Your Husband is Not Your Priest
One of the benefits of being involved in an immigrant community like my own is that we have the wonderful opportunity to attend many weddings. As some of you may know, I hit my own PR for weddings attended in a single year back in 2022 when I made it to 22 by the end of December!
It’s a joy and an honor to get to attend these lovely events, and the joy is multiplied as those closest to me have gotten a chance to walk down the aisle too.
One upside of these occasions has been that I have heard quite a lot of different sermons on the subject of marriage. However there is one phrase that I’ve noticed has become more popular over the years.
Interestingly, I’ve never heard a preacher repeat this phrase when preaching in Romanian. It seems to be an English phrase that our preachers must have picked up on as a result of American Christian cultural influence, as I tend to hear it mostly in our English sermons.
At first I thought it was pretty innocuous until a married friend of mine pointed it out to me. He asked, “is a husband really the priest of his household?”. And that question really got my wheels turning.
The phrase we often hear is “the Husband is the priest of the family”. At first glance it sounds like a great little slogan because it’s used to affirm male headship in the family. Preachers will usually pull it out as an encouragement (or admonishment!) for men to buck up and take authority and responsibility in the home.
I fully affirm complimentarian theology, but there has to be a better way we can promote and encourage male headship in marriage and the family without going into biblical error.
Let’s Put on our Thinking Caps
To start off any discussion on this subject it’s useful to define terms.
John Piper has a wonderful definition of headship that goes like this:
“Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home. ” (1)
In our case, the priesthood referred to in our popular wedding phrase harkens back to the Levitical priesthood that ran and operated temple services before the destruction of the temple. According to Mosaic law, they primarily served two functions:
1. To keep the people faithful to God by acting as intermediaries, as demonstrated in Exod 28:12, 29–30
2. To help the people make atonement for their sins in light of their apostasy, as demonstrated in Leviticus (Lev 4:20–6:7; 8:34; 17:11; 19:22; 10:10–11; Fretheim, Pentateuch, 123).” (2)
The Israelites served a Holy God who could not be approached directly, so God put up systems in place so that he could dwell with his people, but he could not be approached directly by his people. Although there were many priests who worked in the temple, there was only one high priest who would be able to enter into the Holy of Holies and make atonement for all the people once a year. (3)
Because we’re all good Bible students we also know that this system was just a pale foreshadow of the perfect system that Jesus Christ would inaugurate at his death and resurrection.
So that leads me to the two main points I want to draw up to refute the idea of male priesthood, namely:
There is only one High Priest
Each year a high priest was chosen to go into the Holy of Holies and to offer up a sacrifice for the sins of the people. But no animal could ever fully pay the penalty of sin, the ritual had to be repeated year after year.
That is, until the perfect Lamb came along and gave his life as a ransom for ours.
If you open up Hebrews chapter 6 and continue to 10, they are a great Bible study into how Jesus has now become our eternal High Priest. No other sacrifice will ever need to be made, his was sufficient for all time.
The old high priest would also do his best to ensure that people would stay faithful in their covenant to God and act as the intermediary between him and his people. But Jesus Christ has now come along and sealed us by his blood. He has forever reconciled us to the Father, and he himself is our intermediary.
1 John 2:1, Romans 8:34, and Hebrews 7:25 all point to one thing: Jesus Christ intercedes for us directly.
No man can stand as our intermediary, our intercessor, or our atoner.
It is Jesus Christ alone who does this work for us.
2. We are the Priesthood of Believers
“…you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 2:5, ESV
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 1 Peter 2:9, ESV
In his letter, Peter outlines for us how we carry the shadow of the old priesthood into the New Covenant, and how Jesus radically opened up the doors for all of us to be included.
Where there was a temple in Israel, we are all now God’s temple (1 Cor. 3:16). Where there was a whole system of priests who carried out the duties and sacrifices at the temple, we are all now his priests carrying out the duties of the Kingdom around the world at large. Instead of sacrificing animals, we offer up our own bodies as living sacrifices to Jesus Christ (Rom 12:1). We even intercede on behalf of others in prayer as the priests of old did, lifting them and their needs up before God. (4)
This job is one that we all, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or age are called to carry out to the glory of God. This job is not just the job for one husband, but for the entire Bride of Christ.
Like I mentioned earlier, I have nothing against male headship in the family—each man has a great call over his life: to imitate Jesus Christ, to love his wife as Christ loves the church, and to raise young disciples who will carry forth the Kingdom of God into adulthood.
….
But let’s not let a nice sounding phrase get in the way of good theology.
Food for thought!
Footnotes:
(1) John Piper, This Momentary Marriage, pg. 80
(2) Charles Meeks, “Priesthood,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
(3) Mary B. MacFarlane, “High Priest,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
(4) Ronald Rolheiser, Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity, pg. 177-178.
