THE HEADSHIP OF CHRIST

1 Corinthians 11:3; Romans 5:19;

Colossians 1:12-20; 2:9,10; Ephesians 1:19-23

I have an exercise to speak about the matter of headship. It is not something that would be understood in the world at all, it certainly is not taught in schools, but it is something that applies to the believer both individually and collectively. The understanding of it is essential for spiritual progress, and for the maintenance of what is right and for the glory of God.

The order of things is set out in 1 Corinthians 11, and Paul insisted on it explicitly; he says; “I wish you to know”. One reason why it is particularly important at the present time that we should know about headship is because it is a principle that is so despised in the world around. I am not going to spend a long time speaking about the world, but when you come into contact with it, especially when you are young, things are said which challenge what God has set on, and challenge God’s ordering. If you begin in Genesis 1 with the creation, you see that God did things in an orderly way. He began with light; He said “Let there be light” (v.3). He created an atmosphere in which things could flourish, called the expanse. On the third day, the dry land appeared – that is the resurrection day – and there was what was fruitful, what would provide food. Then He provided rule on the fourth day, in the two great lights. We often speak of the greater light and the lesser light, but scripture begins with two great lights (Gen 1:16), then you get the great light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. These lights were provided in order that God’s authority might be maintained and that these conditions of light and atmosphere, and food and rule would be available so that life could subsist. On the fifth day, you get the variety of life brought in and on the sixth day you get the top stone of God’s creation; man.

One of the reasons why divine order and divine ordering are so important is – can you think of circumstances in which life could subsist if there was not light and atmosphere and food and rule? What would happen? Things would fall into disorder. Man after the flesh is perfectly happy to accept the benefits of light and atmosphere and food, but we are not attracted to rule. We like to do our own wills. But the acceptance of God’s ordering brings about life in variety, life that flourishes, and life that is according to God. It brings about conditions in which man can be brought into view, conditions in which Christ can be known. That is why it is so important. If you are told that the best thing for you is to do what you like, that is not true. The best thing you can do is to be obedient to God. The best thing you can do is to confess the Lord Jesus as your Saviour and accept His authority over you, owning Him as Lord. That is better for you than anything that man can provide; indeed, it is essential!

So God set about producing a certain order, and the order that I want to speak of begins here in 1 Corinthians. It says, “I wish you to know that the Christ is the head of every man”. Each of us here who fills out that place of man must acknowledge this. We are not here to do our own wills. We must acknowledge Christ as Head. Then the “woman’s head is the man”; that too is essential, not in the sense of bringing about conditions of subservience, but rather of honouring God. The two great lights are placed together, speaking of Christ and the assembly, but then there is a recognition of God’s ordering, the great light and the lesser light. Those of us who have wives have every cause to be thankful for what God has given us. They provide in many cases what we cannot, they provide order in the household when those of us who have other responsibilities are not there. It is honouring to God that the husband and wife should be together in matters, and recognise God’s ordering, and do so on the basis of affection. But if Christ is Head to the man, and the man is head to the woman, then the household is an orderly place. It is a place where the Lord’s rights are owned and upheld, and it is a place where children can be brought up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. It is a place that is different from the world.

Then “the Christ’s head God”. As Man, Christ has taken a place that involves a relationship. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are co-equal in deity but they have taken up places that are relative to one another. If that willingness to accept these relative positions has been taken up and expressed by divine Persons, in order that they might make themselves known in a way that can be understood by us, how much more should we accept the arrangements which God has made. They are for our blessing. Beloved brethren, they are most certainly and unequivocally for our blessing, particularly in a world where self-will and disorder are gaining sway every day. We can become distracted with what goes on around, or we can be occupied with what God is doing, and the blessing lies in being occupied with what God is doing. The benefit of what God is doing is most readily gained by subjection to the order that He has established.

In Romans, we come to the first principle of headship. I want to speak about the Lord’s headship firstly on a moral basis, then on a personal basis and then on an official basis. I trust that these characteristics of His headship may help us to understand what God has in mind. If the Lord is not Head to you morally as an individual, you will not be able to get the benefit of what He is personally and officially. There is an order to this. We speak about moral; what does that mean? The word moral involves the distinction between what is good and what is evil. The Lord, as we were saying in the reading, was perfectly good in every feature and characteristic. He would not claim it for Himself; He said “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, God”, Luke 18:19. Of course, He Himself was and is God. He remains so; He would not claim it, but He is God. This moral feature of obedience came out pre-eminently in the Lord; this moral excellence that was His was manifested in obedience. We spoke in the reading about the red heifer, which is mentioned in Numbers chapter 19 and it says some things about it that are important in relation to moral excellence. A red heifer “without blemish”; that is the exterior, no blemish upon it. Then “wherein is no defect”, that is the inwards. And “upon which never came yoke”; the Lord never accepted the yoke of man, He always did the will of His God and Father. When you looked on Him, He was perfect. When you knew the expression of His heart, His inward being, He was perfect, and when it came to the will of God, He was perfect. This is “the obedience of the one”.

It says “by the disobedience of the one man”; that is Adam. But then “by the obedience of the one” – who else could “the one” be but Christ, the One who is Jesus, showing perfect obedience in every setting? You come to it that you are a sinner and you come to it that you have been disobedient. Remorse is seeing the effect of your sins on yourself, repentance is recognising that, from God’s perspective, you have offended Him. You have to see it from God’s perspective. One of the first steps on the moral journey, when we begin to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong, is when we stop seeing things from our own perspective and start seeing them from God’s standpoint. The Lord as Man always took things up from God’s standpoint. He did not take them up from the standpoint of what would suit Himself or what would be for His convenience. It says of Him one day that He was “wearied with the way he had come” (John 4:6); it says of Him another day that “he hungered”, Matt.21:18. We know that one day He was tired and He was sleeping on the cushion in the stern of the boat (Mark 4:38). His disciples did not see it from His standpoint, they saw it from their own, and they woke Him up. They did not leave Him to sleep and they asked Him, “dost thou not care that we are perishing?”. Of course He cared, but they were not perishing, because He was there. How could they be perishing when He was there?

Beloved brethren, there are many exercises upon us at the present time, some personal, some to do with health, some in households, and some related to the assembly. But if we are left here, and the Lord takes His place in the midst on Lord’s day morning when we break bread, we do not need to say that we are perishing, for we are not. “I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you”, John 14:18. This blessed One who worked out the will of God here in moral perfection, and who is now in glory, says “I am coming to you”. He never asked the Father if the Father’s will was right; He never asked the Father whether He meant what He said. The Lord Jesus accepted the Father’s will for what it was, He accepted it in perfection, even although that will involved immeasurable suffering for Him, even although He knew what the cross would involve. Awful enough that He should be scorned and buffeted by men, by those very persons whom He had come to call, those whom He had come to save. He says at the end of it all, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23:34. He was prepared to bear the sins of the very men who struck Him! That suffering on the cross itself was suffering enough, an awful drawn out death, but then, more than anything else, to have to confess publicly “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Matt.27:46. But He knew; He said prophetically “And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”, Ps.22:3. He knew why He had been forsaken; He had been made sin, made sin for us. I say for myself, we perhaps step over these scriptures too easily. “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”, 2 Cor.5:21. How grateful we are to come to that, that “we might become God’s righteousness in him”.

But, beloved brethren, let us pause on this. He was made sin for us. Of course, it had to be so for God; God’s righteousness must be maintained and upheld. Indeed, God’s righteousness was not only upheld, it was exemplified and glorified, but at what a cost! I cannot measure it, none here can, but God knew the cost and the Lord knew the cost. And more than that – as knowing it, He paid it. All that enters into the obedience of the One. Is He not worthy? Is He not worthy that you should bow to Him? Is He not worthy that you should honour Him, and accept His authority? You and I were lost and undone in sin, facing an eternity without Christ and without God, and yet finding in Christ the answer not only to all that my heart might have sought, but the answer to all that God had sought. Is He not worthy then that we should accept His authority, Whose was “the obedience of the one”? The One who distinguished perfectly between good and evil, removed the first order of man that was displeasing in the sight of God, and now He says, as it were, ‘Will you not only come under the shelter of My blood, but will you accept My authority too?’. In speaking of it, I know how far short I fall of what I am saying, but nonetheless it is right that we should accept the authority of this blessed One who was the obedient One; “the obedience of the one”.

In doing so, we begin that moral journey. Romans teaches us how the believer is to walk righteously on earth, and brings us to the threshold of heaven; the mystery is mentioned. We sometimes say that Romans is basic; that may be so, but I would rather say it is foundational. You cannot go very far without a foundation. We need a foundation, and that foundation is in Christ, the Man of God’s choice. He takes us from the position of doing our own will and satisfying ourselves to being pleased to do the will of Another. We come by faith to find that not only our sins are dealt with, but sin itself; to find that we have a place in response to God and that others have a part in it too, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father”, Rom.8:15. We find that the gift of the Spirit is sufficient for everything, to help us here and to draw us heavenward, to find our place in the body, and to accept the regulation of the kingdom and to come at the end to the mystery. That is another door open. Romans opens doors. It is a question of whether we have the desire to go through them for what is on the other side. But then as accepting that Christ is Head to us on the grounds of His moral greatness, we make the first step on the journey.

We come to Colossians and that brings us to what Christ is personally. I do not go into the detail of it, but just a few touches. He is personally “image of the invisible God”. God made man upright; He said, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen.1:26), but this One is distinctly and uniquely “image of the invisible God”. He is that perfectly and completely. Then “firstborn of all creation”, but not Himself created, for we see that He is the One by whom all things have been created. When the Lord is spoken of as firstborn, He is firstborn as to place. He is Head of the creation; “all things have been created by him and for him”. He has a personal right to all things; “he is before all”. That is a matter of time, but it is also a matter of place; “he is before all” personally. Everything that exists is upheld by Him. What a Person He is; “upholding all things by the word of his power”, Heb.1:3. And then, “he is the head of the body”. If you accept the Lord’s authority and headship personally, you begin to come into what is collective. If you think of the functioning of a body, how could you have a member of the body that was not subject to the head? It would not truly be part of the body, it would be out of control. That would not work. Another thing about headship, if I may say in passing, is that Christ as Head does not give different members of the body conflicting instructions. How would it be if the head of a body gave instruction to one foot to walk in one direction and the other foot to walk in the other direction? You could not make any progress at all. The Lord does not give His people different directions. If I think that He has given me some different direction from my brethren, the first thing I would want to do would be to check myself rather than to question them.

I say that in all simplicity, beloved, because there are many things that may come in and may concern us, but there is one thing of which I am perfectly certain, and that is that the Lord wishes His saints to be together. I have absolutely no doubt about that. And if something has come in that may have caused disruption or division, I am perfectly certain that He is able to put it right. We spoke in the reading about the sin-offering and I draw your attention to what it says in 1 John 1, verse 7, “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”. Why are the fellowship and the blood put together? Well, if something has come in that would for the time being prevent us from walking together, “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”. It does not say that we should ignore what has happened and go on as though it had not, but there is a way back. I feel that I am speaking more to myself than to any other, but if we are all consistent with the headship of Christ, then these things, I believe, would be the more easily resolved.

Then “he is the head of the body, the assembly; who is the beginning”, so He has the first place but He is also the beginning. Nothing begins for God without Christ. And nothing in our spiritual lives should begin for us without Him either, whether individually or collectively. So not only is He “firstborn of all creation”, but He is “firstborn from among the dead”. That is another place which He has personally. Everything that is for God is on the other side of death and is headed up in Christ that “he might have the first place in all things”. Again, I am obliged to ask myself if that is so for me, that “he might have the first place in all things”. Does this Person have the first place in all things, for me, and for believers collectively? It says, “for in him all the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell”. That was when He was Man here. There are many examples of that which could be brought forward. He says to Philip, “He that has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), and He also says as to the presence of the Holy Spirit, “ye know him” (v.17). You might think that the Spirit was not here when the Lord spoke these words, but He was in the sense that He had descended in bodily form as a dove and He abode upon the Lord (John 1:32). The Spirit was not indwelling those around the Lord at that point and yet Jesus said, as it were, ‘You have seen the Father and you know the Spirit’. That is because “all the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell” in Jesus, and “by him to reconcile all things to itself, having made peace by the blood of his cross”. The “blood of his cross”; what a distinctive cross it was. There was never a cross like it, never a Man like it! There were some who mocked, but there were those around the cross who had to acknowledge it. The centurion said, “Truly this man was Son of God”, Matt.27:54. He had seen many crosses, he had seen many men die on crosses, but he had never seen a Man like this. There was never a Man who, after He died, shed His blood that others might be set free: “the blood of his cross – by him, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens”. The personal greatness of Christ covers it all, “the things on the earth or the things in the heavens”.

In verses 9 and 10 of chapter 2, it says “in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”. You might think that it was all very well when He was here. The disciples could see Him and they could take account of these things; “He that has seen me has seen the Father”. They could see in practice the working of the Comforter, but what about now? It is available now; “in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”. There is not one thing withheld from us at the present time because the Lord is on high; the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, “and ye are complete in him”. The note says ‘filled full ... The fulness or completeness of the Godhead is in Christ as towards us; and we, as towards God, are complete in him’ (note ‘d’). Are we complete in Him? Do we think we need something other than what is to be found in Him? I know that I have done it, had some thought of mine, some idea perhaps that something else would be better, but “ye are complete in him”. There is not anything required outside of Christ. The Spirit is here and Christ is on high. There is an old gospel poem which says, ‘I have Christ – what want I more?’¹. I do not say ‘we’ in any exclusive sense, although our responsibility relates firstly to those with whom we are in fellowship, but we have Christ. I do not say that as claiming it, I say it as knowing it. We have Christ. We begin the moral journey with this, ‘I am His and He is mine’ (Hymn 187), but do we truly believe it? Beloved brethren, I believe we do. I do not say this in any tone of criticism or rebuke; we may say, ‘I have Christ’, ‘we have Christ’, or “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor.2:16), but much better is, ‘He has us’. We are His. Oh, what we owe to Him!

In Ephesians, we come to what He is officially and this also matters. Glory to God “in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages. Amen”, Eph.3:21. He gathers up all that He is morally and personally and officially, but we are going to share with Him in headship in a day to come. I believe that is what is included in the thought of “head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all”. He will fill all in all administratively, but we must accept the official position which He has now. God gave Him to be “head over all things to the assembly” and in the beginning of Genesis when man and woman were brought in, God said that they were to “have dominion”, Gen.1:28. God has given Christ that place and Christ is operating administratively through the assembly now. It says in chapter 3, “in order that now to the principalities and authorities in the heavenlies might be made known through the assembly the all-various wisdom of God” (v.10). That is now. And if that is so now, then it behoves me to accept what He does through the assembly. It does not mean there will not be any exercises, it does not mean there will not be any problems, but accepting what He does now through the assembly honours Him and gives Him the moral basis to act further if it is His mind to do so. Remember that the One who is acting is “above every principality, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name named, not only in this age, but also in that to come”. That is the One who is acting; He has been given that place by God.

All this comes back to our respect for God’s ordering. The place that Christ has morally and personally and officially is all in God’s ordering. It relates to who Christ is, of course; He is personally greater than anything conferred upon Him, but He is morally equal to every office that He holds. The assembly then is being brought into moral conformity to Him. He is the great light, she is the lesser, but it says in chapter 5 “in order that he might sanctify it, purifying it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present the assembly to himself glorious, having no spot, or wrinkle, or any of such things; but that it might be holy and blameless” (vv.26,27).

We spoke earlier of the red heifer. There is the external, “no spot, or wrinkle”; and there is the internal, “holy and blameless”. Then we come to “upon which never came yoke” (Num.19:2). The word is that “that he might present the assembly to himself”. When the Lord looks at the assembly, He is looking for features of Himself. Beloved, when I look at my brethren, what I see are features of Christ. It must be so; we must look in one another for features of that blessed Man. You would be entitled to look at me and find what is imperfect there. I know it is there, but really the search for imperfection is not food for our souls, and self-judgment is what I ought to do for myself, not for others. I need to look in every saint of God for the features that God has worked out in them and will bring out in glory and in display. When I see in Christ what is morally and personally and officially perfect, it entitles me to look for these features coming into display in those whom He has claimed for His own, and to do all that I can to foster, to build and to encourage that which is in accordance with Christ. How do we get children to give of their best? Not really by telling them what is wrong, although sometimes we must, but by showing them what is right. You can usually attract a child away from things that it should not be doing by giving it something better. God has so acted with us; He has attracted us away from that which is worthless and damaging and brought us into His wonderful light. He has brought us into the light of Christ and the assembly, He has brought us into the light of a Man in the glory, He has brought us into the light of an eternal portion in praise to Him that will never end. What else do we need?

Beloved brethren, I trust that these words will be for blessing and encouragement, and that Christ might increasingly be the Man for every heart here, for His name’s sake.

Address at Colchester

4 February 2017

P.A. Gray