Where Authority Resides in a Healthy Church (and Home)

Two really popular erroneous teachings about authority that people claim are in the Bible are:

1. Pastors or elders have authority over congregations
2. Husbands have authority over wives

They are both untrue.

Authority comes from Christ

When you look at a general picture of authority given in the New Testament, you find the Greek word exousia is the most-used word for our English concept of authority. Interestingly, it is nowhere specifically connected to pastors or elders being in authority over a congregation, husbands being in authority over wives, or even parents being in authority over children.

Also, the verb form of the word (exousiazo) is used twice in 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul writes about marriage. But it doesn’t have anything to do with a husband’s alleged authority over a wife, but it’s actually about the mutual authority that husbands and wives have over each other’s body. A couple is not to separate from each other for a season without “symphony,” or mutual consent.

When you really dig into what the original writers wrote in their own language and what they meant, which humans have authority in a church is actually a non-issue. This is because the focus of the New Testament story (and the whole biblical story for that matter) is that all authority resides in Jesus Christ.

That authority then expresses itself in different ways through different gifts, tasks, situations, etc. but where this comes off the rails is when it gets locked into a person or a position. Then certain people have authority no matter what. This is never taught in the New Testament.

There ARE contexts where authority is given to human beings. But it’s never over another human being. Rather, it has to do with overcoming things like disease, evil spirits and death.

When God created humans, he said “Let them have dominion over…,” and then he lists a bunch of things. What’s not in the list of things humans have dominion over is other humans. This pattern holds throughout the entire biblical story. If you ever think you’re reading that, just remember the language you’re reading doesn’t mean that.

In his book 58:0: How Christ Leads Through the One Anothers, author Jon Zens says this about authority in a church…

Church history reveals that early on “authority” was disjoined from Christ and put into the hands of men whose driving force was to control people using fear, threats and coercion—and to keep them under their thumbs. The history of authority in the visible church has left a bloody trail of carnage and death. Whenever the aroma of the foot-washing Christ is snuffed out, power-hungry church leaders will fill the religious vacuum.  Authority comes from Christ, and is expressed through each and every part of His Bride, for Christ is in them with life.

“Head” doesn’t mean “chief decision-maker”

When it comes to husbands having authority over wives, there’s a common misconception that when biblical authors talk about the man being the “head” of the woman, they mean he’s the “chief decision-maker.”

I read a book called Liberated Through Submission that claims it’s biblical that a man’s role in the household is the chief decision-maker, and the woman’s role is the submitter. It goes on to say that if the woman respects her husband as the chief decision-maker, the Lord would bless her for submitting to him regardless of the quality of his decisions.

To be fair, the author does not claim the husband has absolute authority that the wife would follow into sin or abuse. But it does claim he can be dead wrong about something and as long as he’s “acting sacrificially,” the woman should submit. (There are plenty of bad decisions that aren’t sinful or abusive. I’ve made many of those.)

This philosophy largely comes from the fact that the word “head” in English translations of the Bible is tricky (as many biblical words are). In our context, we would say things like “the CEO is the head of that company” or “the president is the head of that country.” This carries a final decision-maker connotation with it.

But if you go back to when the writers of the Bible were using the Greek word that got translated into “head” (kephale), they didn’t actually think that part of your body was the chief decision-making part. They thought your gut was. They weren’t really wrong, were they?! How many times do we make decisions with our gut and then our head justifies it? If you study any marketing psychology, you will learn it’s all the time.

Since the authors of the text thought that way, if you assume the word “head” means chief decision-maker, you’re already starting on the wrong foot when you go to read about marriage relationships.

If you look deeply into it, the overwhelming sense of kephale is “source” or “origin.” Where does a river come from? Where it starts. The head of the river is where the origin of the flow comes from.

In every way this word is used, it indicates an organic/relational setting.

The husband as the “source”

Adam was not the authority over Eve. He was the origin of the flow of life in the sense that Eve was taken out of him. If you look at the pre-Fall language, you find “He gave THEM dominion” and “he called THEM adam.”

Psalm 118 talks about Christ as the chief cornerstone of a building. This is architectural picture. Christ is something to build on.

In John 15, Jesus says “I am the vine, you are the branches – abide in Me and you will bear fruit.” You are connected to Christ and His life is flowing into you.

Many people use 1 Corinthians 11 to support this idea of a husband being in authority over a wife where Paul writes…

But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ…For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake.

But they fail to address his conclusion in verses 11 and 12 of mutuality…

However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as the woman originated from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God.

This church in Corinth had written a letter to Paul asking a bunch of questions, including about man/woman relationships, before he wrote this response. Many scholars believe the first section above was Paul quoting back to the Corinthians their philosophy before responding with the conclusion of mutuality.

The literary style or format of “You said this, but I say to you this” when making a point was a common practice back then. Jesus did it in the Sermon on the Mount, for example.

So Paul is basically saying (my paraphrase)…

Yeah, I get what you’re saying. You live in this honor/shame culture where men and elevated above women and you’re justifying that by using logical reasoning that concludes men are in charge because a man came first in the creation story. But the creation story isn’t about who’s in charge, it’s about a flow of life. God is the ultimate supply and origin of Life. That Life flows and supplies the man, which then flows and supplies the woman.

So is there an order to that? Yes. But it’s not an authoritative picture. It’s a picture of flow.

Making a man the chief decision-maker is actually cutting off the flow of life in a marriage.

Regarding gender relationships specifically, Zens says…

Reflect on Ephesians 5:21-22 for a moment. First, Paul told all believers to mutually submit to one another. Then he said, “Wives to your own husbands.” There is no verb, so one must draw it from verse 21—“wives [submit] to your own husbands.”  Then it is stated that Christ is the “Head” of the ekklesia, and that the husband is the “head” of the wife. Does a military, chain-of-command, “authority over” picture fit here?  The image is organic and relational. Just as Christ is the Source of the ekklesia, so the husband as the source is to cherish and nourish his wife.

A nourishing flow of life

So we can see that the role of any leader in a church or a home is not to be a chief decision-maker, but a nourishing flow of life. Being in charge is actually doing the opposite.

Christ as Head doesn’t force anything on us. He invites us to be His partners and abide in Him and receive and live by His flow of Life.

A godly church leader is one who abides in Christ at a high level and expresses that flow of Life to the rest of the members.

A godly husband is one who abides in Christ at a high level and expresses that flow of Life to his wife.

A godly wife is one who receives that flow of Life from her husband and returns it to him.