The Bible's pattern of male leadership in the home and the church. Grounded in three texts: Genesis 2 (Adam formed first, named Eve, placed in primary responsibility for the garden and the command); 1 Corinthians 11:3 ("the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God"); Ephesians 5:22-33 (the husband is head of the wife "as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior"). Greek kephalē — "head" — is best read here as denoting authority-with-responsibility, not mere "source" (as some egalitarians argue), though both senses may overlap.
Headship is widely misunderstood, abused, and dismissed. Three clarifications. (1) Headship is service, not domination. The model is Christ, who "loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). A husband who demands obedience without sacrificing for his wife's good is not exercising biblical headship; he is abusing the concept. The sharper question for a husband is not "is my wife submitting?" but "am I loving her as Christ loved the Church?" (2) Headship does not imply inferiority. "The head of Christ is God" (1 Corinthians 11:3). The Son is fully equal to the Father in deity, dignity, and worth — yet submits to Him within the Trinity's economy. Equality of worth, distinction of roles. The wife is her husband's equal before God, co-heir of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7), no less spiritually gifted — yet in the household economy she responds to her husband's leadership. (3) Rejection of headship produces chaos. The egalitarian project has had two generations to reshape marriage; the results include skyrocketing divorce, fatherless children, confused boys, angry women, and a church that has lost its moral clarity on sex, family, and gender. Biblical headship — courageous, sacrificial, Christlike — is not the problem; its absence is. Men: lead. Lead gently, lead sacrificially, lead decisively, lead accountably — but lead.