“The Case for Christ: - Kingdom/God: Equality/Headship” 

Before His death, Jesus instructed His servants in their work of promoting His kingdom after His ascension to bring forth ‘treasures new and old.’ 

How did He illustrate this in His own life?

As an example for His disciples, He had shown them how He and His Father worked harmoniously during His earthly mission.

And that harmony was the God-designed life that must characterize those living in His Kingdom.

For it, He made two assertions that operates the Kingdom of God aright.

The first was His equality with God the Father, a truth which we will term a ‘treasure old’ since it is an old eternal truth.

And the second was the Headship of God true in Jesus’ earthly life. That we will term ‘treasure new’.

It is this combination of ‘headship’ with ‘equality’, in the kingdom of God, that embraces the thought of God’s heart from the beginning: that reciprocal interchange of relationship with His people.

Of course, it is impossible to adequately measure the experience of Heaven with our low levels of understanding.

We have yet to learn the ‘vocabulary of Heaven’ so our knowledge is limited except for what we can glean from the Scripture itself under the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

And, so, the best way to examine this is to see it in terms of God the Father’s relationship to His Son during His Son’s earthly ministry.

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Let us start, then, by first going over to 1 Cor 11:3, which reads: ‘Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.’ 

Here, Paul characterized the headship formula instituted by God. 

When we think of someone as ‘head’ over another, it is far too easy to think in terms of superiority over inferiority.

That is the common, human way of seeing this. But it certainly is not the divine way! 

In Jn 5:18, Jesus had given the Jewish authorities quite a jolt when He made Himself equal with God the Father.

But, all through the Scriptures, this was foretold of the coming Messiah. 

Micah, for example, in Micah 5:2, told of ‘His goings forth’ that ‘have been from of old, from everlasting...’.

Although it was generally missed by the authorities, there was, and is, no question that Christ is God and equal to His Father.

So, of course, He was not inferior to God. His equality with God was a ‘treasure old’ that Jesus had revealed.

How, then, can the phrase ‘the head of Christ is God’ be understood?

God as ‘Head’ was because of the unparalleled, inner, deep relationship - His heavenly-mindedness - that Jesus had with His Father.

It was a oneness so intrinsic and so intimate and so loving that the Son did not act independently from God His Father.

In fact, Jesus said of Himself: ‘...The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do; for what things so ever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

For the Father loveth the Son and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth;...’ (Jn 5:19-20)

From eternity, Jesus was always One with His Father.

And when He assumed His redemptive mission for which He left His eternal throne, He and His Father walked along in a continuing, harmonious communion together.

It was a relationship in which there was a reliance on one another, an interdependence for completing the mission.

A loving intimacy and a sharing mission - those two elements were always merged in accordance with the equality that had been from the beginning.

At the same time, Jesus emptied Himself, by abdicating His divine place, and walked, as a servant, in a walk of faith that had the corresponding restraints that went along with it.

As Jesus forged His way through His earthly mission, His ‘heavenly-mindedness’ opened for Him the windows of heaven to ‘see’ the Father ‘doing’. 

And what His Father did in the heavenly realm of thought and action, Jesus did likewise upon the earth.

That is how One they were with one another!

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Then, also, connected with this loving intimacy and this sharing mission, was the power and authority God gave to Jesus.

In Jn 5:21-22, Jesus spoke of this: ‘For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.

For the Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:...’

God gave Him, on the basis of equality with Him, the same power He had. 

And, to add to that, because ‘God is Judge of all the earth’ (Gen 18:25), God also committed ‘...all judgment to His Son.’

So - His Father gave Jesus the power to ‘quicken whom He will’ along with the authority to judge. 

And, since He was given equal power and equal judgeship, He also should receive equal honor, as John 5:23 continues on:

‘...all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father...’. 

These attributes were all from above; they were eternal; they were all of heaven. 

And all the power and all the authority and all the honor given Him by His Father only fortified and shielded His equality with His Father.

He did not use His power and authority given Him out from Himself.

Everything Jesus was and did, in His equality with God and with the Headship of God, corresponded to the Eternal.

It is in the passage found in Lu 10:21-22, where Jesus, seen rejoicing in His spirit as He is praying to His Father, said: ‘...All things - all things are delivered to Me of My Father; (a resounding equality here) and no man knoweth Who the Son is, but the Father; and Who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him.’ 

All through His earthly life, Jesus responded to this one eternal truth of equality in the heavenly-mindedness of His earthly being.

He had abdicated all that was rightfully His to become a ‘servant’ in an interdependence with His Father.

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Perhaps one of the best Scriptural examples of this equality/headship pattern is seen in David.

No human being is deity, of course, but David identified fully with God when he was king of Israel. And, in that sense, he is considered a type of Christ in the Old Testament.

David, as great and as powerful as he was, identified with God by calling Him his Shield, his Refuge, his Tower, his Horn of Salvation, his Savior.

His kingship had been given to him by God. It was divinely ordained - a fact David well knew which thrust him into that interdependence and reliance upon the divine covenant.   

He considered himself so one with God as he said of Him: ‘...He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation and all my desire...’. (2 Sam 23:5)

In the heavenly-mindedness of his being as king, he ministered to God throughout his entire life. 

The psalms he wrote verify that his thinking, acting, and doing were from God’s vantage point - from that outlook of life - except for the times of giving in to his lust.

But even then, he submitted to God in a loving, reciprocal interchange as he responded to Jehovah’s Headship in all matters. 

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Now - how does the ‘equality/headship’ pattern Jesus laid out apply to God’s people?

I have already said that this kind of harmony must characterize the people of God living in His kingdom.

Jesus showed, by example, how life in the ‘equality’ and ‘headship’ operates.

It was one of the ways of ordering and establishing the government of His peace with justice.

When He took the ‘treasure new’ of divine Headship - and the ‘treasure old’ of divine equality - He demonstrated that equality with headship in the kingdom of God does not make one inferior and the other superior.

Nor does it diminish or lower one’s standing before God anymore than it diminished or lowered Christ.

No - each receives honor just as ‘all men honor the Son even as they honor God.’

Each stands equal in dignity before Him and before one another in Christ, the Head, where there is neither ‘Jew not Greek...bond nor free...male nor female...’ but all have been made ‘children of God in Christ Jesus.’

As each submits to Him, it becomes the pattern that changes the believer’s ‘earthly-mindedness’ to a ‘heavenly-mindedness.’

In every relationship the Christian has - the relationship between spouses and family members, between members of the church community, between members of the community-at-large, between those contacts at his workplace, between all other contacts - the Christian sees everything in the light of Christ - in the light of Christ and His eternal glory.

He - in us - is the ‘Life’ of our lives and the ‘Master-Light’ of all our seeing and knowing. 

Yes - then, if we have any true knowledge of Jesus Christ, it will be growing every day that we live.

It is in this heavenly-mindedness - that is, in thinking, acting, and doing from God’s vantage point - that the whole outlook of life takes on a new focus.

Just as Christ stood in His relationship to God, so each believer stands in his relationship to Christ.

This stand securely hides, fortifies, and shields every believer with Christ in God. 

Do you know that your very being is merged with Christ toward completing God’s purpose on earth?

We should know that - and we will - when our reliance upon Him is in a loving, reciprocal interchange!

This is the pattern Jesus cut for God’s people living in God’s kingdom.

It is the pattern that completes the one revelation God has given of Himself.

Our thoughts all point to this one lesson: that Christ, when He and His Word dwells in us richly, our earthly mindedness turns to a heavenly-mindedness.

And that heavenly mindedness bows to His Headship as it ministers His power and judgment to live the God-designed life. 

With this, I will stop for tonight.

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But - in closing, turn in your Bibles to Col 3, and follow through with me, starting with verse one.

I hope you will take the opportunity to read this passage through several times this week and let the Holy Spirit minister it to your hearts.
  
Col 3 starting at v 1: ‘If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.’  Why? 

‘For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
When Christ, Who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.

Mortify therefore your members...’, and then Paul listed them and reminded them of God’s attitude toward those things and how they once walked in them.

Then, in v 8, Paul went on to say: ‘But now ye also put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

Lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him:

Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.

Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

And above all these things, put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.’ 

Amen.