Imagine a young, newlywed man comes up to you after church and says, “Pastor, I’m reading my Bible more and I’ve been feeling convicted. I want to change things in my life and be the man God calls me to be. When Paul says that a husband is the head of his wife, what does that mean?” Maybe this man has run across one of these passages:
- Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands (Eph 5:22–24).
- Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God (1 Cor 11:2–3).
How would you respond to this man? Assuming that Paul’s model for the family still stands (I know that is assuming a lot today), what does it mean for a husband to be the head of his wife? Does it have something to do with authority and decision-making? Does it have to do with breadwinning or veto power? How will you teach this man about headship?
I want to persuade you that a husband’s headship is modeled on Christ’sheadship. In order for us to understand theologically what a husband’s headship at home looks like, we must look to Christ’s headship in the church. Specifically, Christ’s three-fold office as prophet, priest, and king in the Church is the model for a husband’s headship in the home.
Christ’s headship in the Church
The apostle Paul calls Christ the head of the Church in three of his letters (1 Cor 11:3; Eph 1:22–23; 4:15–16; 5:23; Col 1:18). Put most succinctly, Paul says: “He is the head of the body, the church” (Col 1:18). Paul does not define this relationship explicitly, but clearly this is a theological concept associated with Paul’s view of the Church as a body.
Instead of summarizing the tiresome debate over the Greek word kephalē, I want to suggest that Christ’s headship has to do with his anointing. Christos is Greek for the Hebrew māšîḥ, which means “anointed one.” Theologians often point out that Christ is the fulfillment of three anointed figures from Israel’s history: the prophet, the priest, and the king. These three figures were anointed by God to fulfill certain offices with respect to Israel. In many cases, this spiritual anointing was physically administered by pouring or smearing oil on the head of the candidate, such as when the Psalmist describes Levitical ordination:
Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! (Ps 133:1–2)
Or when Samuel physically anoints Saul: “Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on [Saul’s] head and kissed him and said, ‘Has not the Lord anointed you to be prince over his people Israel?’” (1 Sam 10:1).
Elsewhere anointing is a metaphor for a divine vocation, as when the speaker in latter Isaiah describes his prophetic calling:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound (Is 61:1).
Other body parts are anointed in Scripture for other reasons, but kingsand priests are anointed with oil on their head. There is no record of a prophet being anointed with oil in like manner, but Isaiah borrows the imagery of anointing to describe his prophetic office. Why is the oil poured on the head of kings and prophets? One early Anglican theologian writes,
It was sufficient to anoint the vessels of the sanctuary in any part; but it was particularly commanded that the oil should be poured upon the head of the kings and priests, as the seat of all the animal faculties, the fountain of all dignity, and the original of all the members of the body. This was more eminently fulfilled in Jesus, who, by his unction, or as Christ, became the head of the church.[1]
And Calvin points out that the grace given to the head is distributed through the head to the members of the body:
The voice which thundered from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, hear him” gave [Christ] a special privilege above all other teachers. Then from him, as head, this unction is diffused through the members, as Joel has foretold, “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”[2]
Kings and priests are set apart for the sake of their people. They belong to the body, but they exercise a special role in relation to the body. Oil is poured on the head of a newly minted king or priest to consecrate this man to the God-appointed service of the whole people. Just as the head serves and rules the body, so this man serves and rules the people in his God-ordained office. In Israel, kings were ruling heads, priests were liturgical heads, and prophets were teaching heads.
Christ fulfills these Old Testament figures. Christ is our king through his sovereign rule of the Church. He is our prophet by returning us to God through his word. He is our priest by sacrificing himself for our sins and interceding in heaven on our behalf.
Christ’s headship and ordained ministers
The threefold office of Christ corresponds to the three marks of the church: the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments, and church discipline.[3] Christ exercises his prophetic office through the preaching of the Word, his priestly office through sacraments and worship, and his kingly office through the governance and discipline of the Church.
But go to church and you’ll find a pastor or priest up front, not the man Christ Jesus himself. Christ has chosen to administer his headship through ordained representatives. Men who are called to ordained ministry are consecrated for the sake of the body to execute the three-fold office of Christ in the Church. In the Anglican ordinal, the Bishop asks the priest-to-be, “Will you then give your faithful diligence, always so to minister the doctrine and Sacraments, and the discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded?” And later the priest is ordained by the Bishop who lays his hands on his head, identifying him as a head set apart for the service of the body.
This principle of Christ exercising headship through representatives is a model for the home as well as the Church, for husbands as well as pastors.
Christ’s headship and husbands
Drawing from the Heidelberg Catechism, Joel Beeke argues in How To Lead Your Family that Christ’s three-fold office is the model for a husband’s headship in the home:
The church and the world desperately need Christlike men who lead their homes for God’s glory. Such Christlike men reflect Christ’s threefold office as prophets, priests, and kings. This office bearing has huge implications for how we lead our families. As God’s ordained representatives to our wives and children, we should serve them as prophets, priests, and kings. The word father implies that we should be images of the Father of glory, whose brilliance shines fully in his Son. Similarly if you bear the title husband, God calls you to bear the image of our heavenly husband who loved His Bride, the church, and laid down His life to make her holy. We are to reflect all three aspects of Christ’s office bearing to our family and our homes.[4]
Beeke argues that headship is linked to the biblical idea of anointing. Samuel poured oil on Saul’s head, anointing him as king (head) over Israel (the body). The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus from above. Jesus became the Christos (head) over his redeemed people (the body). In the marriage covenant, a man becomes a husband (head) over his wife (the body). Beeke lays out some principles for the husband to follow as the prophet, priest, and king of the family. I commend his book to you for further details on those fronts. Let me use the rest of this article to draw out one major application.
A husband draws his headship from Christ’s headship. This means we are not free to import our own ideas of headship into the biblical concept of headship. Christ’s headship is the theological content of a husband’s headship. I have heard pastors draw up a list of duties which the husband ought to fulfill as “spiritual head” or “leader” of the home. These often include specific rules, such as the husband tracks the budget, is the family’s sole breadwinner, makes all of the household’s major life decisions, exercises veto power over his wife, decides whom his daughters will marry, and declares what haircut his sons can have. We can debate whether these are good or bad things for a husband to do, but a pastor cannot require a husband to do these things by appealing to his headship. A husband’s headship means something particular and limited, and it has to do with these three roles:
- Prophet: Ensuring the family hears the holy Scripture read and taught.
- Priest: Ensuring the family worships God in the home and with the corporate assembly of saints.
- King: Ensuring order is kept in the home.[5]
These roles are taken from Christ’s own headship, and pastors should not overdetermine these roles beyond what Scripture requires by “good and necessary consequence.”
As father, a man is the prophet, priest, and king to his family, but these roles should not be confused with the God-ordained offices of prophet, priest, and king. The fact that a father exercises a priestly role in his family does not mean he replaces the ordained minister of a congregation. Holy Communion, for example, is properly administered not privately among families but corporately in the family of Christ with a duly-ordained minister presiding. Whereas in the Old Testament the pater familias celebrated the Passover meal with his family (Ex 12:24–28), the New Testament eucharistic assembly occurred during corporate gatherings (1 Cor 11:18–22), and this practice continued into the early church.[6] Likewise, the pastoral office is a position of spiritual headship relative to a congregation (pastors are prophets, priests, and kings in their congregation), but a pastor’s kingly role should not be confused with the office of magistrate who receive their office from God (Jn 19:11; Rom 13:1). A pastor’s kingly role is limited to keeping good order in the congregation through church discipline; it does not extend to the civic sphere over which the magistrate has jurisdiction.
So what does it look like for a father to administer Christ’s headship in his household? Suppose you have an illiterate Antiochene fisherman who becomes a Christian five hundred years after Christ’s death. He can’t read a lick of Scripture, but he brings his family to church once a week where the Scriptures are read, prayers are offered, and the “breaking of bread” (the Lord’s supper) is celebrated. He is a good prophet if his family hears the gospel accounts read in church and if he, mindful of Moses’ admonition in Deuteronomy 6, helps his children gradually grow in their knowledge of God’s law to the best of his ability. He is a good priest if his family can say the Lord’s Prayer and turn to God in times of need and thanksgiving. If at home he helps fighting siblings reconcile, nourishes and cherishes his wife, and provides food for his family, he is a good king. He is dispensing the headship of Christ at home, whether or not he mows the lawn or is the one behind the wheel on long road trips to Disneyland.
Pastors are right to help men realize their high calling as fathers, especially in a culture that devalues the role of a man in the home, but this paternal office must exist relative to a proportionally high view of Christ and his Church. A man’s paternal office takes its theological shape from Christ’s three-fold office and is embedded in the larger order of the Church and her ministers. Ultimately, fathers and pastors alike submit themselves, together with the whole Body of the Church, to Christ himself, the bridegroom of the bride, our true prophet, priest, and king.
Bryce Lowe is a deacon in the Anglican Church in North America and serves as a curate at Redeemer Anglican Church in Franklin, PA.
[1] John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed (Cambridge University Press: 1882), 190.
[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 15.2
[3] See Belgic Confession, Article 29. There is some dispute in Anglican circles whether there are three marks of the church or two (the preaching of the word and administration of the sacraments). Many argue that for the sacraments to be “duly administered” entails discipline, usually exercised in admitting or barring people from Communion. Alexander Nowell: “Wheresoever the Gospel of Christ our Saviour is sincerely taught, God by prayer truly called upon in the name of Christ, the holy Sacraments are rightly administered, the discipline duly used, there the company of Christian men and women assembled, is a visible Church of Christ.”
[4] Joel Beeke, How To Lead Your Family (Reformation Heritage Books, 2025), 3.
[5] Admittedly, this one is the most flexible and open to various interpretations, but I would argue, following Old Testament models of kingship, that kings defend and provide for the common good of their kingdom and judicially arbitrate disputes.
[6] See, for example, Justin Martyr’s First Apology 65–67. Also see Didache 9, 10, and 14, in which the “breaking of bread” seems to have occurred during the public assembly on the first day of the week.