HEADSHIP
HEADSHIP
[p. 123] Romans 3: 23,24; Romans 5:19; Colossians 1:18-20; Colossians 2:18,19; Ephesians 1:17-23; Ephesians 3:14-21
What an important place headship has in the ways of God, and how much depends on the recognition of the Head! God has brought in One who is morally entitled to be looked up to with reverence. He is One whose every movement, both inward and outward, was in the spirit of obedience, and He has accomplished righteousness. Redemption is in Him. He is entitled to be chief and pre-eminent in the regard and reverence of all men. If we reverence Him, we learn His love. He will never make it known to an irreverent heart. We also take character from Him. Man is so made as a creature that He needs a Head, so headship meets a great necessity in the very constitution of man as a creature. When he recognises Christ as Head, he is constituted righteous, and then his affections can come into play under the influence of the love of Christ; he is “to another”, even to Him who rose from the dead, and he becomes fruitful towards God.
There is a fulness in the Head that is capable of satisfying every sense of lack that exists in man. God intends that we should have unalloyed happiness, and He has provided a Head in relation to whom we can find it. What is greater still, God has provided, in that glorious Head, One who sets everything that is in right relation to Himself, in right and blessed relation to God, so that God has complacency and delight in it. This is reconciliation.
Headship is the great principle of the moral universe. It is the first and the last thought of God. A great deal depends on our apprehending our Head. We know very little about headship, or about the Lord as Head.
We far more often speak of Him as Lord than as Head, and yet lordship is only for a time, but headship will subsist to all eternity. Lordship will end when the Son delivers up the kingdom to the Father, and all is for ever subdued to Him who is God and Father, and the Son as Man, for ever maintains a subject place. Headship is an eternal principle in the universe, lordship is not.
We must first learn that Christ has a Head. We find the order set out in 1 Corinthians 11: “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God”, In regard to Christ, His Head was God;
[p. 124] as a Man on earth He ever looked up with reverence and affection to God. It is not exactly relationship, but as Man He looked up to God and derived all His character from Him; so that there was a Man in this world in right relation to God. This is how we see the only true God and the true Man. There was a Man on earth who knew God, and who ever gave God His place — Christ the anointed Man. All that God is was before Him, and He derived everything from God.
It is a wide glory that Christ is Head of every man. All men feel the need of a Head, the mistake is that they do not know it. It is a necessity of man’s being that he must have a head, that is why a man of great ability always gets a place; man must have someone to look up to. All men are fallen creatures; there is no one entitled to be looked up to but Christ. The end of man’s looking for a head will be antichrist. Adam was the finest man that ever lived. All the wisdom, all the intellect, all the inventiveness that have ever come out in the human family were in Adam. Adam was the head of the race; but he fell, and all his posterity fell in him. A head gives character to those to whom he is head. Take a king for instance; he is king politically, but then he is also head of the nation, and gives character to it. When a man like Charles II was on the throne, the whole nation was a mass of licentiousness. When a virtuous woman like Queen Victoria was on the throne, every propriety was fostered and promoted in her kingdom. The head confers character. Now the Head of every man is Christ; every man, converted or heathen. The Head of every man is Christ, but only those holding the Head take character from Him. Is He holy and true? Holiness and truth mark those under Him. Is He subject to His God and Father? Subjection and obedience and meekness mark those who come under His blessed influence as Head. In this way He gives character; it is this that gives dignity to man.
It is only by redemption that we come into the good of headship. We all know what redemption means. Boaz the mighty man of wealth, the kinsman, redeemed the inheritance, and with it the poor Moabitish damsel. There was a nearer kinsman, and as long as it was merely a question of the inheritance — something to be possessed — he was quite agreeable to be the redeemer, but when he found that Ruth had to go along with the inheritance of her dead husband, that [p. 125] was another story, and he declined it all! Not so Boaz, he became head to Ruth, and she came into the good of headship by redemption. We come into it in the same way, through redemption. We are recovered for God in virtue of redemption according to the greatness and blessedness of the Head, according to all the Head is. If we are recovered to God, it must be in the apprehension of the Head: the absolute perfection of the way we are recovered is seen in the Head. In Romans 5 the way the Head is introduced is by redemption, it is Christ in contrast to Adam. He came in the way of obedience; that is God was His Head. God ever had what was due to Him in a Man. Christ has come in where everything was in disorder, and has established righteousness; He has come in to recover man by redemption. His work has recovered us, and by recovering us He establishes a claim over us, and we look up to Him with reverence. As we consider the path He has taken and all He has done, we cannot help looking up to Him with reverence, and all who do so get the good of headship. It is an important exercise for us to be maintained in that condition, to look up to Christ with reverence just as He looked up to God. It should be a great exercise for us as to whether we have the good of our Head.
Exercise is the movement of heart towards Christ. Exercise is movement; if not in movement we are stagnant, allowing our hearts to gratify themselves. Exercise does not mean misery. Suppose we think we are not exercised, then there is self-judgment; it makes us pray, and the soul that prays is in movement. We should pray that we may understand and know the Person who is our Head, that we may know the perfections and excellencies that are in Him. We pray — there is no other way.
To know Christ as Head there must be the deepest reverence, just as with a true wife to a true husband. When we have so learned Christ, in His moral perfections and beauties, that we reverence Him, He will make known the depths of His love to us. The Lord never reveals His heart to an irreverent soul, never! It is to the one who already appreciates and delights in Him that He confides Himself; He can have a secret with one in whom He can confide, and make private communications, just as a husband does to a true wife. Then He knows how to do everything for you, and make Himself everything to you. Are you in perplexity? He will give you wisdom and [p. 126] direction. Are you in sorrow? He will comfort you. Are you in poverty? He will open up His own boundless resources for you. You cannot get into any circumstances where He will not succour you, and it will be the delight of your heart to be to Him (Romans 7), and then there will be fruit for God. Romans 7 is the Head — the new Husband; you want the Head for deliverance, He has the title to claim me in love. If I look up to Him with reverence He supplies everything: I shall have His company, His love, everything to make me fruitful. There is the yielding oneself to Him; many hold back. How much we all hold back! We do not give Christ His place, and we try to fit ourselves for Christ through painful exercises, trying to lift ourselves to His level, but we should just allow God to present Christ to us in such a way that what we see commands our reverence. We have a Husband who makes no demand, He is the Source of unlimited supply. It is not a question of whether I shall fail, but will He fail? Romans 6 is living to God in relation to the Head, a most blessed position, for it puts one entirely outside the world to be for God’s pleasure. Romans 7 is the new Husband. To be to Christ is to be in relation to Him, in contrast to law. Romans 8 is that you get His Spirit, a wonderful thought! It is not His outside support, but you get His inside support, the Spirit of the Head.
Colossians 1:18-20; Colossians 2:18,19 We have been looking at headship in Romans in connection with the individual. We might look at it now in connection with the company, as presented in Colossians. We get there the assembly looking up to Christ as Head. Headship is God’s great thought, and it necessarily produces unity. The Roman Catholic has the idea, and he tries to carry it out in a human way, but he can only make a dead, inert unity, a mere crystallisation of creeds and dogmas centralised in one man at Rome. God’s unity is living, and grows with all the increase of God, by that which every joint supplies. Holding the Head produces living affections, and vital growth, and mutual care of the members one for another. The prosperity of one is the good of the whole. It is the Father’s work in souls that the Lord values and trusts; He educates and disciplines us that we may come to the end of all our resources, and then we find that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in the [p. 127] Head, and available for the body. What do we want of human wisdom and philosophy in view of that? On the other hand asceticism and harsh treatment of the body have no place either, if we are holding the Head. Then too, we do not desire to intrude into things not seen. Man has an impression that there is something wonderful around and beyond him into which he would fain penetrate. Now in holding the Head we find boundless resource to meet every need of heart and mind.
In Romans all the moral beauty and fitness for headship come out in the blessed Lord, His obedience and righteousness. There is a moral necessity that obedience and righteousness should characterise the Head, and each individual who comes under the Head partakes of His character. We come before God in all the acceptability of the Head, the fragrance of the frankincense.
In Colossians the greatness of the Head is presented to us. All His glory is brought out in chapter 1 so that we might realise what a Head we have. Creation, redemption, reconciliation, are all brought in to show the greatness of the Head. He was the Creator, the Maker of heaven and earth. It is said of Him — the Son, “by whom he made the worlds”, and they were made to display the glories of the Head. He has brought all these things into reconciliation by the blood of His cross, so that the Godhead might find its perfect complacency in the whole scene. He has also reconciled us that He may present us to Himself holy and unblameable and irreproachable before the Godhead. All the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him in a body, and we are complete in Him. If Christians do not know the greatness of Christ, and what He delights to be as Head to His people, they are in danger of being drawn aside by what is of man. In Colossians we see the greatness of Christ in contrast to all that could be suggested by man. As Christians we have received Christ; it is a great thing to have received such a Person. He had been presented to them by Epaphras, a “faithful minister of Christ” (Colossians 1: 7) and they had received Him. Even to the Corinthians Paul said, “In everything ye are enriched by him”, 1 Corinthians 1: 5. Little did they understand that they were enriched in the Head. We ought to have the sense that we are enriched in the Head. It is like this chapter: “Ye are complete in him”, verse 10. I could not say that every believer [p. 128] had received Christ intelligently. All have believed He died for them, but to receive Him is to let into the heart that wonderful Person in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells. Nothing is right that does not take character from Christ. Whatever is pretentious must be tested by Christ; if it will not stand that test it is of no value.
“The mystery of God” has to do with the body; it is hidden, but Christ is in His saints, and the graces and moral beauties of the Head are coming out in His people down here. “All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are hid. It is the most wonderful thing that Christ in rejection should be still on earth in His people. It is a unique moment; the world to come will not furnish anything so peculiar. While Christ is rejected, yet He is here for God. Christ coming out in His body is for the pleasure of God, for divine complacency. The body is not for testimony, the house is here for testimony. The body is the vital principle; you cannot see the body. You see the house which is like the clock; it shows the time of day, but it would be no use without works. The body is the works; the body of Christ is hidden. The house is the assembly of the living God; all that is of God is found in His house; it is His children presented in testimony. In Genesis 28 Jacob set up a pillar in the power of the Spirit for God, and called it Bethel. The house is the pillar and base of the truth, a pillar with all that God is inscribed on it. Everything in man’s hands has been spoiled, but if we see the divine character of the house as set up of God, then we refuse everything that is not consistent with it. Every person is converted in order to be part of the house and a member of the body. The simplest thought of the assembly is in Acts 15, where James says, “God at the first did visit the gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name” That is the most elementary idea of the assembly. Every person God has visited in grace is taken out to be for His Name; such form the house of God, where the Spirit of God dwells. Many do not understand it on account of the failure; we are privileged to look at things according to the truth.
Christ is the Source of everything needed to supply the body and minister to it, so that it may increase “with the increase of God”, chapter 2: 19. Everything for God’s pleasure must be derived from the Head, so it should be the habitual state of our hearts and minds to hold the Head. Two things [p. 129] are comprised in this, to bow in the sense of the greatness of Christ and of the fulness that resides in Christ the Head; then also we must have a profound sense of the depth of His interest in us, and this awakens the heart; this is what holds us to the Head in affection.
The apostle uses a beautiful word in relation to the Head: “Let no one fraudulently deprive you of your prize”, chapter 2: 18. The apprehension of Christ as Head is the true prize of our hearts, and everything that draws us away from this is a triumph of the enemy; he is always busy! Our hearts should be set on the prize to know Christ as Head and to use Him, and we should not be diverted from it. We might lose it religiously by abasing ourselves; when people take a very low place, they think that is acceptable, but it might be their “own will”. We might worship angels, but that would be losing the Head, and being robbed of our prize. “Entering into things not seen” is a kind of intellectual pleasure, a reaching after the unknown. The “feasts” are the former things connected with man in the flesh, things pointing to Christ, but people go back to them and leave Christ out. In contrast to that the body is of Christ, it is formed under the influence of Christ. Everything in the body is of Christ: we may say every Christian is in the body, because every Christian has derived from Christ, that is how he is in the body — he has the Spirit to begin with. Then if we hold the Head in reverence as we see His greatness, and in affection as we learn His love and interest, we shall become “joints and bands” through which the grace of Christ can flow. The joints and bands are out of sight, they make no show. Some obscure Christian might be a joint, we can all come in as joints and bands, and the welfare of the body depends on their being in order.
It is a great thing to be holding the Head: it is not making efforts, but it is allowing Christ His due place in our thoughts and affections, and thus we are kept in contact with the Head so that His grace can flow out through us for the nourishment of the body. It is open even to me to be a channel of communication between the glorified Head and His members on earth. It is not fussing about, wanting to do things, but it is being in right relation to the Head. Christendom is active and the Lord knows how to value it. No labour will lose its reward; but there is something better than that, that one [p. 130] should place oneself in proper relation to the Head. The smallest Christian can do that. We reverence Him because of His greatness and we have affection for Him because of His love; this must be maintained.
Living “to him” (2 Corinthians 5: 15) is similar to “holding the head”. “The love of the Christ constrains us”, that is the love of the Head. It is not living for Him, but living to Him, the heart referring to Christ, alive towards Christ. It is having that Person in thought, in affection, in reverence; “walk in him”. It is the privilege and joy of every saint to turn to Christ, to move in relation to Him, He becomes the Source of everything. There is a supply of grace in Him and from Him to meet everything, but that is more the priestly side of the Head. Here the Head gives intelligence in the knowledge of God; there is nourishment ministered, so that there is increase in the knowledge of God. That is the side presented here. The most blessed thing that could be is, not that we should be supported and helped in our individual path, but that we should be nourished in the knowledge of God. In the Head there is full knowledge of God; there is wisdom and intelligence, and all that the Head knows He can communicate to us. The “increase of God” (verse 19) is everything that is of God, formed, and developed in the body; it is divine increase in contrast to increase of human thought. All great unfoldings of truth and light have come from giving place to the Head; then it is that the Spirit has His place also. The great thing is that the Head should have His place. The Spirit is scarcely mentioned in Colossians, because it is important that we should give place to the Head.
The first ray of light J.N.D. got when the truth was restored was that there is a Head in heaven, and I think that is the great truth recovered in the last century, and everything that has followed, dispensational truth, right thoughts of the assembly, all has flowed from this, that there was the recognition of the Head. We have actually seen how the Head has ministered through joints and bands; it ought to encourage us to expect great things from the Head. Then the practical result of holding the Head is that His grace comes out in the members. “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, long-suffering” (Colossians 3:12,13). We put on all these things through exercise, as belonging to us, not as borrowed clothes.
[p. 131] Someone has said that we put them on in the same way as the sheep puts on its wool; it grows from inside. We may see a kind person do a thing and imitate it, but that is no use. We have to accept the character of Christ as our true character, and then put it on by exercise and dependence, by holding the Head. Then it is our own, it grows from within.
Ephesians 1:17-23; Ephesians 3:14-21 We have been looking a little on previous occasions at headship; first in Romans as to the individual, then in Colossians in connection with the company. Now we might take up a few thoughts on headship in connection with the bride, and look at the two prayers of the apostle in Ephesians 1 and 3, that we might be brought into suitability for, and present enjoyment of, union. No one could know union with Christ, who was not suitable in affection and intelligence to answer to His heart and mind, suitable to be His companion, and I think that many saints, feeling their practical unsuitability, shrink from the subject. We are all of us woefully deficient, but that need not deter us from looking into these stupendous realities, and we can each of us wait upon God to bring us up to the wonderful elevation He proposes for us. Paul did not shun to declare to the Ephesians “the whole counsel of God”. They were in all the affection and energy of “first love” when this epistle was addressed to them. “First love” is the love of the bride, bridal affection.
There are two types of the bride that we can look at in connection with these scriptures, Eve and Rebecca. In Eve we see the sovereignty of God at work, and in Rebecca the practical effect of the testimony of the Holy Spirit, and both must be effectual in the bride; we need both. Eve was, so to speak, quite passive: it was all God’s doing, He made a deep sleep fall on Adam as Christ slept in death, He took a rib from Adam’s side and builded it into a woman. God formed and fashioned a bride for Adam and brought her to the man. Adam recognised her at once as of himself and said, “This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”: he recognised Eve as a suitable companion. Eve was the direct outcome of God’s sovereign purpose before time began. Now in Rebecca we find that she had to have thoughts and exercises produced in her heart and mind by the servant’s testimony about Abraham and Isaac. There was first the meeting with [p. 132] the servant, then she heard all he told her father; there were the secret struggles in her own heart as to leaving her own country and her kindred, and the overcoming their desire to keep her. She had much to hear while the camel bore her seven or eight hundred miles over the desert. Then she had exercises when she first caught sight of Isaac, and when he took her into his tent and loved her and she became his wife. Now all this is practical, and so it needs to be made effectual in us. Suppose Rebecca had heard the testimony about Isaac and remained in Mesopotamia, what would it have availed her? She had to have her heart set longing by a report of Isaac. “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand”: she believed in the greatness of the Son, and she had to be brought in heart and mind to the actual point of decision, “I will go”! It is a great thing when we are so attracted to Christ that we come to this point — I will leave kin and country and go to Him. That is experimental.
In view of the great elevation of the divine purpose, the apostle turns to God in prayer for us (for we can put our own names in here), that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, would give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him, being enlightened in the eyes of our hearts. Could anything be greater than the knowledge of divine Persons? How such acquaintance would raise the tone of our minds, and regulate our every thought. Nothing base would be tolerated for a moment; it would prepare us for something further, and there are three petitions proffered for us. First, that we might know what is the “hope of his calling”. What is the hope of His calling? Is it not all the vast scope of God’s purposes connected with the church? The vista of glory, excelling glory in endless succession throughout the ages of ages. That as I understand it is the hope of His calling! All will subsist in the value of redemption; every purpose in the heart of the eternal God rests upon that indestructible basis, the death of Christ.
Next we come to “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”. God says, ‘I will put you into the full enjoyment of My possessions, and My enjoyment will consist in your enjoyment’. Is it not marvellous that He should take up such a poor wretched worm as I am, to place me in such boundless inconceivable grandeur and delight of heart? There is nothing that gives such joy to a father as to see the [p. 133] prosperity of his sons. God made a father’s heart, and He made it to reflect His own! God will find His happiness as Father in the happiness and blessing and prosperity of His “many sons”; we are contributors in that way to the joy of the blessed God. He will fill the universe with joy, but none will have the place accorded to us as sons.
The third thing the apostle is led to ask for us is, “that ye may know” — consciously know, in the depths of our being — “the surpassing greatness of his power towards us... according to the working of the might of his strength, in which he wrought in the Christ in raising him from among the dead”. Think of the power that could take a Man lying in the dust of death, out of it, and seat Him in supreme glory and triumph in the highest seat in the universe! That is the power that works in our favour; that is the power that is “towards us who believe”. The activity of that almighty power that wrought in the Christ will also work for the weakest believer who trusts in His name, and will bring us too to where He sits in heaven’s unclouded rays. That power works in us now, that we may consciously enter into and enjoy at this present moment these stupendous spiritual realities. They are facts very little entered into. We sing, and say, that ‘the Spirit’s power has ope’d the heavenly door’, that in the divine purpose we are risen with Christ, and seated in Him in the heavenly places, but what do we know about it? What would Rebecca have known of Isaac had she remained in Mesopotamia? We need to be exercised in prayer and meditation, and that is the gain of conversing about these things which the Spirit brings before the eyes of our hearts in order that we might contemplate and desire them. God brings before us the vast expanse of His counsels all centred in the true Isaac: that is the wealth of God. Silver and gold are nothing to Him, but the fruition of His purposes of love is everything.
Mr. Stoney used to call the prayer in Ephesians 3 the endowment of the bride, and I do not think it can be better expressed. The apostle speaks of the Father, and the Spirit of the Father. I believe this is the only passage in which the Holy Spirit is spoken of as the Father’s Spirit, and it is interesting and beautiful to see that, where it is the Spirit of the Father, He occupies us with Christ; and, where it is the Spirit of the Son, He gives us to cry “Abba, Father”. The Spirit of the Father desires that the saints may share the joy [p. 134] and delight of HIS heart in Christ. Christ ever dwells in the Father’s heart, so the Spirit would have Him dwell in ours. He would have our roots strike down into the blessed fertile soil of the divine nature — love, that we may have a robust spiritual constitution and grow up into an ever-increasing acquaintance with the love of Christ, that all eternity will never exhaust. The love of Christ, the heavenly Bridegroom, the surpassing knowledge of Him will expand before our ravished hearts for ever. If the prayer in chapter 1 is to give us elevation, so that there may be no disparity with the Bridegroom, the prayer in chapter 3 is to give us spiritual fitness so that we may answer to His mind and heart, in intelligence and affection. He wants a bride who has capacity to respond to His thoughts as well as to His heart, and the work of the Spirit of the Father is to form and fashion us for this. Our hearts may well be bowed in deepest reverence for such a Head.