1 Corinthians 11:3

3. Head of every man Of every Christian, says Grotius. Yet in the redemption Christ has a headship of the race. See notes on Romans 5:12-21. Here, however, as a harmonious ruling and obeyed headship is implied, Grotius’s limitation is correct. Of every man, by Paul addressed, the Head was Christ.

The headship of our Lord over the Christian man is a headship of divine authority, in which, however, when complete and perfect, the authority merges into a blessed spontaneity and concurrence of wills. Such is the apostle’s view of marriage, of which the union of Christ and his Church is the type. A divinely-constituted headship similarly belongs to the husband in the family; but the true idea of the family is a unity of love, in which the command is the expression of the common happiness, and obedience is a loving concurrence of wills. If the realization of the idea is seldom complete, that is true of all sublunary constitutions, arising from the jars of sin.

The man That to the masculine side of humanity (as of all other living races of beings) belongs the force, the executive endowment, and the consequent headship, is plain to every eye that looks at male and female through all animated nature as they are created. It is shown in every quality of their respective human frames. Size of brain and body; strength of bone, fibre, and nerve; tendencies of instinct, feeling, and will; all proclaim that man should bear the brunt of the battle of life, and, therefore, must plan the campaign and order the particular manoeuvres. To talk of equality here contradicts God and nature. It is one of “the rights of woman,” as it is one of the instincts, to retire to the rear of the fight, and live under the protection of a stronger arm than her own. It is one of her “rights” to lean on that arm for aid, and to look to that head to plan for her well-being.

And to this it is the noblest instinct of man that responds. It is the thought of wife and children, rather than thought of self, that prompts the soldier to the fiercest bravery, or the labourer to his cruelest toil. He can bear any thing; but how subject the tender ones at home to hardship, disgrace, or disgusts. To win for her at home honour, ornament, and happiness, is the crown of his own enjoyments. The whole history of civilization shows that the robust thought and toil are man’s. The pyramids, the temples, the capitoliums, the city walls and towers, the aqueducts and bridges, the railways and telegraphs, are all the products of man’s hand and brain. The battles by him are fought, and by consequence to him belong (save in exceptional instances) the diplomacies, the senates, the cabinets, and the executive chairs. In short, to man belongs, by nature and by God, the national as well as the domestic rule. If in a free government woman should ever possess the right of suffrage, it would be (like her consent or her veto in accepting or rejecting an offered husband) rather the particular right to choose her ruler than a power to rule.