TITLES OF CHRIST
THE HEAD
DR. JIM DIXON
EPHESIANS 4:10-16, JOHN 10:10
FEBRUARY 5, 1989
What animal lives in the ocean, lays eggs, is called a fish but is not a fish, has eyes and a mouth, but incredibly has no head, and rather grossly is able to actually bring its stomach through its mouth and use its stomach to envelop and ensnare its prey?
Well, perhaps you don’t know the answer and perhaps you don’t want to know the answer. But if I told you that this animal was related to the sea cucumber and the sea lily and the sea urchin, and that most of the time this animal had five arm-like extensions that made it resemble a star, then most of you would know that this animal is the starfish.
Zoologists tell us that of all the animals of the world, the starfish is one of the strangest. It’s one of the strangest, simply because it doesn’t have a head, a living organism without a head, a body with no head.
Well the Bible tells us that the church of Jesus Christ is really like a living organism; not so much an organization as an organism, a living organism, and it is called the body of Christ. Unlike the starfish, this body has a head and that head is Jesus Christ Himself, the great Head of the church.
But what does it mean to say that Jesus Christ is the Head? Well, the Greek word in the Bible for head is the word kephale. This word, in addition to its literal reference to a physical head, had three very special meanings. First of all, the word kephale, the word head was used to describe the seat of authority. To say that Jesus Christ is the Head is to say that He sits in the seat of authority.
In the ancient world, in the Greek world, magistrates, rulers, those who sat on thrones were described by this word kephale. They were called heads. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the 12 leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel were all referred to with this word kephale… “heads.” Of course, this word “head” has carried over a similar meaning into our language and culture. We describe those who sit in seats of authority as being heads, whether we’re describing head coaches or heads of state. And there is no doubt that in calling Jesus Christ the Head, there is a reference to His authority in the title. That is why in Colossians, chapter 1, verse 18, we’re told that Jesus Christ “has been given power over all dominions, principalities, and authorities. He is the head in order that in everything, He might be preeminent.”
A little over a year ago I shared a story with the singles in our singles retreat. From time to time I’ve shared this story I’m going to tell you in other places. It’s really one of the strangest events that Barb and I have ever witnessed. It took place many years ago at the LA International Airport. Barb and I were there waiting for a plane to take us back to Denver, and it was the middle of the night. LA International was fogged in. No planes were able to land. No planes were able to take off. We had been waiting for hours and hours. We were tired. Most people were. Some people were getting kind of irritated and suddenly, as I was sort of dozing off, I heard a man shouting. He was yelling, “I want to get on a plane and I want to get on a plane now.”
I looked up and I saw this man shouting at this woman who was behind the counter working there at the airport. I recognized the man because he was one of the elders at the church I used to work at. He was obviously very frustrated and very upset, and he pounded the counter and he said, “I want to get on a plane and I want to get on a plane now.” The woman very graciously, very gently said, “I’m sorry, sir. We can’t put you on a plane. The airport is fogged in. No planes are taking off.”
Well, he reached in his pocket, took out his wallet, reached in his wallet, took out a card, put it down on the counter, and he said, “I work for the United States government and I’m telling you I want to get on a plane and I want to get on a plane now.” She said, “Sir, it really doesn’t matter who you work for. We’re fogged in and I can’t put you on a plane.” Well, it began to anger him and his veins kind of began to kind of stand out in his neck and he pointed to the card and he said, “I told you I work for the United States government. You either get me on an airplane or I’m going to have your job!”
Well, she just smiled a big smile and she said, “Sir, let me tell you, you wouldn’t want to have my job.” Well, this just seemed to anger him all the more. He was red in the face and he pounded the counter again and he said, “I told you I work for the United States government. You either get me on an airplane or I’m going to close this airport down.”
As I said, I knew this man and he did…in better moments he was really a great guy. Obviously under a lot of stress, under a lot of pressure, and he did work for the United States government. But I can tell you, he didn’t have the authority to close down the LA International Airport. But you see, in a time of stress, in a time of incredible pressure, he was claiming an authority he simply didn’t have. I’m sure that’s happened to all of you. All of us have had times when in the midst of stress or in the midst of pressure, we’ve claimed some authority we didn’t have. I’m sure you have all had times where you wished you had an authority that you just don’t have.
But you see, it doesn’t really matter who you are. Everyone in this world has limited authority. We’re all finite. Even if you were the richest man in this world or the richest woman in this world, your authority would be limited. You wouldn’t have the power to protect the people you loved and to preserve them from harm and danger. You still wouldn’t have the authority to ward off disease or ward off cancer. Even in the economic arena of life, your authority would be limited. In our world, the greatest authority we vest in human life is that authority vested in kings and magistrates and those who sit on thrones.
One of the greatest kings who ever lived was Canute. Incredibly, when he was 19 years old, in the year 1016, he conquered England. He sat on the throne of England. One of the greatest kings England has ever had, King Canute was a Viking warrior, tall and blonde, and he was fierce. Of course, he was not only king of England. He ruled England for more than two decades, but he was also king of Denmark and he was king of Norway and he was king of Sweden, and even the King of Scotland was an underling to King Canute. No king of England prior to Canute…no king of England since Canute has ever ruled so much of Europe as he did. Yet he said, “Behold, how small the power of earthly kings.” In that famous moment, as he stood on the beach at Southampton and he commanded the waves to abate and he commanded the sea to withdraw, and the sea came in and enveloped his throne, he said to the masses, “Behold, how small the power of earthly kings.”
You see, most magistrates, most sovereigns, most kings throughout history have acknowledged that their power is finite and their authority limited. That’s been true of all of the presidents of the United States of America. You see, most of the presidents of the United States, from George Washington to George Bush, have actually acknowledged that there is one king above all kings and that one king is Jesus Christ. The Bible says “He is King of Kings.” The Bible says “He is Lord of Lords.” And Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me.” He is the Head of the church. In truth, He is head of all things. But you see, it’s the church. It’s those people, people who belong to the church of Christ. Those are the people who have acknowledged His authority and embraced Him as Head…the seat of authority. But you see this word, kephale, does not simply refer to the concept of authority. It does not simply refer to the seat of authority, but this word also refers to the source of life.
In the Greek world, the word kephale was used to describe the source of life. To say that Jesus Christ is the Head, to say that He is the kephale, in a sense is to say that He is the very source of life. In the Greek world, in the ancient world, when you found a fresh water spring that brought up fresh water from the earth forming a stream or a river, that spring where the fresh water came from, that spring was called the kephale. It was called the head and it was the source of life for the stream or for the river. In some sense, this meaning of head has been carried over into our culture and into our language. We speak of the headwaters of a river because that is the place from which the river derives its source of life.
But you see, in the ancient world and in the Greek world, this word kephale referred to the source of life in a still deeper sense. The Greeks believed that your head physically was the very source of life for your body. The Greeks didn’t really view the heart as the source of life or the center of life, but they viewed the head as the source of life. To sever the head from the body was to cut off all life.
I remember when I was growing up and I would read children’s stories. I remember looking through one book. Of course, it was complete with pictures and it was a Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” I loved that story and I remember looking through the pictures and being totally fascinated as I read about Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman and how scary that Headless Horseman was: kind of a symbol of death, cloaked in black, and a perfect symbol of death because, you see, he had no head and without a head there is no life.
I remember growing as a child, sometimes we would go back to the farm in Missouri, my brothers and my mom and dad. My mom grew up on the farm there. In fact, I still have relatives that live on farms in Missouri, south of the Ozarks, north of Springfield. We would go back there many summers. I always loved it on the farm. You know, I love the food there. I love the fresh vegetables. Somehow, the food just doesn’t taste the same when it’s purchased at stores. I love the fried chicken. I mean, nothing was better than the fried chicken we had on the farm in Missouri. But you see, they didn’t go to the grocery store and buy that chicken. They had their own chickens. They reared chickens there on the farm. You couldn’t eat a chicken unless you killed the chicken.
Now, I don’t mean to gross you out, but I remember going with my grandfather and with my uncle into the chicken coop and watching how they did that. They would pick the bird they wanted and they would kind of trap the chicken in the corner and they would take it and they would twist its head and kill it, and then they chop its head off. If you’ve ever seen that done, you know what happens. Then the body of the chicken just begins to kind of jump around headless. It jumps around…I remember thinking to myself, “boy, there’s got to be a better way to bring the chicken from the coop to the plate.”
Well, you know, as a kid, whenever my brothers and I got kind of out of control and we were kind of roughhousing too much and running around too much, my dad would say that we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off. That was kind of a graphic image for us. But you see, truly biblically, all the people in this world apart from Christ are really running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They’re separated from the head. You see, the Bible says “Jesus Christ is the Head of all men.” But the problem is most men are separated from Christ and they literally are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They have no authority. They have no real direction in their life. They have no source of life because they’re cut off from the head and they just flitter about. Their breath is short and eventually they die. You see, that’s why the gospel has been entrusted to you. We are to take the gospel to the whole world and the gospel invites people, actually invites people, to come into the body, into the body of Christ and be joined with the Head that they might find life eternal and full.
One of the most beautiful verses in all the Bible is John 10:10. Jesus said that “Satan came to maim and to kill and to destroy,” but He said, “I have come that you might have life, that you might have it abundantly.” The Greek word there for life is “zoe” and refers to life in its deepest sense, spiritual life, eternal life. That’s what Christ has come to bring. That’s why the gospel is preached to you. And that’s why as Christians we are called to share the gospel with the nations.
Yesterday, Bob and I went to a Presbyterian meeting, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. I know I’m sure Bob probably mentioned this in his class downstairs. We listened to different candidates for the gospel ministries share their testimonies. They were wanting to be brought under the care of the Presbyterian of the West of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church that they might eventually be ordained to the gospel ministry.
Well, one young man that we heard there yesterday was a young man, a Cambodian named Satahn Lei. Satahn Lei had been reared in Buddhism like most people in Cambodia and his grandfather had been a Buddhist monk. He had been reared in the Buddhist faith and he had never heard the name of Jesus until 1979 when he was in a refugee camp and a Christian there began to share the life of Christ with him. The Holy Spirit, you see, touched Satahn Lei, and this Cambodian received Christ as Head and he joined the body of Christ.
The person who led him to Christ said, “You must go out today and share your love for Christ with other people right here in the refugee camp.” He only knew one Bible verse that had just been given to him. He went out and he began to just share Christ, to share what had happened to him and the new life that he had found. And people began to accept Christ. The Holy Spirit was upon him. I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but in the next six months, primarily through his ministry, 35,000 people accepted Christ along the Cambodian border. I mean, it was kind of ironic and really somewhat humorous to think that we were approving him as a candidate for the gospel ministry.
But you see, we’ve all been called as Christians to share the life of Christ with people who are around us, in the neighborhoods in which we live and the places in which we work, friends that we have. Because you see, He is the very source of life, the focus of the gospel, the kephale, the head of the body.
Well this word kephale does not simply refer to the seat of authority or the source of life. It had a third meaning, a very different meaning. Sometimes the word kephale was used refer to the “tie that binds.” Not only the seat of authority or the source of life, but also the tie that binds. To say that Jesus Christ is the Head of the church is to say that in some sense He binds it all together. Now, here’s a meaning of the word kephale that has not carried over into our culture and language. We do not use the word head in this sense, but the Greeks did.
The word in the Bible, the word “church” in the Greek is actually the word “ekklesia.” That was the word in the secular Greek world that was used to describe any assembly. When the people of Greece were called together for an assembly, the word “ekklesia,” the word from which we get the word “church” was used. The individual who called those people into that assembly and the individual who was responsible for having them work together in that assembly was called the kephale, called the head.
You see, Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, the Head of the assembly because He is the one who has called us all together. He is the one who binds us together and would teach us, as the Head, how to function together as a body…the tie that binds. That is why in Ephesians, chapter 4, and in other places where Christ is called the Head of the body, we are told that “He is the head from which the whole body is joined and knit together.”
I remember growing up, at Glendale Presbyterian Church whenever we had communion, after communion the whole congregation would sing that song “Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love, the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.” You see, the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love is Jesus Christ…our common head.
I remember when Barb and I were in Israel in 1978 and we were at the Garden Tomb. We were with a hundred other people from Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora. In the Garden Tomb, there we celebrated communion. It was a beautiful place. There were flowers there. Of course, we were probably right there near the site where the body of Christ had been placed. As we celebrated communion together, we sang Christian songs. But part of what made that moment so beautiful is there were other Christians there from all over the world, in that region of the Garden Tomb. They were gathered in other places about, and they too were celebrating communion or they were singing hymns. We would recognize the tune of the hymns that they would sing, but the words of course would be in other languages. There were some groups of Christians from Japan, some that were from China, some that were from Europe, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, some from Africa, and they were singing these hymns of the faith. And you felt a oneness. You felt a closeness to those other Christians. You’d never met them, but they were singing about the same Lord you were singing about. They were all part of the same body you were part of. And they had the same Head you had, Jesus Christ. There was a kinship there. As you looked at each other, you just felt a closeness in that moment.
Then I remember as we went to Bethlehem, we went to the Church of the Nativity. Our group was going downstairs into the kind of cavern that was the stable where Christ was born. As we were going down those stairs, we were singing “Silent Night” and there was a group from Germany coming up the stairs singing “Silent Night” in German. I can’t describe for you, I mean as we looked at each other with smiles on our faces, there was a bonding there. You see, that isn’t of this world because we’re all part of one body and we have one common Lord, the kephale, the Head Jesus Christ. He binds us together, the true church of Christ, all the people who have come together under His Headship.
It’s been said that the greatest, the most famous church in all the world is the Notre Dame Cathedral. In 1972, Barb and I went there and we saw the Notre Dame Cathedral. It certainly is beautiful with its flying buttresses and its gothic architecture. It’s built on a little island in the midst of the Seine in the city of Paris, built in honor of the Virgin Mary. The words “Notre Dame” mean “our lady.” Built in the 12th century, or at least that’s when they began to build it, but it took 150 years to build the Notre Dame Cathedral. Through the years, some incredibly well-known events of history have taken place there.
In 1430, King Henry VI, the boy monarch, was actually crowned King of France right there in the Notre Dame Cathedral. In the midst of the 100-year war when, apart from Joan of Arc, France would have become an English dominion. In 1558, Mary, Queen of Scots, was married to Francis II right there in the Notre Dame Cathedral. In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon himself took the crown from Pope Pius VII and he placed it on his head and he crowned himself Emperor and Josephine Empress right there in Notre Dame Cathedral. On August 26th, 1944, Charles de Gaulle knelt at the altar in the Notre Dame Cathedral, giving thanks to God for the liberation of France, even as sniper’s bullets bounced off the walls in the cathedral.
I suppose that one of the reasons the Notre Dame Cathedral is considered the most famous church in the world is because great events of history have occurred there. But you see, biblically and in the sight of God, the Notre Dame Cathedral is not a church at all. It’s simply a building. Simply bricks and mortar. Now, various churches throughout history have met there from time to time. Various congregations of people who believed in Jesus Christ as Head and embraced Him as the authority and the source of life have come together in His name and worshipped there. You see, Cherry Hills Community Church isn’t this building at 3651 South Colorado. You are Cherry Hills Community Church, all of you who believe in Jesus Christ and have been called together, all of us called together under His Headship into one body.
We used to worship down at Orchard not that many years ago in a different building, but the same church. We come together for worship and for teaching and for instruction and for fellowship. That’s why we have Koinonia groups that you might be called into the one body by Jesus Christ and learn to fellowship with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Of course, there are some people who say that they are Christians, yet they don’t really gather with other Christians. Some people who say that they are Christians and they really don’t go to church. They are kind of afflicted with what some theologians have called “morbus sabbaticus.” It’s a strange affliction. It tends to hit on Sunday mornings. It doesn’t really affect the eyes. You can still read the newspaper and watch tv, particularly football. It doesn’t affect your appetite, but it tends to become kind of chronic as time goes by, and studies actually show that there are many people in this world who say that they are Christians and they only go to church three times. They say they are Christians and in their entire life, they only use the services of the church three times: at birth when they receive dedication or baptism, then when they’re married and they find the person they want, and then finally at death for their funeral or their memorial service. All they want the church to do is hatch and match and dispatch.
But you see true Christians are people who, in their commitment to Christ, have come to Christ and they have embraced Him as the very seat of authority. They have discovered Him as the source of life and then in response to His call, they have come together with each other. You don’t really need to meet in a building. That’s not the important thing. The important thing is you’re getting together with other Christians. It doesn’t even have to be on Sunday morning. The important thing is you’re coming together and you’re being the assembly. You’re coming together with other brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ because we’re called to be the body of Christ. You’re not joined to the Head individually. You’re not the body. You’re merely part of the body and you’re called to join yourself with brothers and sisters in Christ for the purpose of instruction, for the purpose of encouragement, for the purpose of up building and support and prayer and nurture. That’s why the Bible says “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.”
You see, the Bible actually makes it very clear that if we do not do this, if we do not assemble together with other Christians, we never really discover the fullness of His direction and His authority in our lives. Unless we come together with other brothers and sisters, we don’t even discover the fullness of His life in our lives.
So you see, He is the Head, the kephale, the seat of authority, the source of life, the tie that binds. Let’s close in a word of prayer.