“For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body…”

We would think the following reactions foolish at best.  A building collapses due to shoddy planning and/or poor construction, killing dozens inside.  So the survivors shout, “Buildings are dangerous!  Tear them all down!”  Or a car engine catches fire and kills a family trapped in it.  So the government says, “Junk your cars.  They’re much too hazardous!”  Or this: due to the 2004 tsunami off the coast of Indonesia, the UN has declared all beaches in the world unsafe and off limits for human activity.  “What?!” you say.  Where’s the logic in any of this?  Good question.

Bring that questioning perspective to marriage.  How many times have we heard radical feminists claim that domineering patriarchal marriage has caused so much harm to society, so much pain to wives, so many difficulties to children, that it must end?  Way too many.  So what “logic” do they employ when complaining about bad heterosexual marriages?  Throw the baby out with the bathwater.  “Let’s try a 50-50 marriage, or same-sex ‘marriage’”.  How about an open marriage or multiple “marriage”?  Anything but a male head-of-household structure.  They’re too dangerous, abusive and unhealthy.  Ready to give up your houses, cars and beaches too?

In Ephesians 5:23 we find an unmistakable connection between heterosexual marriage and our salvation: “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body”.  Notice that the latter precedes the former, meaning that our salvation in Christ was a done deal in the mind of God long before marriage began with Adam and Eve.  They were not to conduct themselves like animals, even though they might seem to have a few apparently similar characteristics.  One man, one woman, for life was the structure to conceive, birth and raise the next generation.  This kind of family is the only one God gave.  Other models will always fall short and be inadequate at best, corrupting at worst.  In all of the verses about widows and the fatherless, not once did God say, “Try another marriage model.”  What the psalmist said of the Lord, however, is true: “You are the helper of the fatherless” (Psalm 10:14).  Another model won’t work because it doesn’t show salvation like a male head-of-household.  That is why so many times in the Old Testament it says to help the widow and the fatherless.  They are illustrations of an incomplete family that needs help…or saving.  For whatever reason, the head of the family is absent.

Not-so-radical feminists say that Christ as the head of the church means he is the origin of it, much like a spring is the head or source of a river.  This is true indeed, but can we exclusively limit “head” to such an understanding?  Let’s look at the three places where Paul uses “head” in Ephesians.

In 1:22-23 he writes, “And God placed all things under his feet, and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body….”  The allusion to placing everything under Christ’s feet comes from Psalm 8:6, where the context is “the ruler over the works of your hands” and being “crowned with glory and honor”.  Nothing about point of origin here, only authority.

In 4:15-16 we find this: “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.  From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work”.  Growth is mentioned here, not point of origin, and growth only happens with a properly functioning head.  Without being overly graphic, what organism grows without its head?  More pointedly, what decapitated creature even survives, let alone grows?  It is only the operating head, with all its authority and power functioning, that guarantees health.

Finally, we arrive back to our primary text.  Immediately after the statement that Christ is the head of the church, Paul writes, “of which he is the Savior”.  That’s what it’s all about: the savior of the body can only be its head.  Husbands have the high calling to save, preserve, protect and grow their families.  Wives have a tremendous opportunity to model trust in and partnering with their husbands.  The picture that both provide in this unique relationship illustrates our salvation in Christ our head to a lost world.  Changing the picture or replacing the model with an inferior one only muddles the picture and perverts the message.  If you have a spouse, how goes your marriage?  Is it illustrating God’s salvation to a lost world?