earlier chapters, pastors and teachers will be held accountable for how well they handled that responsibility in their individual churches. Parents will be held accountable for how well they handled that responsibility with their children. Each individual will be held accountable for how well he or she handled that responsibility in their individual lives, and husbands will be held accountable for how well they handled that responsibility in the family. What does being the head look like in the church in the family? It looks like what Christ did, self-sacrificing love and service holding fast to the gospel. From Paul's use of this metaphor, we can see that the head and the body are to see each other as part of the same entity. We are to love and nourish our spouse as we love and nourish our own bodies. And Christ showed us what being the head looks like. His example is not an authority or a king which lords it over the rest of the body and exerts its will. His example is self-sacrificing service which seeks the goal of bringing the other to truth and wisdom and maturity. Now the last thing I want to talk about on this topic is I've mentioned several times that I think these roles of head and helper take place within the context of a biblical marriage, and I want to define that. Paul quotes Genesis 2.24 in Ephesians 5 when he draws this analogy between Christ's headship and the husband's headship. And that's Ephesians 5.31. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This I think is the definition of a biblical marriage. The for this reason refers to marriage. We have this built-in need for intimacy, and marriage is God's solution to our need for intimacy. Marriage is God's solution to this problem of we need a partner, a helper, or a person of like kind. And then he defines marriage as these three commitments leaving his father and mother, joining to his wife, and becoming one flesh. So the first commitment is specialness. That's what he means by leaving his father and mother. So the first commitment of marriage is I promise to make my spouse the most special thing in all creation. This comes from the idea that culturally in the ancient Near East, a man's father and mother were the most important people in his life. And when he gets married, he now has a new priority. Now he leaves his father and mother. That was his highest priority to take care of his parents and honor them, but now he has a new higher priority. Your spouse should be more important than whatever used to be the most important thing in your life when you were single. The idea here is more than that you move out of your parents' house. The Hebrew word here is very strong. It has the sense of abandon or forsake or desert. We often think of blood ties as the only indestructible bond, but from God's perspective, the marriage bond takes precedence even over those blood ties of parent and child. Thus, one of the commitments of marriage is to make our spouse the most important thing in all creation. This is both husband and wife make this commitment. Our concern should be that my spouse is more important than my career, than money, than my parents, kids' goals, prestige, whatever the most important thing in your life was when you were single, you now have a new priority, and that is your marriage, your spouse. So the first commitment is to make your spouse the most special thing in all creation. The next commitment is this idea of becoming one flesh. And the idea here is that I promise to share every aspect of my life with my spouse. The word flesh here just means life. It's the same word, for example, that's used in the flood account, no flesh shall be spared, or the end of all flesh has come. It refers to life. So one flesh is not just a physical relationship. It's that I start to think of us as a one. My body is one flesh. When I break my leg, I don't say, oh, that's something else. It's not part of me. It's me. You break my leg, you hurt me. The idea is now I think of my spouse the same way. We are one body. I think of him as me. I strive toward sharing my life with him and vice versa. And I should be as concerned about what happens to my spouse as I am about what happens to my hands or my knees or whatever. So we stop thinking in terms of I, me, or mine, and we start thinking in terms of us, we, and our. So sharing one life or striving to have one life experience does not mean you have to spend every moment of every day together, but rather we think of ourselves as one unit. We define ourselves in terms of us and our calling and our gifts and our relationship, and not in terms of what I want, but in terms of what we want, not what's best for me, what's best for us. And then the last commitment is the commitment of permanence. This is the idea of cleaving. That is, I promise to keep these commitments until death to us part. A biblical marriage is meant to be forever. That permanent commitment provides the security to then make the other two commitments. You can't promise to make someone the most special thing in all creation and think in terms of us and ours instead of me and mine, but oh, today, tomorrow's not looking so good. You have to have permanence to be able to have that kind of openness that's required of the other two in the other two commitments. So I could put my spouse first and be open and honest with him because he's promised he's going to be there every day. These roles then of head and helper, as we define them in these talks, are to operate within the context of those three commitments, of making my spouse the most special thing in all creation, of being willing to share every aspect of our lives together, and to make that commitment till death to us part. And you can see in that kind of a relationship, being ahead is not compatible with any kind of dictatorship or abuse. Those roles are meant to operate underneath those three commitments. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but shows you how we figure it out. I really appreciate you listening to the podcast. And I have a couple favors to ask. Please subscribe to the podcast, leave a positive rating, a review wherever you get your podcast, and tell a friend about it. And if you can only do one thing, telling a friend is best. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates of heartfeltmusic.org. I'm Krissan Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.