Ephesians 5:25 – Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…
As we have established, the Trinity is a bit like a family, living together in love and sacrificial unity along with familial language for the Father and Son. In the Trinity, the Father is the singular head, and the Son and Spirit are the plural leaders.
In a covenant family, the husband is the singular head, and the husband and wife are the plural leaders. This explains why the Bible repeatedly commands children to obey both their mother and father – because they are plural leaders.
In Ephesians 5:21-33, Paul says that Jesus Christ is the Head of our New Covenant relationship with Him, and He lovingly and humbly serves us. This New Covenant relationship serves as the pattern for marriage, with the husband supposed to treat his wife the way Jesus does the Church. Some theologians refer to this as “federal headship” as the word federal comes from the Latin word for covenant.
While God holds both a husband/father and wife/mother responsible for their behavior, as head, the husband is firstly responsible.
We see this pattern, for example, in Genesis 3. Although Eve sinned first, Adam was standing by silently and passively doing and saying nothing, which is sin of omission, and then joined his wife in sin. When God arrived to deal with their sin,
God called out first to Adam, “Where are you?” God rebuked Adam for his passivity and failure to lovingly lead his family against Satanic attack. God then rebuked Eve for her sin as well, but she was dealt with after Adam because he was the head.
Did you grow up in a family where the father was the singular head, and the parents were plural leaders? If not, how can you do this more effectively in your current or future family?
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