Living Under the Headship of Christ

When a person’s life is beautified within by Christ’s presence, that life provides a radiant reflection of Him in all they do and say. The Christian life displays Christ before the world. Christ’s presence within produces a longing to be with all those who love and adore Christ with a pure heart. The Christian life, therefore, should not be driven by a mindset of organized religion. If we do, it would be morphed into the incarnation of man’s efforts to capture God and put Him in a house of human construction. This would result in our gathering as a people of God and at a location as a man-made institution which would be completely at odds with the fundamentals of Jesus’ life and message. God cannot be confined by limitations of our human mind.


The problem is not about where we gather, but in losing sight of why we have gathered and truly understanding what we have become in Him. We were once dead, but are now quickened by the Holy Spirit into life. We are now being fitted into a habitation of God. Therefore, individually and collectively we are now God’s space to encounter humanity; where God now receives true worship and adoration (Genesis 28:1-22; 1 Peter 2:5).

“Welcome to the Living Stone, the Source of Life. The workmen took one look and threw it out. God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ approved lives up to God. The Scriptures provide precedent. Look, I am setting a stone in Zion, a cornerstone in the place of honor. Whoever trusts in this stone as a foundation will never have cause to regret it. To you who trust Him, He’s a stone to be proud of, but those who refuse to trust Him, the stone who the workmen threw out is now the chief foundation stone. For the untrusting it’s a stone to trip over, a boulder blocking the way.” (1 Peter 2:1-9, The Message).

The Holy Spirit that quickened us into living stones is the Spirit of Christ. Christ, therefore, is the Chief Cornerstone in God’s place of rest; the Church. In our collective expression of God’s resting place, Christ is the Head and our lives as believers should be lived totally and only in response to His leading and direction in our daily walk. (Ephesians 2: 16-20, 1 Peter 2: 4-6, 9).

In the first century the cornerstone was the first stone that was laid in the foundation. It was also the main stone of the building. It aligned and united all the other stones together. Each of the stones in the building was measured by the cornerstone. The building had to be in complete conformity with the cornerstone or else it could not be approved. Jesus Christ is the main stone, the Cornerstone in the foundation of God’s house; all things are measured by Him, united in Him and conformed to Him (1 Corinthians 3: 9-11).

What this tells us is that Christ, being the Chief Cornerstone, is Head of the collective expression of our Christian life on earth. Christ, therefore, should be allowed to make the decisions in our lives and in our midst. In reality, this means that the members of a local expression of the Lord’s body, the Church, should respond to their Head, which is Christ, through the collective view of the Body rather than through a few human persons who happened to be in a position of prominence. In other words, the Body of Christ, in union with the Head, expresses the Lord’s mind better as a collective then as a few making or taking decisions for the rest of the collective.

When the collective, under the headship of Christ, address problems and solve them, they learn the truth of being built together as one and discover what the Cross was in the process. The Cross is the instrument of death. It’s the principle whereby we lay down our own life in order that the Lord’s life may be fully expressed. The Cross means death to self, our ambitions, our preferences, our agendas, our opinions, our desires, and our wishes (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34-35, Luke 9:23-24). For what reason?, one may ask. So that Jesus Christ can have His preference, His agenda, His opinion and His desire. Body life is built on the principle of the cross. It is built on the resolute decision to live by the Lord’s own words: “Not my will, but Yours be done.”.

Jesus Christ, when given the rightful place in the heart and walk of His followers would become the visible expression of Him and the house of His rest. This corporate human expression is the house of God. The final criterion of that house is that when they gather together as believers, God is present as a witness and proclaims His pleasure. The individual in this collective has abandoned himself in Christ’s hand, committed to a shared life with others under His exclusive Headship, leaving all decisions to Him.

This is a high calling of our Christian life (Colossians 2: 19); a life that is lived in trust and dependence upon the unseen Christ who dwells within us. He is the Head and this is what it means to live under the headship of Christ as a believer.