My hope is that this series will offer my readers a chance to consider the names, characteristics and descriptions of our God in the Word.

The remaining Names of God in this series might be considered descriptors, or characteristics of the Lord. We have reviewed the three primary Names of God, along with nineteen compound Names of God in our previous posts. As we venture through these descriptors of our God, I hope we will recognize all the many characteristics of our God that we tend to take for granted.

The Word is truly rich with descriptions of the Living God, and this effort of searching in the Word was quite illuminating. He truly is the ultimate subject of the Word, and His revelation of self-descriptions, or the accolades offered Him by His priests, prophets, kings apostles and faithful truly is a blessing.

May the Name of the Lord be praised, and by thinking on His name, may you have a blessed day.

HEAD OF EVERY MAN

1 Corinthians 11:3 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.

We are entering a topic that has become a hot topic for the last half century in the church. We will be thinking about headship in this verse, and I want to confess I have been influenced by conservative churches as to what headship means.

One church we were associated with was an open brethren, which allowed no women to speak in the service, with the women wearing head coverings, showing submission to the husband as per 1 Corinthians 11.

During our time there we enjoyed great times of fellowship and made wonderful friends, but we never “made it “converted” to the head covering practice. As a matter of fact, one of the elder’s wives, (who publicly wore a head covering to show her submission to her husband) told her husband, the elder of the church to come talk to my wife about this “sin”. I was not in the discussion at all! He visited my wife, and when I got home that night from work, I questioned even more the reason for the doilies on wives “of submission”. Too much to discuss in this post, but do you see any problem here?

Two views are raging in the church regarding the teaching of headship. A brief review may be of help.

Complementarian

In 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Ephesians 5:23, kephalḗ implies  authority, leadership, or preeminence. Some may assign an inequality in the husband / wife partnership when this view is considered but I fear they may think different positions in life equal different values before God. This is preposterous in my mind. Each of us have our talents and calling, and each of us are equal before God, with the value of the blood of Christ assigned to each sinner!

Egalitarian

Using Genesis 2, the egalitarian (equal) view leans into the meaning of kephalḗ as source, origin, or progenitor. It is as the husband is the “source” of the wife, and not her ruler.

I have noticed that this view seems to be gaining steam in the last half century, coincidentally with the rise of feminism. Coincidence, or simply the revelation of truth completely apart from the massive cultural shift we have all experienced? I will leave that to my reader.

Nevertheless, I will admit this view has not made sense to me, since the argument might be made that if the man is the source of the woman, he has the right of ownership, or can at least claim management over her. This also is preposterous, so I must be understanding the egalitarian view incorrectly.

One other claim by the egalitarian view is to equate the head of a family to a “boss”. This is bringing the worlds view of business management into the Lord’s institution of a godly family. Of course this is preposterous. To be the head of a family is to mimic the Savior (who is our Head) in leadership servanthood, dying for others within the family, and showing concern and loving care for those in the family instead of himself.

To be the “boss” in the family is a distortion of the headship teaching, for our great example and Savior, the HEAD OF EVERY MAN, is the suffering Savior, the meek and gentle One who has all authority over heaven and earth.

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I would love to hear of your favorite name, characteristic or description of the Living God. Please leave me a comment, and I will include it in the list!

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