The Truth War (24 page)

If the husband's role as head in a marriage relationship involves any degree of authority over the wife, the feminist and egalitarian approach to gender relationships is biblically untenable. Evangelical feminists have therefore long insisted that the word “head” in Ephesians 5:23 means nothing more than “source.” They suggest that it means the husband is to be a loving protector to the wife, but it does not grant him any particular leadership responsibility over her. Marriage is an absolutely equal partnership, they say, with neither husband nor wife having any kind of authority over the other.

But the headship of Christ is so linked to the headship of the husband in Ephesians 5, that if the husband's role is divested of authority, Christ's authority over the church is likewise diminished. As a matter of fact, in 1 Corinthians 11:3, Paul even links the idea of headship to the relationship of authority and submission between the Father and the Son within the Trinity: “I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” So in the same way Christ voluntarily submitted Himself to His Father's will (John 6:38), wives are commanded to submit themselves to their husbands, and the church is to submit to Christ (Ephesians 5:24).

CHRIST IS THE ONE
TRUE HEAD OF THE
CHURCH, AND WHATEVER
INTERFERES WITH HIS
HEADSHIP HAS THE
SEEDS OF APOSTASY IN IT.
CONVERSELY, EVERY
FORM OF APOSTASY IS
AN IMPLICIT DENIAL
OF “THE ONLY LORD
GOD AND OUR
LORD JESUS CHRIST”
(JUDE 4) AND IS
THEREFORE A FORM
OF REBELLION AGAINST
THE CHURCH'S
ONE TRUE HEAD.

The notion that headship involves no idea of leadership or authority is entirely without linguistic support. The Greek word translated “head” in Ephesians 5 is
kephale.
In 1985 Wayne Grudem began an exhaustive study of that word and its usage in ancient Greek literature. He examined 2,336 occurrences of the word, beginning with Homer in the eighth century BC and ranging to the church fathers in the fourth century. He found that whenever the word is used of a person (as opposed to the cranial appendage), it always speaks of someone in a position of authority. Nowhere in any extant Greek literature does the word ever mean “source” without any notion of authority.
⁵

That is how Scripture uses the word too. Jesus' role as Head of the church is inseparable from His position as Lord over all (Philippians 2:9–11). Paul told the Ephesians: “He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church” (Ephesians 1:20–22). So Christ is given to the church
as
“head over all things.” Or, as a different version renders verse 22, “God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church” (NIV). It is for the church's sake that Christ is Lord of all, and it is in that very capacity that He has been given to the church as its true and sovereign Head. To interpret headship in a way that eliminates the idea of authority is to empty the idea of its true significance.

WHO MADE CHRIST HEAD?

Ephesians 1 also makes it clear that Christ's headship over the church is at the very heart of His Father's eternal purpose. God the Father planned and orchestrated the entire plan of redemption as a way of exalting His Son as Lord of all creation. In fact, everything God is doing in the universe ultimately pivots on His plan to make Christ Lord over all and give Him as Lord to be the church's loving Head. As Paul describes it, God's electing purpose, all the work of salvation, the resurrection of Christ, the glorification of His physical body, and His final exaltation to the right hand of God all culminate in this objective: that all things would be put under His feet, and that in His capacity as Lord of all, He would be Head of the church and the church would be His body and bride.

Notice the multiple ways Paul underscores Christ's authority as supreme and sovereign Lord over all. He says that God has “seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named” (Ephesians 1:20–21). That authority applies “not only in this age but also in that which is to come” (v. 21). It is absolute supremacy in every sense. Not only are all things put under Christ's feet (v. 22), but He also “fills all in all” (v. 23).

So the church's Head is ordained to be the consummate authority in all the universe by God the Father Himself. This is the ultimate expression of the Father's eternal love for His only begotten Son. He did not give an archangel like Michael or Gabriel to be head of the church. He didn't establish an earthly priesthood to mediate the headship of the church either. But by God the Father's own decree, Christ alone is Head of the church, and all others must fall on their knees before Him.

Colossians 1:18 settles every question about the relationship of Christ's authority as Lord to His headship over the church. There Paul says, “He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.” First place belongs to Him. Nowhere should that be truer and more clearly evident than in the church, where His people openly submit to Him as Lord. Christ is the
only
proper and legitimate Head of the church. No king, no pope, and no politician has any right to usurp the title or pretend to occupy the office.

That also means earthly church leaders are undershepherds who are to serve the Great Shepherd. No one has the prerogative to fabricate his own doctrine, devise his own self-serving agenda, or invent his own novel idea of what the church should be. Christ alone is the church's true Head, and only those who recognize His authority and bow to it unconditionally have any true right to serve as undershepherds to His flock. All the rest are ravenous wolves.

In his commentary on Colossians 2:19, John Calvin perfectly summed up the point of all this: “Should anyone call us anywhere else than to Christ, though in other respects he were big with heaven and earth, he is empty and full of wind: let us, therefore, without concern, bid him farewell. The constitution of the body will be in a right state, if simply the Head, which furnishes the several members with everything that they have, is allowed, without any hindrance, to have the pre-eminence.”
⁶

Apostates and false teachers actually think they are their own masters. Rarely do they admit it, but that is their true perspective. They prove it when they tamper with or attempt to tone down the gospel to make it more acceptable to unbelievers (1 Corinthians 1:22–25). They show it by seeking the approval of men rather than God (Galatians 1:10). They declare it by trying to reinvent the church so that it will be more pleasing to the world (John 15:18–19). All those trends effectively overrule the authority of Scripture in the church—and in that sense, they “deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).

That is no exaggeration. The fact that all those approaches to ministry reflect the dominant philosophy among today's evangelicals is no reason to discount the evil in that way of thinking. On the contrary, it is an urgent reason to be deeply concerned about the future of the evangelical movement, and it ought to serve as a reminder that we had better get back to fighting the war for truth.

The way to begin is by giving Christ His due position of preeminence in the church once more.

8

HOW TO SURVIVE IN AN AGE OF APOSTASY: LEARNING FROM THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

But I want to remind you, though you once knew this . . .

—Jude 5

W
hy do so many evangelicals act as if false teachers in the church could never be a serious problem in
this
generation? Vast numbers seem convinced that they are “rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing—and do not know that [they] are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17).

In reality, the church today is quite possibly
more
susceptible to false teachers, doctrinal saboteurs, and spiritual terrorism than any other generation in church history. Biblical ignorance within the church may well be deeper and more widespread than at any other time since the Protestant Reformation. If you doubt that, compare the typical sermon of today with a randomly chosen published sermon from any leading evangelical preacher prior to 1850. Also compare today's Christian literature with almost anything published by evangelical publishing houses a hundred years or more ago.

Bible teaching, even in the best of venues today, has been deliberately dumbed-down, made as broad and as shallow as possible, oversimplified, adapted to the lowest common denominator—and then tailored to appeal to people with short attention spans. Sermons are almost always brief, simplistic, overlaid with as many references to pop culture as possible, and laden with anecdotes and illustrations. (Jokes and funny stories drawn from personal experience are favored over cross-references and analogies borrowed from Scripture itself.) Typical sermon topics are heavily weighted in favor of man-centered issues (such as personal relationships, successful living, self-esteem, how-to lists, and so on)—to the exclusion of the many Christ-exalting doctrinal themes of Scripture.

In other words, what most contemporary preachers do is virtually the opposite of what Paul was describing when he said he sought “to declare . . . the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Not only that, but here's how Paul explained his own approach to
gospel
ministry, even among unchurched pagans in the most debauched Roman culture:

I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1–5)

Notice that Paul deliberately refused to customize his message or adjust his delivery to suit the Corinthians' philosophical bent or their cultural tastes. When he says later in the epistle, “To the Jews I became as a Jew . . . to those who are without law, as without law . . . to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:20-22), he was describing how he made himself a servant to all (v. 19) and the fellow of those whom he was trying to reach. In other words, he avoided making
himself
a stumbling block. He was
not
saying he adapted the gospel message (which he plainly said
is
a stumbling block—1:23). He did not adopt methods to suit the tastes of a worldly culture.

THE CHURCH TODAY
IS QUITE POSSIBLY
MORE
SUSCEPTIBLE TO FALSE
TEACHERS, DOCTRINAL
SABOTEURS, AND
SPIRITUAL TERRORISM
THAN ANY OTHER
GENERATION IN CHURCH
HISTORY. BIBLICAL
IGNORANCE WITHIN THE
CHURCH MAY WELL BE
DEEPER AND MORE
WIDESPREAD THAN AT
ANY OTHER TIME SINCE
THE PROTESTANT
REFORMATION.

Paul had no thought of catering to a particular generation's preferences, and he used no gimmicks as attention-getters. Whatever antonym you can think of for the word
showmanship
would probably be a good description of Paul's style of public ministry. He wanted to make it clear to everyone (including the Corinthian converts themselves) that lives and hearts are renewed by means of the Word of God and nothing else. That way they would begin to understand and appreciate the power of the gospel message.

By contrast, today's church-growth experts seem to have
no
confidence in Scripture's power. They are convinced the gospel needs to be “contextualized,” streamlined, and revamped anew for every generation. Forty years of that approach has left evangelicals grossly untaught, wholly unprepared to defend the truth, and almost entirely unaware of how much is at stake. The evangelical movement itself has become a monstrosity, its vast size and visibility belying its almost total spiritual failure. One thing is certain: the cumbersome movement that most people today would label “evangelical” is populated with large numbers of people who are on the wrong side in the Truth War.

We are right back in the same situation the church was in a hundred years ago, when modernists were busily reinventing the Christian faith. Far from being a strong voice and a powerful force for the cause of truth, the evangelical movement itself has become the main battleground.

Moreover, the postmodernists who are beginning to dominate the evangelical movement are employing exactly the same strategies, pleading for precisely the same kinds of doctrinal modifications, and even using some of the very same arguments modernists used when they took over the mainline denominations a century ago.