“For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church.” (Eph 5:22)
Thank you Father, that you have created in husbands and wives a beautiful picture of Christ and His Bride. May you grant a renewal of what you made marriage to be, that the world may see in its midst the glory of Christ.
Let’s talk leadership today, and let’s begin by talking generically.
Suppose the CEO of a company steps down. Who leads next? Generally, the company has some protocol in place for who that would be. But what if there was no protocol? Who would lead then? It doesn’t take a great imagination to see that that company would be in turmoil as a host of people vied for power until one ultimately won. And when that person won power, he would not have obtained it in a healthy way.
In the days of the kings of Judah and Israel, a king would often name his successor. He did this because he knew that if he didn’t do it, he would be inviting a bloody war over who would ascend the throne after he died.
When I entered the army as a second lieutenant, I became a platoon leader. Within that platoon, I was the top dog, but that platoon contained sergeants with far more experience and leadership ability than I had. I had to lean on them even though I was the leader. I became leader of that platoon not because of my ability but because of a military protocol. But what if the military had no protocol? What if the platoon was free to decide its own leader?
In America, we elect presidents, and the person we elect is not generally the best leader out there. Elections are about popularity, not leadership, and I would be willing to say that a majority of Americans at any time in history would agree that the best leader in the nation was not sitting in the Oval Office. America has a protocol for establishing a president, and that protocol doesn’t always produce the best leader. But what if America had no protocol at all?
It seems obvious that for the overall good of any organization, the people need not just a leader but a protocol for designating a leader. Without such a protocol, the group will likely end up in a power struggle. Having no protocol for establishing leadership encourages dysfunction and division within any organization. This is basic human nature. For the good of a company, for the good of a country, there must be a way to designate a leader.
For the good of marriage, this same principle holds.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Unfortunately, modern marriages show us how true this saying is. Most marriages today are divided, but when God set up marriage, He set it up to show unity. Christ and the church are not to be divided. They are one; thus, a husband and wife are one. Division ruins the oneness. Satan’s primary goal in destroying marriages is to attack the union. He may use many means to attack that union — sexual temptation, financial difficulties, cultural differences, anger — but he focuses all of those means on one purpose. He wants to destroy the union. The union is the picture of Christ and the Church, and that is what Satan most hates.
So Satan wants division in your marriage, and the one place that most commonly brings division is the issue of leadership. Who gets to make the decisions for the family and what will those decisions be? The husband believes the family should rent an apartment downtown, while the wife believes the family should buy a home on the south side. The husband thinks he should discipline his son for disobedience while the wife thinks the son’s behavior was merely childishness and not worthy of punishment. The wife wants the family to go on a vacation while the husband says they can’t afford it. Finances, child rearing, job and home issues, cultural perspectives — all of these situations bring about disagreement, and they show a couple’s commitment to the marriage when that couple must make a decision for the couple. Not for him. Not for her. But for both of them. This is where the rubber meets the road because someone has to give. This is where division often shows its face.
Now a country, company, military unit, school, committee, or any other group would have a protocol in place to determine who had the final say in situations just like these. Marriage is no different. When God designed marriage, He built into it such a protocol, and that protocol is not just nice. It is necessary. Without it, marriage will suffer.
So let’s go back in time to the beginning and think through a protocol for leadership within marriage. Imagine for a moment that you had to set up a relationship in which two people would live as one and, in doing so, reflect the union of Christ and His church. How would you structure it? Who would lead? How would they make decisions when they disagreed?
Broadly speaking, your options are no leader, two leaders, or one leader. Having no leader is chaos. Everybody does what he or she wishes. That option will quickly destroy the unity, and the whole purpose of marriage will vanish. Two leaders amounts to the same as no leader, for what do you do when the two leaders cannot resolve a disagreement? You, in effect, have no leader. In addition, within the relationship between Christ and the Church, you do not have two leaders. The body of Christ is not a two-headed body. This means that the best option to preserve the marriage long term and to reflect Christ and the Church is to have one leader. Having one, consistent leader combats division. It does not eliminate division, for people are sinners. But when division occurs in a structure with one leader, it occurs despite the structure, not because of it. So if you want to set up a relationship that reflects Christ and His Bride, it will have to be a permanent union that survives human frailty, sin, and all the vicissitudes of life. That union needs one leader.
What I have said so far should be common sense. We see it with governments, corporations, committees, sports teams, universities, and any other group in which two or more people must act as one. Marriage, by definition, consists of a man and woman becoming one. Why would we somehow think that marriage is immune from the need for one leader? Marriage needs one leader.
But who should that leader be? As far as we have gone, that leader could be the husband or the wife. So how do we determine who it is? Marriage needs a protocol — just like every other institution. But there’s more. Because marriage reflects Christ and the Church, it needs a protocol in which husband and wife fill the same role across all marriages. If the husband were sometimes Christ, sometimes the Church, the result would be confusion. The picture would be lost.
These considerations eliminate the possibility of a protocol like an election, or mutual agreement, or the parents decide. These criteria are fights waiting to happen. They will not do. In the end, they amount to no protocol whatsoever. If God were to leave the decision of marital leadership up to subjective opinions, he would be encouraging division.
In the end, the clearest protocol, and the one that will engender the least division is to name either the man or the woman the leader. Couples often fight over who the best leader is but not over who the man or woman is. That’s a bit obvious.
Therefore, for the sake of preventing division within marriage and for reflecting a consistent picture of Christ and the Church, God has given to the man the leadership role within marriage (Eph 5:22). This fact is not popular today, and many people kick and scream when they read it, but it is what Scripture says.
When God gives the husband this role, He is not saying that men are always better leaders than women. He is not saying that women are confined to servitude for life. He is not saying that men are more Christ-like than women. He is simply establishing a consistent picture and helping to preserve a union by designating a leader.
In a sinless world, no one would have problems with this structure, for the leaders themselves would be sinless, and the others would not be rebellious. It was in such a world that God made this arrangement. Genesis 2 occurs before Genesis 3. This arrangement is, thus, not the result of the Fall. Nevertheless, God saw that the Fall was coming, and the need for one clear, consistent leader may be more pronounced in a sinful world than in a perfect one. This is why Scripture repeats many times over the principle of a husband’s headship and applies it within a fallen world.
So far, all I’ve said is that marriage, like any other institution, needs a protocol for leadership and Scripture gives that protocol: the husband is the head of the wife. I probably need to address some objections and perhaps give a picture of what Scripture says about how that leadership should function, but for today, we are out of time.
