1. That young men in the 21^st century have, by and large, received little or no instruction (verbally or by example) in what it means to be a leader – that, in fact, young men today are, in general, woefully unprepared for leadership in any capacity; and
2. That God has entrusted leadership in His church and in His covenant households to men (single mothers are sometimes in the difficult position of leading a household, but this is not the biblical norm; and where such situations arise, it is the duty of Christian men in the church to lend their counsel and aid to the single mother and her children).

The issues that will be explored in this study, then, are not (a) why training in biblical leadership is a crying necessity, or (b) whom God calls to leadership; but rather (a) what biblical leadership is (what it entails), and (b) how men are to exercise leadership (what it looks like on the ground).

This will not be an exhaustive study of leadership; rather, it will be a study of certain essentials, really one in particular. That one essential may be captured in the word direction. A leader, put simply, is someone who is purposefully going somewhere. At the heart of leadership is charting a course; the essence of leadership is the establishment, articulation, and pursuit of certain goals, certain objectives, a particular “vision,” a purpose, a telos. A man who does not know where he is going is not a man anyone can, or should, follow.

It is regrettable that much teaching on the subject of Christian husbandry and fatherhood centers on the question of “how to,” on methods. This is not necessarily bad in itself; but one cannot read the scriptures seriously without discovering that the dominant focus is not on everyday practical directives (e.g., how to love a wife, or how to instruct and discipline children), but rather on the fundamental direction in which family life is to move. The emphasis falls on the implications of the weighty fact that every Christian household is situated in an overarching metanarrative called the kingdom of God, in which the Lord God Himself is pursuing certain objectives, certain plans and purposes; and these purposes and plans of the High King are the template on which the head of each Christian household is to frame his purposes and plans. The central concern, biblically, is not everyday methods but rather the orientation of household life, which orientation it is the chief task of each household head to maintain and articulate before his family, in order that they may attain to the kingdom-objectives established by the High King.

Put simply, the direction in which God is moving His cosmic kingdom is to be the direction in which each Christian man moves the microcosmic kingdom of his household. God’s objectives, His kingdom-goals, are to be our objectives, our goals. A head of a Christian household who is not aware of, passionate about, and moving toward God’s kingdom-objectives cannot lead his household in the biblical sense of leadership.

The pressing question, then, is this: as the head of a Christian household, what are the goals I am to have for my family? In what direction(s) would the High King have me move my household?

A word should perhaps be said here about the role of a wife and mother with respect to the goals and direction of a Christian household. God calls a wife and mother to be a helper suitable to her husband in his leadership of the household. She is to submit to her husband’s leadership as he pursues the upward call of God for the family. But, in truth, many husbands make it miserably difficult for their wives to help and submit, because (a) they have no idea where they are going (which is another way of saying they don’t lead), (b) their goals for the household are not those of God, but rather are self-generated (which tends to make a wife feel tyrannized rather than led), or (c) they fail to articulate the “vision” or direction of the household (which leaves the wife in a state of confusion and uncertainty, even as she feels the pressure to follow along). A husband who is going somewhere, and going somewhere that is eminently biblical, and who has carefully and lovingly articulated this direction to his family, is a husband who is relatively easy to follow, and to whom it is relatively easy to submit. It should also be noted that a godly husband, while he communicates his objectives to his household, does not try to force these goals on his family; rather, he patiently keeps the objectives before his family, with the confidence that God by His Spirit will birth enthusiasm for them in the hearts and consciences of his family members. It is God who changes people, and wins their hearts to His kingdom-goals; a godly husband does not carry the burden of doing this himself.

Returning now to the question, in what direction(s) would the High King have a Christian leader and his household move, it is important to keep in view that God in Christ Jesus is restoring that which He created in the beginning, but which was lost in the first Adam. Ronald Wallace offers the following helpful summary in his work, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life:

The purpose of our redemption is the restoration of the original order of man’s life. “It is the glory of our faith,” says Calvin, “that God, the Creator of the world, in no way disregards the order which He Himself at first established.” The work of Jesus Christ is to restore to man the image of God which was lost in Adam. “Adam was first created after the image of God, and reflected as in a mirror the divine righteousness; but that image, having been defaced by sin, must now be restored in Christ. The regeneration of the godly is indeed . . . nothing else than the formation anew of the image of God in them. . . . The design contemplated by regeneration is to recall us from our wanderings to that end for which we were created.” The work of the Spirit in our hearts is to “begin to reform us to the image of God” with a view to the complete restoration of that image both in ourselves and in the whole world. (p. 107)

Put another way, the basic template of God’s redemption-kingdom is the creation-kingdom; not in the sense that we are put back in the garden in precisely the same circumstances as Adam, but rather in the sense that what God intended for the first Adam, He still intends for those whom He redeems in the last Adam, Jesus Christ. The glorious life set before the first Adam as the goal of his existence (but forfeited by his sin), is still the life set before us afresh in Jesus Christ.

We may think of this creation-template concretely along the following lines: man was created in an extraordinarily complex fabric of cultic, communal, and cultural relations. All these relations – his cultic relationship with his God, communal relations with his fellow humans, and cultural relations with the creation order – were components of what we may call the creation covenant, in which the Creator-King bound Himself to His created subjects in love, and bound them all to Him in love, with man standing as both a party to this covenant-bond and an administrator of it with respect to the rest of creation. Man was both subject and lord, both party and administrator.

This helps us understand what it means that man was created imago Dei, in the image of God. If nothing else, God’s image in man meant that man stood in a unique relationship both to God and to creation. He stood “closer” to the God than any other creature, by virtue of bearing His image, and stood “over” the creation by virtue of the same image.

As the administrator of God’s kingdom (even while he was himself a subject), and the mediator of God’s covenant (even while he was himself a party), man was called to be God’s prophet, His priest, and His king.

God’s purpose in redemption, then, is that man should – “in Christ,” the perfect Administrator of God’s kingdom, the perfect Mediator of God’s covenant, the perfect Prophet and Priest and King – be restored as the image-bearer of God; and should, progressively, be renewed in knowledge as God’s prophet, renewed in holiness as God’s priest, and renewed in righteousness as God’s king. (The purpose here is not to defend all of this with specific biblical proofs, but for those interested it would be worth consulting Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, pp. 44–90).

The implications of the foregoing for biblical leadership should begin to emerge. If this is what the High King has purposed and is pursuing in the cosmic reconstruction of His kingdom among His covenant people, then this is what the head of every Christian household is called to purpose and to pursue in the microcosmic construction of God’s kingdom in the home (and church). How am I, as the head of a home, moving in the direction of being renewed in the image of God, and how am I leading my household in this direction? More specifically, how am I pursuing my own and my household’s maturation in the exercise of our God-ordained offices (prophet, priest, and king) in the particular spheres of our cultic, communal, and cultural relations?

It is now possible to explore certain concrete objectives, toward which biblical leadership of the Christian household must be directed.