Headship

For additional insight, please read this article in Christianity Today:  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/002/5.50.html

Excerpt from a well written article:  (http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cbmw/rbmw/chapter8.html)

Paul commands wives to "be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord" (verse 22, NASB). The operative verb "be subject to" or "submit to" (hupotasso) reappears in verse 24, where Paul writes that wives should submit "to their husbands in everything" "as the church submits to Christ." This is the essence of the apostle's teaching to wives, since in Colossians 3:18 it is the entirety of his charge: "Wives, submit (hupotasso) to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord."{8} Furthermore, this particular exhortation to the wife to submit to her husband is the universal teaching of the New Testament. Every passage that deals with the relationship of the wife to her husband tells her "to submit" to him, using this same verb (hupotasso): Ephesians 5:22; Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1; Titus 2:4f.{9} Sampley summarizes the matter when he says concerning the household instructions for wives that the form reduced to its barest details would include: Wives, be submissive to (possibly 'your own') husbands.{10}

The meaning of hupotasso, used consistently in the charge to wives, is the same as its meaning in verse 21, that is, "submission in the sense of voluntary yielding in love."{11} This is no abandonment of the great New Testament truth also taught by the Apostle Paul that "there is neither . . . male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). Rather, it is an appeal to one who is equal by creation and redemption to submit to the authority God has ordained. Her equality is evident in the verb form always used in this admonition and in the fact that it is wives who are addressed, not husbands. (The New Testament never commands husbands to subordinate their wives, i.e., to force them to submit.) The voice of the verb is not active but middle/passive, with the meaning either of subjecting oneself (middle) or of allowing oneself to be in subjection (passive), with the middle voice most likely here. Thus the admonition is similar to the request in Hebrews that Christians (who are equal in creation and redemption to one another and therefore also equal to elders) are to "Obey your leaders and submit to their authority" (Hebrews 13:17) and Peter's instruction that young men be submissive (hupotagete) to those who are older" (1 Peter 5:5). Just as certain men can be given authority in the church, implying no superiority for them or inferiority for those subject to them, so also wives may be asked to subject themselves to their husbands without any suggestion of inferiority/superiority. The Apostle Peter makes this clear when he insists that husbands, to whom he has asked wives to submit (1 Peter 3:1ff.), "treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life" (1 Peter 3:7).

Paul gives the basis for his charge to wives in verse 23: "For ("because," hoti) the husband is the head (kephale) of the wife." It has been assumed already that this word head (kephale) implies authority. Not all agree. Some say that it means "source." I refer the reader to the chapter by Wayne Grudem on this subject as well as the standard Greek lexicons for the data. Suffice it to say here that Paul indicates the significance of "head" (kephale) by saying that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church (verse 23). It is evident that Christ is the head of the church as the authority over it because the following verse speaks of the church as submitting to Christ. The two concepts mutually explain one another: the church submits to Christ's authority because He is the head or authority over it.

This reference to Christ as head follows two previous references to Him as head where the note of authority is equally present. In the first, Ephesians 1:22, Paul writes that Christ is head over "everything" and that God has "placed all things under (hupotasso) his feet." In the second, Ephesians 4:15, Christ is designated the head of the church, His body, and it is His authority and power that cause the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. It is virtually certain that in comparing the headship of the husband over the wife to the headship of Christ over the church, the apostle is using the term kephale for the husband as he does for Christ, namely, as one who has authority and is the leader.

When we ask how that headship was established, we are aided by Paul's treatment of this question in 1 Corinthians 11:1ff., where he explicitly relates the headship of a man over a woman to that of Christ over every man and of God over Christ. In this context, Paul refers to Genesis 2:21-24 and states that the order of creation of man and woman and the fact that woman was created to help the man (and not vice versa) demonstrate that God had established man as the head over the woman by this divine action and its inherent intent (1 Corinthians 11:8-9). Paul thus affirms that male headship is a divine appointment. This understanding certainly informs his use of the same term kephale in Ephesians and is therefore the basis on which he commands the wife to submit to the husband as her head. It is evident in Ephesians 5 itself that Paul has Genesis 2 and its principles in mind, because he quotes Genesis 2:24 at Ephesians 5:31. What he has explicitly said in 1 Corinthians 11:8, 9 informs his statement in Ephesians 5:23, and his quotation of Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:31 demonstrates that the principles of Genesis 2 inform his statements in Ephesians.

Furthermore, Paul always addresses those under authority before those in authority: wives before husbands, children before parents, servants before masters (Ephesians 5:22-6:9; Colossians 3:18-4:1). The rationale for the first two of these relationships{15} would seem to be that the divinely instituted relationship is best preserved when the divine order inherent in it is made plain by urging compliance on those under authority first, before addressing those in authority. The apostle may then command those in authority to exercise their authority with loving concern that does not run roughshod over those under authority, tempting them to challenge the divinely established relationship. Having established the divinely given character of the institution and the divinely given roles, the apostle now spells out the attitudes with which those in that institution should fulfill their respective roles.