What Does Scripture Teach On Male Headship and Equality of Men and Women?

Introduction:

    Last week (June 7-13, 2026), The Southern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. In such meetings there are proposals voted upon and resolutions made that express Southern Baptist opinions and concerns on current issues. One such matter, which has been a major discussion for years in SBC life had to do with whether men alone ought to be Senior Pastors, ordained pastoral staff, and Elders. , Bishops, as well as Pastoral staff; or whether such offices ought to include women as well. 

    The resolution put forward by Al Mohler Jr. and passed by a 75% affirmative vote on June 13, 2026. Readers may access the entire resolution here On the Office and Function of Pastor/Elder/Overseer - SBC.net. What I want to is outline why I whole heartily agreed with this amendment. 

    To the point: what does the Scripture teach on male headship and equality of men and women? Is male headship in head-on collision with maintaining equal dignity of men and women? To answer such questions, we need to keep before us four lenses when discussing a Christian worldview of gender roles in marriage and the local church: Biological lens, Theological lens, Ecclesiological lens, and an Eschatological lens. 

Biological lens to define "maleness" and "femaleness".

    Genesis 1:26 states: "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." We could define gender as follows: a God-given property (i.e. characteristic which makes a thing what it is) in the biological design, nature, and purpose of humanity. Gender makes possible relationships, marriage, reproduction, creativity, and illustration of God’s purposes revealed in Jesus. The Biblical understanding of gender is expressed as God’s gift in the BFM 2000: “The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God’s creation.” 

    Masculinity and femininity points to the creative expression of God Himself (see Genesis 1:26-28). For humans, the terms "assigned gender" and "gender identity" are not two independent categories as secularists contend. Rather, they are mutually dependent. Gender’s basis is biological. Even the secular American Psychological Association (APA) recognizes this point by its definition of gender: “gender refers to the attitudes, feelings and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person's biological sex.” 

    Gender expression refers to how culture views what is appropriate to each gender. The SBC ERLC (Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission) notes: 

"So, on the one hand, our gender is given (Gen. 1). And, on the other hand, the particular expression it takes varies culturally and relationally." 1

    It is this first lens that Christians use to affirm that men and women are equal in God's sight as it pertains to bearing His image as individuals and as a collective species (Genesis 5:1; 9:5-6).2 

Theological lensing reveals the complementary roles of men and women while maintaining their equality of dignity.

    Biology and the image of God showed the equal dignity men and women have before God. To say "theological lensing" means to draw together the relevant Biblical passages and doctrinal development into a coherent systematic expression of doctrines that flesh out details on a given subject (like what we're currently discussing). 

    When we apply the theological lensing of Scripture, we begin to not only see this continued equality of men and women on the one hand, but also their distinct roles on the other hand. The doctrine of creation revealed that Adam was to transmit God's revelation of Himself and commands on how to live in the Garden to His wife (Genesis 2:16-17). This headship of Adam was a covenant headship, meaning he bore the responsibility to love, cherish, and lead his wife in godliness while clinging to her in preference over his parents (Genesis 2:24-25; 1 Timothy 2:14-15). 

    The spiritual headship of the man over his wife was not to be a tyrannical headship, but a protective, cherishing, and nurturing one where he and her would exercise dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26-28; Matthew 19:4-6). 

    From the doctrine of creation we come next to the doctrine of redemption. God's relationship with His people, whether Old Testament Israel or the New Testament church, was to be illustrated by the husband and wife relationship. God the Father redeemed the Israelite people to be as a wife unto Him (Ezekiel 16; Hosea 2). He redeemed them (Exodus 12-15), provided for them (Deuteronomy 8), loved them (Deuteronomy 7:7-8), and pledged His covenant love to them (Genesis 12:1-7; 2 Samuel 7:13-16; Jeremiah 31:31-34). 

    In the New Testament, we find that the Father had a bride in mind, the church, as a love gift to the Son from all eternity (John 17:6; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2; Revelation 9:7-10). The headship of Christ over His church is asserted in the metaphor of marriage (Ephesians 5:22-33). Christ as the head of the church is in His humanity a co-heir with His church (Romans 8:14-17; Revelation 20:6; Revelation 21:2, 22-27; 22:17). Thus, we see the headship of the husband and the equality of husbands and wives expressed by this theological lensing.

Ecclesiological lensing of men and women in the local church.

    Ecclesiology is that area of Bible doctrine that studies the nature, offices, and life of the local church and the church the world-over. Without those first two lenses (biological and theological lensing), the whole matter of male headship in the pastoral office would appear as it does to uninformed people: arbitrary, bigoted, and random.3 The equal dignity of each gender and the complementary roles each have is necessary to maintain the overall Biblical understanding of leadership and life in the local church. 

    When Christ came to redeem men and women, He recovered the equality of dignity and complementarity of the genders as Divinely envisioned. His incarnation as a man affirmed the Divine desire to redeem men who with Adam were responsible for the entry of sin into the world and on the human species (Romans 5:12-21). 

    Christ as the Second Adam in earthly ministry elevated  women to their original equality of dignity with men, treating them with respect, honor, love, and giving to them areas of service (Luke 10:38-42; Mark 10:9). Outside of the pastoral and elder offices in the local church, women can serve as missionaries and in any non-ordained office in the church. Although women are not allowed to exercise authority of Biblical teaching over men (1 Timothy 2:15), they nonetheless can exercise their gifts and teach God's Word to women who need uplifted and discipled (Titus 2:3-4).

    The foregoing Scriptural teaching stands behind why in the local church, the leadership of Pastors, Elders, and ordained staff is to be men (1 Timothy 2:12; 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). This is not bigotry, but rather God's original plan to convey the Lordship of Christ over His church and God's authority over creation.4  This same pattern holds what is true of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:22-33).  

    The dignity of women in the church and congregation is also asserted by the Bible's teaching on women in the local church. In the resolution I mentioned earlier "On the Office and Function of Pastor/Elder/Overseer", one of its "whereas" statements summarizes well this point with prooftexts:

"WHEREAS, Scripture teaches that women are equally created in the image of God, gifted by the Holy Spirit for meaningful service, and valuable in the work of the church (Genesis 1:27; Acts 2:17-18; 1 Corinthians 11:5, 12; Titus 2:3-5)."

Eschatological lensing points to where redeemed men and women will spend eternity with the Lord Jesus Christ.

    Eschatology is the Biblical, doctrinal study of "last things", which includes life after death, Heaven and Hell, Christ's return to earth, His Kingdom, final judgment, and the New Heavens and New Earth. Popularly called "Bible Prophecy", eschatology reminds us that the Gospel not only deals with the past and sin, but it also holds the promise of what God will accomplish in bringing about His redemption of the cosmos and the completion of the salvation of all who have trusted in Christ by faith (1 Corinthians 15:23-28; 1 Thessalonians 5; 2 Peter 3; Revelation 4-20). 

    Passages such as Revelation 19:7-10 reveal Christ's return to earth with Christians as His "Bride", for whom He had already rewarded for their faithfulness to Him in this life (see also Romans 14:10; 1 Corinthians 3:10-15; 2 Corinthians 5:10). The "Bride of Christ" theme is as much a redemptive truth pictured by marriage (Ephesians 5:22-33) as it is an eschatological reality in the ages to come (Revelation 21:1-2).5 

Closing thoughts:

    In today's post I aimed to give four lenses through which we can grasp the Biblical teaching on male headship and equality of men and women. These two ideas are not contradictory but complementary truths. Biologically, God had from creation made men and women equal in dignity. Theologically, we saw through the doctrines of creation, redemption, and Christ's incarnation that the genders are equal image bearers and distinctly assigned roles that fulfill God's original design for creation and salvation. The ecclesiological lens or "church-wise" view of things reminded us that male-only pastoral leadership and that of Elders model the foundational truths of our biological and theological understandings of humanity from the Bible. Then eschatologically, we're reminded of how such teaching telegraphs God's ultimate plan to bring about the New Heavens and New Earth for His redeemed people. This, I hope, has clearly conveyed the Biblical teaching on male headship and equality of men and women. 

Endnotes:

1. God's image refers to the spiritual, rational, and relational properties that uniquely makes a human being human, created and endowed by their Maker, who imprinted such uniqueness into the biology and psychology of each human being.

2. To blur the distinctions between biological gender and the expressions of it leads to the confusing psychological condition known as “gender dysphoria”. Since gender is a biological property, a person cannot choose their gender, since it is inherent to who they are as a person. Put another way, it is invalid to say that gender is somehow obtained by psychologically identifying with a different gender, since it blurs “what kind of human being one is” versus “what they would feel better in being”.  

2. I have noticed over the decades that those who argue for an "egalitarian" model of church leadership, which asserts that the pastoral office is serviceable by women as well as men, typically do not devote attention to those first two lenses.

4. Binary patterns such as these safeguard God's people against the tendency of secular and paganized systems to erase such patterns. This pattern of male spiritual leadership in the church returns us to the creational pattern of male spiritual leadership originally in the Garden and in marriage.

5. The male headship of Christian marriage and male pastoral leadership in the local church telegraph this potent eschatological / prophetic reality. When Christ came, He introduced the forthcoming Kingdom of God in preview form (Mark 1:15). Each local church is to function as an embassy of Christ's coming kingdom, composed of born-again ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:18-21). The equal dignity of men and women who are co-sharers of the vision of God through Christ in the New Heavens and New Earth is also to be conveyed in marriage and the local church.