Christ the Head: What It Means That He Is Above All

If you ask the average American Christian whether Christ is the Head of the Church, they will say yes without hesitation. It is one of those truths we are sure of, the way we are sure the sun will rise. Of course Christ is the Head. We sing it. We pray it. We confess it in our creeds.

But what does it actually mean?

For many, "Christ is the Head" has become a sentimental affirmation. It means He is the most important figure in the church. It means He is, in some honorary way, above us. It means we love Him and follow His teaching.

Scripture means something far weightier than that.

When the New Testament calls Christ the Head of the Church, it is not giving Him a title. It is describing a living, present, organic, governing reality. Five truths sit inside this declaration — and each one challenges how we have been living.

1. He is preeminent.

The Apostle Paul writes: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church" (Colossians 1:15-18).

Christ is not first among equals. He is the firstborn — the One before whom and through whom all things were made. He is preeminent in creation, preeminent in the church, preeminent in everything. "That in everything He might be preeminent" (v. 18). This is not a title we award Him. It is the truth we recognize about Him.

2. He is the living Source.

When Jesus called Himself the vine and His people the branches, He was teaching something Western ears often miss. He was not saying "I am your teacher and you are my students." He was saying "I am your life-source, and you are sustained by Me."

"I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

A branch severed from the vine does not struggle to bear fruit. It dies. There is no fruit at all — no slow decline, no diminished yield. Just death.

The Head of the Body is not a position. It is the source. The body lives by what flows from the Head. To be a church without functional connection to Christ is not to be a weaker church. It is to be no church at all.

3. He is present.

Some treat the Lord's headship as if He were absent — gone until He returns, leaving us to manage in His stead. Scripture says otherwise.

Before His ascension, Jesus told His disciples: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18). He promised: "Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Paul writes that God has "raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places... and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 1:20-23).

The risen Christ is not in storage. He is reigning right now, present with His Church right now, leading her right now through His Word and His Spirit. The Head has not stepped away from the body.

4. He reigns.

Paul says God "put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church" (Ephesians 1:22). And the writer of Hebrews tells us that after making purification for sins, Christ "sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3).

In the ancient world, sitting at the right hand was the posture of completed work and active rule. Christ is not waiting to take charge. He has been given charge. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me" (Matthew 28:18).

We do not ask Him to take His seat. He is already there.

5. The body cannot function apart from Him.

This is the truth that exposes us.

"From whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love" (Ephesians 4:16). The body grows from Him. Not from its programs, not from its leaders, not from its plans, but from the Head.

A body whose head is honorary is functioning as a corpse. It may move for a time by inertia, but it is dying. And much of the American church has been operating on the assumption that the Head is honorary — that we have been given the church to manage, and Christ has been given a seat to honor.

Scripture refuses that arrangement.

If Christ is who Scripture says He is — preeminent, living Source, present, reigning, the One apart from whom the body cannot function — then the question facing the American church is not how to organize ourselves better. The question is whether we have been listening to Him at all.

We will turn to that question next.