Welcome back to Thomas Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire, and for many people, one of the hardest biblical teachings to know what to do with is this idea of male headship.

When the Bible talks with the husband as the head of his wife, what does an authentic biblical headship look like?

How should we not understand these passages? And how can a proper understanding of headship actually improve your marriage?

I think the best place to start is with scripture itself, particularly St. Paul's hotly disputed words from Ephesians

chapter 5. Quote, wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is ahead of the

wife as Christ is ahead of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. As the church is subject

to Christ, so let wives also be subject

in everything to their husbands. So what does that mean? Well, I want to take a look at a few

examples of how some people interpret or maybe misinterpret it. But first, I want to go ahead and say

thank you to all of you supporting me over at Shamelessjo.com. You really do keep this show going.

And you know what? This topic actually came up in a recent Patreon live stream Q&A. It's where I got the idea to do it. So just know these live streams are a great way for me to hopefully answer your questions, but also for me to find out the kind of topics you'd be interested in learning more about. And you get all of that for as little as $5 a month over at Shamelessjo.com. Okay, so let's consider a couple of real-life interpretations of male headship that are, in this case, both coming from the Protestant world. The first one is a model of headship that I think is expressed well in a letter that a woman named Mary wrote to Pastor John Piper in which she says, I know that submission is the requirement of the wife, and I've been working hard lately to hold my tongue and agree with my husband, even when I have

a different opinion. In her letter, she goes on to ask if she's aired by going along with her husband's

decision to unwisely buy a new car, even when she knew he was making a mistake. So that's the first model of headship. I mean, something like, the husband makes all the decisions, the wife's role is just to hold her tongue or to agree with him, even if she really knows he's wrong. On the other side of the issue, though, you've got this very different understanding of male headship from people like Kate Wallace Nunnelly of the Junia Project. Women are often told that they are less than in the church, but we believe the Bible tells a different story.

At the Junia Project, we are all about teaching biblical equality, equipping women, and resourcing the church.

If you struggle understanding what the Bible really says about women, or how to articulate your egalitarian beliefs, you're in the right place. None only argues that male-hedship in the church is a myth, that the Bible never says that the man is ahead of the household, and that the idea the husband is to lead his wife is actually unbiblical. Now, she concedes that the man is ahead of the wife in the Bible, but she insists that we've getting that passage wrong. In her view, when Paul talks about Christ being head of the church, that actually

has nothing to do with leadership or authority, but with love, sacrifice, death, and giving of life.

So similarly, she argues that when Paul calls the man in the head of the wife, this refers only

to giving himself up for her, sacrificing for her,

to give her a flourishing life. Now, she, of course, concedes that Jesus did lead and have authority

over others, but she claims that these are not traits that husbands are meant to imitate as they

imitate the headship of Christ. Instead, she says, the husband's headship is a servant role,

not a leadership role. So I think that's a clear example of the the husband's headship is a servant role, not a leadership role.

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