How many of our debates about headship and submission might disappear before a new army of godly men rising from apathy to model the self-giving Christ? Men who do not sacrifice their children for their careers. Men who refuse to apologize for God’s assignment as head in the home and who do not shrink back from the crown Christ wore to save his Bride: a crown of thorns.

The king is the most important piece in chess. Powerful as the queen may be, able to move any number of spaces vertically, horizontally or diagonally, a player can lose the queen and still win the game. But once the king is captured, the game is over.

So, the object of every calculated move is to protect the king at all costs. Pawns may be discarded. Bishops, knights, and castles forfeited. Even the queen herself will be sacrificed to protect his majesty, the king. The crown hides behind his row of subjects, protected in his castle. All must fall before he does.

But the King of the world is a very different kind of king, one echoed by Thorin Oakenshield, lord of the dwarfs, in The Hobbit.

In the extended edition of Battle of Five Armies, the foul orcs have worn down the dwarf and elvish armies. The situation is desperate, and Thorin knows their only chance is to “cut the head off the snake” by killing the opposing leader, Azog the Defiler. He shares his nearly suicidal plan with his cousin, who exclaims, “Thorin, you cannot do this! You are our King!”

To which he responds, blood pumping with true nobility, “That is why I must do it.”

The King Steps Forward

Men today need to see their steel-spined King, in the moment of his greatest glory, to become the husbands, fathers, churchmen, and citizens God calls us to be. And what kind of king is Jesus? We find out precisely in the desperate situation he faced.

As the lions encircled, as the betrayer led the chief priests and soldiers to him and his disciples, “Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward” (John 18:4).

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