What does the glory and image of God look like in a man in a feminized world?

Sam Waldron explains that it involves leadership. It involves protection of the family, providing for the family, and presiding over the family. Men are not called to be passive but to be intentional leaders. 

When we talk about servant leadership, we are not referring to men not leading at all or passive leaders. Rather, men should be cognizant of the needs of those below him and are accountable to others and have mentors present in their lives. 

1 Peter 3:7 (NKJV) - "Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered."

Well, what does the glory and image of God look like in a man in a feminized world? This is a really important question in our day and Let me begin by saying that it looks like leadership When I talk about leadership, I do mean a position of authority, but that kind of puts it in a harsh kind of way. Of course it's a position of authority, but it's a position of authority that involves presiding over the family and the wife, involves protecting the family and the wife, it involves providing for the family and the wife. All of these dimensions of headship come out in Paul's great statement about feminine submission and male headship in marriage in Ephesians chapter 5, 22 and following. And so it looks like the man being assertive and exercising godly assertiveness, not for his own benefit or glory, it looks like the man doing that for the sake of giving leadership and specifically protection and provision for his wife and family.

And this means it looks like not sitting there and being passive, it looks like rather his moving forward and leadership. Now I just got done teaching at a marriage conference and this needs to be understood very carefully. One of the things that needs to be understood is that there's a real position of authority or leadership here. This gets qualified away in so many ways in our day and age that we need to emphasize That when we talk about servant leadership and that language gets tossed around We're not talking about non leadership leadership What we're talking about leadership is that is leadership for the sake of the good of those being led Paul makes very clear to in 1st Corinthians 11 that this leadership and headship that man exercises is different than God's headship. God's headship looks like sovereign independence.

God's headship looks like he doesn't need us, which is the truth. He doesn't need us. He's the independent transcendent creator, perfectly happy, perfectly complete, without us and creation whatsoever. But that is not the kind of headship that man exercises in the home. Paul goes on to emphasize this when he emphasizes that man is dependent on the woman, even as the woman is dependent on the man.

And so there's a while there's a real order in the home of male headship, there's also a mutual dependence and interdependence in the kind of headship a man exercises. There are very real ways in which he is dependent on the woman. The old saying, if mama isn't happy, ain't nobody happy, is really, really true because the happiness of the man greatly depends on the happiness of the woman. And his success in many other things depends on her executing well and performing well her own responsibilities and duties. So we have to understand male headship and male and godly assertiveness within the context of understanding that it is not a sovereignly independent kind of headship that God exercises.

It's a kind of headship that is consistent with the kind of dependence on the woman that he leads. One of the other things about this whole matter of headship that needs to be understood and grows directly out of what I've been saying is that headship does not mean that the man is like God and that he doesn't ever need a counselor. One of the glories of God is that he needs no counselor. Well, If a man thinks that someone's saying of him that he needs no counselor or never sought counsel, you think that's glorifying to him or that's some sort of compliment. That's completely wrong because only God is the one who needs no counselor.

Men do need counsel. What a part of headship then because men are not omniscient, because men do not know everything past, present, and future like God, is that this headship needs to be exercised by listening to not only the wife, but to godly counsel and to the word of God as well in the way that headship is exercised. But after knowing who he is and listening in the way he needs to, to gain the wisdom and information that he needs as a basis for his leadership, then the man needs to make decisions. And he needs to make decisions and move in a godly and assertive way forward to lead his family. There may be delay and there may be deferring, but delaying and deferring are not dithering and there needs to be decisive leadership after the man understands what that leadership needs to do by way of listening to the needs of his wife.

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