For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Ephesians 5:23

This one verse has been a pivotal point of controversy in the Church but much of the controversy comes from a misunderstanding of one word— “head.”  Paul uses the Greek word “kephale” but we get stuck when we think of the English word head—we think it means “boss.”  When I was co-founding chapter of an international Christian women’s group in Texas and going through leadership training, our team was  told, “We don’t want bosses here, we want leaders.”  And as it turns out, the word kephale has no relationship to boss or even leader though Paul could have chosen one that did—but he didn’t; he and the Holy Spirit knew what they were doing!

Here is a list of what kephale DOES NOT mean: headmaster, head of a family, head of state, head of the clan, head of the household, headman, principal or supreme—all of these come from words other than kephale.  The word simply means that which sits on one’s shoulders—a physical head with eyes, nose, mouth and ears, or it can mean a head of garlic (I don’t think he meant that!) or LIFE.*  So when you read Ephesians 5:23 with the definition of “life”, it would say, “For the husband is the life of the wife as Christ is the life of the church”  Wow!  That makes a difference!  It fits the context of the verse is of husbands laying down their lives for their wives, loving and nurturing them—not ruling them.

* www.perseus.tufts.edu: Liddell,Scott; Georg Autenrieth, A Homeric Dictionary;

www.uchicago.edu Woodhouse’s English Greek Dictionary