Headship
in Marriage
A husband is not
the spiritual
head of the wife. Jesus is.
Everyone uses the
passage in Ephesians
to say the husband is the spiritual head of the wife.
God knew this would happen so had another
passage put in The Bible: 1 Pet 2:25 -3:7.
Here it shows that the husband is only the domestic head of the
wife and
Jesus is the spiritual head of her.
1 Pet 2:25.For
you had gone astray like sheep, and you have returned now to The
Shepherd and
The Caregiver of your souls.
1 Pet3:1. In
this way, also, you women, submit to your husbands, that you may win
without
labor those who do not obey the word by your beautiful way of life,
2. When they see
that you conduct yourselves in reverence and discretion.
3. Do not be
adorned with outward ornaments of your hair braids or of gold jewelry
or fine
clothing,
4. But be
adorned in the secret person of the heart and in a humble spirit which
is
uncorrupted, an excellent ornament before God.
5. For in this
way from the first, the holy women who hoped in God were adorning their
souls
and they submitted to their husbands.
6. Just as Sarah
was subject to Abraham and was calling him, “My lord”,
whose daughters you are
by good works, when you are not shaken with any fear.
7. And you men,
in this way dwell with your wives by knowledge, and hold them in honor
as
weaker vessels, lest you be subverted in your prayers, because they
also
inherit the gift* of eternal life with you
In this passage, a
Christian
woman has ended up married to a non-Christian man.
She belongs t the Kingdom of God and he to
the kingdom of Satan. If she is to
submit spiritually, she will be submitting to the head of the man which
is
Satan. Jesus, having died to free her
form Satan is not going to put her back under him.
So headship cannot be spiritual but only
domestic.
The Bible is not
double minded
having one set of headship rules for a Christian marriage and another
set of
rules for a marriage of a Christian to a non-Christian.
Remember a
Christian and
non-Christian cannot marry (the Bible forbids this) so that this
passage would
be applicable to a woman who became a Christian and her husband did not.
She is to submit to
the
domestic authority God has given the husband and respect him because of
this
authority and he is to love her as Jesus Loves her.
Unless she submits to her husband’s authority
the husband cannot love her as Jesus requires him to love her.