30 What does 'Head' in Corinthians? A Genesis-Based Look at Headship

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 will be continuing our study in 1 Corinthians 11, verses 2 through 16 today. This is the 30th talk in our series on 1 Corinthians, the third in a series of four talks on this particular passage, and the first in a series of two talks on this topic. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, and you can also find them by going to my website, WednesdayInTheWord.com slash 1 Corinthians 30. And take a moment on the website to check out all the Bible study information. There's no charge, no spam, no ads, only Bible study, and you can find previous episodes in this series. Glad to have you along. Well, this is our third week on 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 2 through 16, which is the infamous passage about women having their heads covered. In the first podcast on this message, I went straight through the passage explaining how I think the passage makes the most sense. In the second podcast, we examined the cultural background for this issue. And in today's podcast and the next one, we're going to tackle the question what does Paul mean by head? If you've done any reading on this question, you know that this is a hugely controversial question. Many, many trees and many, many forests have given their lives in service of this debate. Entire books have been written on this question. And I am certainly not going to settle the issue today. Please remember, as I explain my conclusions on this passage, that almost everything I say here is debated. Even though there is someone who disagrees with almost every sentence, I'm going to avoid starting every sentence with the words I think, but that is implied. I do not mean to suggest in the way I'm presenting this that I have the market cornered on truth or understanding because I don't. These are my conclusions after copious research and many, many hours of study. This is my best shot, and I realize I could very well be wrong. And I know that's true of every passage I teach, but there is a higher than average probability that I am wrong here because this is a very difficult passage. Many people I respect disagree with me on my conclusions and they disagree with each other. This is one of those passages I had to understand because I'm a woman who loves to teach the Bible, and I needed to know what Paul is saying about how women should conduct themselves, especially in public worship services. So I have been studying this passage a long time. I've reached a fairly high degree of confidence in my thinking, but I realize this is a really difficult passage, and I still could be the one who's wrong. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11 3, but I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. All we're gonna look at in this podcast is the concept of headship, and we're gonna continue the discussion into our next podcast. This is one of the major controversies in this passage. Paul says Christ is the head of man, man is the head of woman, and God is the head of Christ. What does Paul mean by head? There's a very real sense in which the passage turns on how you understand this metaphor, and it is very highly debated. For some viewpoints, their entire argument rests on their understanding of this word in this verse, and it is a major debate. Before we get into that debate, I want to look at the hierarchy for lack of a better word. This whole concept of any kind of a hierarchy is especially problematic for our modern American culture. We just rebel at the idea that there could be any such thing. And the fact that Paul would suggest any kind of hierarchy is a stumbling block for many on this issue, and it's a double stumbling block in that it looks like it's not only a hierarchy, women are on the bottom. We see this hierarchy twice in the passage, and again I'm using the term hierarchy for lack of a better word. In eleven three, the one I just read, he says, But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. So here we have Christ is under God, man is under Christ, and woman is under man. And then in eleven seven he says, For a man ought to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man. So here we have man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man. How are we to understand the kind of point Paul is making? For example, should we understand him to be saying that Christ is not also the head of the woman, but only the head of the man? Or should we understand him to be saying that woman is not also the image and the glory of God, but only the glory of man? What kind of a hierarchy is he establishing? And I would argue if you look at Paul's other letters and the biblical teaching as a whole, Paul could not be making that kind of a point. Paul could not be making an argument that woman is not also in the image and glory of God, nor could he be making a point that woman is not also under Christ. Paul clearly teaches in other places that Christ is the head of the body, and the body of Christ is made up of all believers of both genders. So Christ is the head of his people and his people are both male and female. Likewise, I think Genesis clearly teaches that mankind is created in the image of God. Both male and female reflect God's image and are in his glory. Genesis 127 explicitly says both male and female are made in the image of God, and I would argue that they are both in the glory of God in the sense that Paul means here because of Genesis. So however we understand head, and we're going to get into that debate, and however we understand glory, we have to keep in mind that Paul believes men and women are created equal before God and that both genders are in his image and both are in his glory. And actually, that is one point all the major positions on this issue agree on. It might be the only one, but it is one everyone agrees on. The views regarding women and authority in the church can be generalized into three basic positions Hard Complementarian, which is the most restrictive, soft complementarian, which is less restrictive, and egalitarian, which is the least restrictive. And I'm not going to take time in this podcast to go into those three positions, but I will put a link in the lecture notes to a summary of each of them. And the one point all of those three major positions agree on is that men and women are both created equal before God and in his image. In my opinion, it's unfair and misleading for one side of this debate to point a finger at the other sides of the debate and say, Oh, you're a chauvinist, or you have a low view of women, or you're a sexist. For the most part, that's just not true and it's not a given in this debate. You can have a high view of women and be an egalitarian. You can have a high view of women and be a complimentarian. On the other hand, it is unfair for one side to point to the other sides and say, well, you just don't take the Bible seriously. You're ignoring scripture. It is true that there are some outliers in every position who have a low view of scripture and think that, well, Paul was just wrong and we can ignore him. But that is not a given in this debate. And I'm not even going to address the folks who think they know better than the apostles or who think that they can pick and choose which scriptures to follow and which ones to ignore. I don't have any common ground on which to talk to them. There are lots of people though who hold each of the major views, who take the Bible seriously, who believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God, and who believe that Paul is one of those inspired authors. From my side of the table, I think it's unfair for one side to accuse the other of ignoring scripture or being chauvinist or being sexist because they've reached different conclusions. These are really difficult passages, and I think sincere Bible believing Christians are going to disagree. Alright, so let's get back on topic. Why would Paul speak of a hierarchy? Let's remember the context. As best I understand the situation, in Corinthian 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 Jewish worship service. They watched and observed from a separate area. But all that changed in the Christian church. In the Christian church, they begin participating right alongside the men. That sets up 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, she's showing respect for God, but she is being disrespectful to her husband. If she keeps her head covering on, that is respectful to her husband, but is disrespectful to God. And she's in both those relationships. So we have a clash of cultural symbols and practices. And I understand Paul to be reasoning just like he did in the meat sacrifice to idols section and saying which symbol speaks loudest to your culture? If a woman stands up in the service and removes her head covering, are the people in your area going to conclude, oh look, there's a woman who's being respectful to God, or are they going to conclude, oh look, there's a woman who's being disrespectful to her husband? And Paul thinks they will conclude the latter. They will look at that action and read that as disrespect. And he says, because the disrespect symbol speaks louder in your culture, then you should keep your head covering on. Now the question we're looking at now is why would Paul set up this hierarchy as part of his argument? That's the question he's answering. That's the answer he's going to get to. Why does he bring in this hierarchy? Partly, I think, because we have a clash of cultural symbols, and the question is which one has priority. The husband only has to figure out how to respond to the headship of Christ. That's all he has to think about. All he has to do when he stands up to pray is say, How do I respond to the fact that Christ is my head? But when a wife stands up to speak or pray in public, she has an extra consideration that her husband doesn't have. 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, and we're going to talk about what that means. For now the point I want to make is she has an additional role to take into consideration. In this particular situation, the cultural symbols for how you show respect for these roles are in conflict. And the question on the table is how do we resolve the conflict? Which one has more weight? And I would argue Paul gives this advice not because men and women have different heads or different images or different glory before God. He's giving this advice because wives have an additional factor to consider. A wife has an additional consideration that her husband does not have. In a marriage, the husband is the head in a way that the wife is not. And there is a lack of symmetry in these particular roles. That lack of symmetry is what's creating this additional consideration for the wife. The husband doesn't have to worry about the headship of his wife because she's not the head in the marriage. And we're going to define what that means in a minute. But the wife has to think about the headship of her husband because he has that role in the marriage. Now we I realize we haven't defined head yet. We will first I want to explore this question of why is this a hierarchy? And my answer is it's not exactly a hierarchy. It's not a hierarchy in the sense that one is more important than the other, or that one is superior to the other, or that one is better than the other, or that one is just like a dictator or a boss. It is an asymmetrical relationship. One role is dependent on the other, and in that sense they lack symmetry. Suppose for the sake of argument that a head covering has the same symbolic value as a wedding ring. A wedding ring simply says I am a married person. This is a married person and that's all the wedding ring means. Paul could say something like, Well, neither husbands nor wives should remove their wedding rings in the worship service. That's a symmetrical symbol. The man's ring means the same thing as the woman's ring, and he can tell them both the same thing because the symbolic message would be the same for both of them. Each of them has taken vows to each other and the ring symbolizes the same vows. To remove the ring sends the same message about the same vows in this same relationship. That's a symmetrical relationship. But that's not the kind of relationship we have here with this issue of head coverings. Paul is pointing to a lack of symmetry. He says there is something true about the husband that is not true about the wife, and that's what's creating this conflict, and this is how we're going to resolve it. They are different in some way, and that difference accounts for his advice as to why the husband should remove his head covering and the wife should leave hers on. Whatever the cultural symbol means, a wife ought not to do it because there is something different about the situation she is in that is not true of her husband, and that difference is a lack of symmetry. And that lack of symmetry is the hierarchy. And again, I'm using the hierarchy for lack of a better word. Let me see if I can explain this with an analogy. If I give one of my children the role of drying the dishes, and I give another one of my children the role of washing the dishes, it does not mean that one child is better than the other, it does not mean that one is superior or more capable or more important than the other, and it does not mean that I love one better than the other. I have just given them different roles to play in the family. One washes the dishes and one dries the dishes. Now the one who washes doesn't really have to think about the one who dries. He or she can wash away whether the person drying is standing next to him ready to go or not. But the one who dries has to consider the timing and the tasks of the washer. His role depends on the washer. He cannot dry before the washer has washed. The child who dries has two factors to consider in his role as dish dryer. His sibling, the washer, has only one factor to consider. Now don't take my analogy too far. I have not created a perfectly parallel situation. The point I'm making here is that the roles are different. They are asymmetrical. The dryer has to take into consideration not only his own role of drying, he has to factor in when the washing has been completed. But both children are equal, both are loved, both are valued, both have worth, and both have importance. It is not a hierarchy in the sense that one is more important than the other, one is superior to the other, one is more capable than the other, or one is more loved than the other. It is a hierarchy of roles in that one is dependent upon the other. Now again, please don't push my analogy any farther than that. It will break down almost immediately. I'm trying to remove the emotionally charged language of head with this analogy in order to explain how I understand the point Paul is making. And the only point I'm making with this analogy is that the child who dries has an additional factor to consider that the washer does not have to consider. But they are on equal footing. The fact that there is this additional factor to consider says nothing about their value, their abilities, their worth, or their dignity as human beings. It does not make one superior to the other in any way. One child's role requires considering an additional factor that the other child doesn't have to worry about. This is not a question of who mom loves best. This is not a question of who is superior, who is more talented, or who is more gifted. This is not a question of worth. These are different tasks that need doing within the family. And I understand the hierarchy to be that kind of lack of symmetry and roles of husband and wife. So when Paul says the husband is the head of the wife, he's talking about a role like saying one child dries and one child washes. Now the role of helper is dependent upon the role of head, but it is a question of role and responsibility. It is not a question of worth and value. Now what are these roles? Paul appeals to the creation account to defend this asymmetrical relationship. In first Corinthians eleven, eight and nine, he says, 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. He's finding this lack of symmetry or these different roles in marriage from the creation account, and he's referring back in a very kind of shorthand way here to Genesis two. So we're going to spend a good deal of time going back and looking at Genesis two verses fifteen through twenty five. Let me go ahead and read that for us. Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man saying, From any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die. Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. The man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. So what can we learn about the roles of husbands and wives in marriage from this account? Well God created the world, he created the animals, he created man, and he put him in the garden of Eden to look after it. And then in two eighteen God says, It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make him a helper suitable for him or corresponding to him. And notice first that God noticed that Adam was alone. Not Adam and God's first step is to make Adam aware that he is alone and that he has this need. So God brings the animals to him and has Adam think about them and give them an appropriate name. He has to figure out what sort of creature this creature is and then name it, and in that process he comes to see that he is incomplete, he's alone. He has no matched pair, he has no helper. The animals are all in male and female pairs but he is alone. Then once Adam recognizes that he has a need, God sets about meeting it. He creates Eve from Adam's rib, and when Adam sees her, he says this is now part of me. She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. He recognizes this is someone like me. She corresponds to me in a way none of the other creatures I've seen correspond to me. And the name he gives her is the feminine form of the word for man. It's like saying there's a male person and a female person. I'm the male person, she is the female person. We are the same kind, we correspond. Now, where then is the lack of symmetry? It is not in their image and their type, in that they are the same, so their difference is not in their creation as human beings, they are of like kind, equal before God. The difference comes in the responsibility they were given. Adam has a responsibility that Eve does not have, and Eve has a different responsibility than Adam. Adam was made first and given a task and a command. When the New Testament writers refer back to this creation account to talk about these roles in marriage, they often say Adam was created first, and I don't think they're pointing to chronology. It's not merely the fact that Adam was created first that gives him this responsibility, it's that he was given a responsibility before Eve was created. He was put in the garden to cultivate it and to keep it, and God says, I will make him a helper of like kind. And I think that's what Paul is appealing to by saying the wife was created for the husband's sake and not vice versa. Adam has a responsibility. He is the one who will be held accountable in a way that Eve will not be held accountable. She does have a responsibility and for that she will be held accountable, but she's not going to be held accountable for his responsibility. Now I should note that some folks argue that the order of creation makes no difference. They would argue that Adam was created from the ground and that doesn't make the ground his head. What difference does it make if Adam was created first and Eve was created second or that she was created from his rib? And they would not find my arguments here persuasive at all. But I think that Paul argues that Genesis teaches that God gave husbands and wives different roles to play in marriage, and that Adam and Eve are the paradigm for all husbands and wives. Now as I go through this argument, I'm going to use the term husband headship or simply headship to describe the male role. And I use that term to distinguish my view from the rather pejorative view put forth by some of the biblical feminists, which they call male headship. They describe something they claim the Bible teaches, which is, in my opinion, a straw dog and a very pejorative negative view of male headship that I don't think the Bible teaches. So I'm going to use the term husband headship to distinguish my view from their term and also to make clear that I think these roles function only within a biblical marriage. I don't believe there's such a thing as all males having headship over all females. I think these are roles that God created for a biblical marriage. So I would define husband headship as the biblical concept that God assigned to the husband responsibility for the marriage and the resulting family. We see this from the creation account in that God created Adam first and gave him responsibilities. He taught Adam, he gave Adam moral commandments and responsibilities. Then God created Eve to help Adam meet those responsibilities. She was Adam's partner in the responsibility. She was responsible for helping him meet it, but not ultimately responsible for implementing it. And as we've noted, she was a helper suitable or corresponding to him. So while equal in relationship to God, she was given a different role to play in the marriage. She was to be Adam's partner in the responsibility, helping him meet it, but not ultimately accountable for it. And we see one example of headship in the fall. Eve was the first to eat the fruit, and she is responsible for her individual actions, yet the human race fell through Adam, and Paul makes that point very clear in Romans. Nowhere is Eve blamed for the fall of mankind, even though she was the first to eat. Adam is held accountable because ultimately it was his responsibility, the commandments were given to him. And then the New Testament writers argue that Adam and Eve are the paradigm for all husbands and wives, for all marriages. So headship is the biblical concept that God assigned to the husband responsibility for the marriage and the resulting family, and he will be held accountable in a way that his wife will not. Now I would say ideally, headship isn't a factor in the daily life of a healthy marriage. I've been married almost forty years, and I can honestly say I don't know that headship's ever really played a major role or been the way we have resolved a disagreement. But the need for a head comes from the idea that this is a permanent partnership. And if you're gonna have a permanent partnership, you have to have some way to resolve a disagreement. There's no majority vote in a partnership of two. As long as a husband and wife agree, there's no real question of whose head. It's not really a factor. And that ought to be the normal state of affairs in a Christian marriage. But what do we do when there's a real disagreement? Well, I'm assuming, of course, that we've talked it over, that we've sought wise counsel, that we've prayed it through, that we have done everything we can to listen to each other, to understand each other's point of view, and we have still failed to reach an agreement. Well, what do you do next? When there's only two of you, you can't decide by a majority vote. One or the other of the two has to have the ability to cast the deciding vote if the marriage is to be permanent, otherwise your only option is divorce. So you can't have a permanent relationship without some kind of an agreement as to what you're gonna do when a disagreement arises. And because the husband is going to be the one who will be held accountable, he needs the freedom to follow his conscience. Now remember what I'm describing here is a role, and this role cannot be used to justify any kind of wife abuse. If you're trying to justify any kind of verbal abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, plain old selfishness, neglect or disrespect through headship, you are in the wrong. If the biblical teaching does not result in the utmost respect for women, it is not the biblical teaching. Headship involves not only recognizing that you have this responsibility, it also involves recognizing that you need a helper. It's not good for man to be alone. So headship is the idea that the husband has the responsibility for the resulting marriage and family, and so when there is a disagreement in this constitution of two or this partnership of two, he has the ability to cast the deciding vote. I would then define being a helper as recognizing who is responsible and granting him the freedom to follow his conscience. So a helper has the responsibility to provide sound wisdom, guidance, accurate advice, and wisdom on what is right to do. To be any help at all, she needs to be involved and discussing and analyzing and thinking and praying and seeking truth and seeking the wisest path. But if the two simply cannot reach agreement, it may come to a point where being a helper means saying, Alright, you're responsible, we'll try it your way. Being a helper is not a derogatory term, it is a role. As I've said, this is not a question of identity, it's not a question of ability, it's not a question of superiority or inferiority. These are roles. Head and helper are roles like the one who washes the dishes and the one who dries the dishes are roles. There are two main arguments given against this understanding of roles in marriage and to argue that Genesis does not imply any lack of symmetry. The first argument focuses on the phrase suitable to him or corresponding to him, and as we've seen, this phrase means equivalent to him, corresponding to him, of like kind, and we should understand it as being equal. God made a helper equal to him, and therefore people argue there is no lack of symmetry. If she's equal to him, that implies no difference whatsoever, including in roles or function or responsibility. Well that doesn't fit the story to me because the story involves Adam learning that all the other animals have a matched pair, that they are male and female, there's no one like him, he has no other half, there's just no other human being like him, he has no mate, there is no one equivalent to him but female like the animals have. And he does say she is someone like me. She matches, she corresponds to me, she too is human and we are meant for each other. And I do think they're right, the phrase helper suitable for him is intended to communicate equality, but it is an equality of being or of essential nature or personhood. And the point is both male and female are human unlike all the other creatures. Male and female are equal in that sense. I don't think it means or must mean that there can be no other differences whatsoever. She too is a human being made in the image of God. She was made from him, he was made in the image of God, and so she too is in the image of God. And I do think they are right, this is a great message of the equality of men and women as image bearers of God, but I don't think you have to take the next step and say therefore that negates the roles they were intended to fill, and it negates any kind of difference or the possibility of any difference. It's clear that she is not like him in other ways. There are clear differences between them. She's not like the animals, she is like him, but she is also different. The second argument against this idea of roles in Genesis concentrates on the word helper itself, and if you study the way the word is used in the Old Testament, you'll find it most often describes God. God is frequently described as Israel's helper, and they use this word. God is the helper of the one who calls on him. And they would argue from that usage that helper doesn't imply any kind of submission because we submit to God and not vice versa. So God is called our helper, but we are to submit to him. He is greater than we are. Therefore, to be a helper does not imply any kind of lack of symmetry or hierarchy as we've been talking about, because God as Israel's helper is the one who has the authority and we submit to him. One of my mentors uses this analogy to explain why God is frequently depicted as Israel's helper. And this I think is a very helpful analogy in terms of understanding the roles of head and helper. Suppose I, as a parent, am helping my son finish his third grade math homework. In relation to his homework, he is the head. His teacher gave him the responsibility of finishing his homework. It is his job to complete it, and he is the one who's going to get the grade. My responsibility is to help him. I can be a bad helper and give him all the wrong answers, or I can be a great helper and teach him how to find the right answers. But if we reach a problem where we disagree, he says the answer is five, and I say the answer is fifteen, in the end, he has to put down the answer he thinks is right because it's his homework. He's the one responsible for it. He's the one that's going to get the grade. Now, in my example, I am the more capable and more experienced and better at third grade math. Our roles have nothing to do with our ability, our talent, or our worth. They are a question of who is responsible for getting the homework done. And that's the same kind of lack of symmetry that we see in the relationship between God and us. God is frequently described as Israel's helper. Clearly, God is superior in every way. But if I ask him to help me avoid sin, it is my responsibility to avoid it. It is my task to be obedient and righteous, and I am asking him to help me do it. It's true that he is more powerful and more capable, but I'm the one who has the responsibility. And I would say Genesis clearly teaches the equality of men and women in essential nature, in essence, in being, in dignity, and in relationship to God. I think it also teaches that women are equally gifted. It would be foolish for God to create a helper that He doesn't also equip with the means to help. It would be foolish for God to create someone who is inferior or lacks talent as a helper because she'd be no help at all. She has to be capable to be a helper. And part of marriage is learning to respect our differences. We need to value and respect the differences in our abilities, in our gifts, in our gender, in our callings. God created those differences on purpose. I am more suited to make various aspects of our marriage work than my husband is, and he is more suited to make various aspects work than I am. So to be a helper does not imply inferiority, but it does imply a difference in responsibility. Now we will each be held accountable for the way we handled our roles and responsibilities. Suppose I sit back and I am totally uninvolved and unwilling to help out with some big important decision we have to make that affects our family. Say it's let's say it's a financial decision and I'm just like, ah, whatever, you're responsible, you decide. And then the financial decision goes horribly wrong. If I turn to God and say, God, this man you gave me, he made a horrible decision. What is wrong with him? You should just throw the book at him. God could come to me and say, Hey, I gave you the responsibility of helping him. Where were you when he needed advice and wisdom and help steering this course? I will be held accountable for my own choices, actions, wisdom, or lack thereof. I'm still responsible. It's just a different responsibility. Now let's turn it around. Suppose the marriage falls apart and God comes to us and my husband says, Well, that woman you gave me, she was just stubborn and unwilling to listen, and she didn't respect me, and she just dug her feet in and would not compromise in any way, and it's all her fault. God could say to him, Yes, she was all those things, but I gave you the responsibility of making this marriage work, and why didn't you seek forgiveness or give in on your side? I think headship does imply that if it comes to the point where the marriage is on the breaking point, a husband has a greater responsibility to seek forgiveness, reconciliation, counseling, whatever it takes. Now, that does not absolve either party of their own sinful choices. We will be held accountable for our own sinful choices, and we should all be trying to love our spouse as we love ourselves, and to respect and cherish and honor each other. There's a lot more we could say on those roles, but let's move on and look at this word glory, Paul uses. Paul says the woman is man's glory. This word glory often implies something like honor, and we can see that in this section we have pairs of opposites. We see shame on one side and dishonor on the other. The husband should not shame his head, he is the glory of God. The wife should not shame her head, she is the glory of her husband. Later on in the passage he says long hair on a man is his dishonor, but on a woman it is her glory. So we see this contrast where glory is the opposite of and stands in contrast to dishonor. Now remember I said husbands have only one consideration. God has made human beings to be like himself, he has made them in his image and his glory, and human beings are to honor God and to bring him glory. We are intended to reflect his image and to bring glory and honor to him. Both husbands and wives have that calling. Additionally, wives have another thing to consider. Not only are they to honor God, they are to honor their role in the marriage and their husband's role as head in the marriage. By God's design, they have this different responsibility in the marriage and they are to honor that difference. And I think Paul has that responsibility in view. Now others would vigorously disagree with me on that conclusion, but I think Paul clearly teaches that in Ephesians 5 when he also appeals to Genesis to make his point, and we're going to look at Ephesians 5 in the next podcast, but many disagree with me. I think Paul seems to be arguing that there is something true for a wife that is not true for her husband. The husband has a responsibility she does not have, and that prior responsibility leads to a type of submission and respect. Now clearly that concept has been horribly abused throughout history because we're sinful people, and great evils have been justified or attempted to be justified in the name of headship. But I have argued that husband headship speaks to responsibility, not superiority, not ability, not character trait, as we saw in the homework example. Being the head is not equivalent to being the dictator and the boss who imposes his will or the decision maker. God gave man a helper precisely so he wouldn't have to be alone, and he would be a fool to ignore the helper God has given him. So husband headship is not the authority to impose your will, and neither does it mean you're independent and everyone in the family must serve your needs. The role started because it's not good to be alone. We were created with a need for intimacy and with a need for a spouse. And part of the marriage commitment is we're in this together. We stop thinking about I and me and mine, and we start thinking about we and us and ours. We're not free to work and ignore the gifts and the needs and the desires of our spouse. Spouse. The calling is to figure out how we do this life together. And Paul's advice, as we'll see, is husbands, love your wife as you love your own body. Head and helper share the same goals. And because they share the same goals, they should use all the resources God has given them. Ahead would be hindering their progress to ignore, neglect, or disregard the skills and the callings and the giftings of his helper. It's like a coach putting his best player on the bench because he thinks, well, I'm the coach, I get the limelight. But we're a team. We want to do what's best for the team. And he would be working against himself if he didn't trust his helper to make decisions in areas where she has more expertise. So husband headship is the concept that God has given responsibility for the marriage and the resulting family to the husband and that he will be held accountable in a way that his wife will not be held accountable. Being a helper is recognizing who is responsible and granting him the freedom to follow his conscience. Now remember, these are questions of roles and responsibility, but there is no particular mandate about how you work these roles out. In other words, being a helper does not mean that you must be the housekeeper, the laundromat, the gardener, the chef, and the chauffeur. A helper is not abdicating her role as helper if she hires these out or the husband takes care of them. Roles as God assigned them do not dictate the way you have to spend your days. A helper does not have to be in the cottage baking bread if her real talent is slaying dragons, and a wise head should figure that out and give her the freedom to slay dragons. These roles can work themselves out in many, many different ways. Compare Ronald Reagan and Dennis Thatcher, Margaret's husband. Now I have no idea what those particular couples believed, but assume they had a biblical marriage, and in that biblical marriage they had the same responsibility, but they worked it out very differently because of their specific situations and talents and gifts. They could both have been honoring their roles as head and their own gifts and calling and the gifts and calling of their wives. The roles themselves do not dictate who does what inside or outside the home. If Dennis Thatcher realized that Margaret's true calling was to be prime minister and helped make that possible, then he was exercising his role as head. It is not a given that the husband's career dictates all choices. His career might take a backseat to say the needs of the children. His career might take a backseat to the medical needs of a child who requires living in a certain climate. Or to use my Margaret Thatcher analogy, his career might take a backseat to her opportunity to be prime minister. There are any number of situations where what is best for the family may conflict with what is best for his career and the calling is the family. Part of marriage is that we stop saying I and mine and we start saying we and our. The calling is we are in this together. It's not how do you help and serve me in my calling, it's God has called us together, how do we faithfully serve and follow him together? If part of the calling is that Margaret is prime minister, then we make that happen. If part of the calling is that Ronald is president, then we make that happen. It is not a given that his career takes precedence over everything else. It might in some situations, but it's not a given. It's not a given that his time is more valuable than hers or takes priority over hers. It's not a given that she must be the stay at home parent, the cook, the housekeeper, or the chauffeur. It's not a given that his needs take precedence over her needs. The marriage commitment is we stop thinking about I, me and mine and we start thinking about us, we and ours, and we seek to love each other as our own bodies. And the calling is to make this marriage work and faithfully execute the calling God has given us. The minute you enter a marriage, your calling changes. The man is no longer free to ask what do I want, what's best for me, and what's my calling. He must now ask, what do we want, my wife and I? What's best for us as a married couple and a family, and what is our calling? He's not free to pursue his own course without regard to the needs of his family. Similarly, the wife is no longer free to ask what do I want to do with my life? What's best for me and mine? She must ask what's best for our marriage and our family. We're in this together, what is our calling? True, each individual stands before God to get his calling or his marching orders, if you will, but once you're married, that marriage defines in some ways, limits in some ways, and broadens in some ways the scope of your calling. And your calling is now understood to be in relationship to this other person. So that's what I think Genesis teaches about roles within marriage. And in the next podcast, we're gonna look at Paul's use of head in the New Testament and then take this understanding and what we learn from the New Testament back to Corinthians. So to summarize, I would argue that behind Paul's thinking in Corinthians is this idea of husband headship and helper from Genesis two. And that understanding includes the idea that men and women are created equal before God in worth, in dignity, in value, in image. They both bring glory to God and they are both made in his image. And while many abuses have been practiced in the name of headship, the Bible never teaches that the head has the privileged position of being able to get his way in every situation. The Bible never teaches that a husband owns his wife the way a master owns a slave. The Bible never teaches that the man has the authority or the freedom to dictate his will to the rest of the family, and the Bible never teaches that the head is the boss in the sense of a master or a ruler or a dictator. I think a husband headship is the concept that God assigned the husband responsibility for the marriage and family, and that being a helper is recognizing who is responsible and granting him the freedom to follow his conscience. And that these roles function within the commitment of marriage, which can be summed up as loving the other person as your own buddy. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to teach you both what the Bible means and how we know. If you've enjoyed this podcast, I have three favors to ask. Please subscribe to it. Leave a positive rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast, and tell a friend. And if you only have the time to do one, telling a friend is best. I don't accept any advertising on my website, nor do I ask for donations, but it does encourage me to hear from you what you've learned, so please leave a positive rating on your favorite podcast platform or drop me an email. You can find out more or hear previous episodes on Wednesdayintheword.com. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morata, and I'll see you next time at Wednesday in the Word.