Roles & Design

No words in Scripture take more fire than headship and submission. The culture hears a cage, and it has reason to — the words have been used as a club in plenty of homes, by men who stopped reading before the sentence that comes after them. Other houses have made a quiet truce and left the passage alone. You get a husband who leads nothing and calls it peace, and a wife who waits to be convinced before she gives what Christ already asked of her, in a marriage that has agreed with the culture about what those words must mean.

So the first study starts where Genesis starts, with a husband and wife bearing the same image and the same worth, before either calling is named. They come out of that same account, given while the world was still whole. A man who reads headship as superiority has taken a call to die and turned it into a claim to be served.

Then the harder words, one study written for him and one for her. A husband called to lay his life down the way Christ did for the church, on the days she makes it easy and the days she doesn’t. A wife called to follow him as to the Lord, the way the church is subject to Christ, on the same terms — because Christ asked it of her, not because her husband has earned it.

Both callings are heavy. They come in different shapes, and they were built to fit together — which is the point, because side by side they’re a picture of Christ and His church.

If these words have been used against you in your own home, take this study to your pastor and work through it with him. And if you’re in danger, get to safety first. That comes before any book, including this one.

Read your own study before your spouse’s. Each asks for a pen and an honest hour, and both are harder to give than they sound.

This book is reflection, not counseling, medical, or legal advice, and it does not replace your pastor, or a biblical counselor sought with your pastor.