Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. You’ll notice that chapter 11 has been divided into two segments, the first addressing the aspects of divine order and the challenges that the church of Corinth was facing. And as you listen, I’m sure you’ll notice that society today is facing similar challenges, more dilemmas, and so much more. Let’s listen in. First Corinthians chapter 11, properly and in order. Today we’ve come to 1 Corinthians 11, where the apostle Paul is now turning his attention to some things going on during that church’s gatherings, and I mean actually during their church services.

Chapter 11 is actually one of the most referred to chapters in this letter. If you’re a regular church attender, some verses from this chapter I’m sure are going to be very familiar to you, but those verses come from the second part of chapter 11, the part about communion or observing the Lord’s Supper. Truth is, the first half of this chapter may be the section you are least likely to hear preached on or read aloud from 1 Corinthians. And I think that’s true for two reasons. First, because it is a little bit hard to decide exactly what was going on in the Corinthian church services which Paul heard about that caused him to write this section, since we don’t have that list of questions, remember, or access to Chloe’s report that she brought back.

But second, honestly, just because many people don’t like what they think Paul is saying here, so avoid the first half of this chapter altogether. It might seem really odd at first that the two topics that come up in this chapter are even in the same section of Scripture, but I think what ties them together in Paul’s mind is that this whole section from chapter 11, verse 2, to the end of chapter 14 is about problems occurring in their worship services. The last line of chapter 14 summarizes Paul’s concern where he says, All things must be done properly and in an orderly manner. Clearly there were things happening in the Corinthian church services he considered improper and out of order. So, ready or not, we’re about to get into them. Listen to the first several verses here.

I’ll read them in the modern New Living Translation. I’m so glad that you always keep me in your thoughts and that you are following the teachings that I passed on to you. But there is one thing I want you to know: the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. A man dishonors his head if he covers his head while praying or prophesying, but a woman dishonors her head if she prays or prophesies without a covering on it, for this is the same as shaving her head. Yes, if she refuses to wear a head covering, she should cut off all her hair. But since it is shameful for a woman to have her hair all cut off or shaved, she should wear a covering.

A man should not wear anything on his head when worshiping, for man is made in God’s image and reflects God’s glory, and a woman reflects man’s glory. For the man didn’t come from woman, but first woman came from man, and man was not made for woman, but woman was made for man. For this reason, and because the angels are watching us, a woman should wear a covering on her head to show she is under authority. But among the Lord’s people, women are not independent of men, and men are not independent of women. For although the first woman came from man, every other man was born from a woman, and everything ultimately comes from God. So judge for yourselves: is it right for a woman to pray to God in public without covering her head?

Isn’t it obvious that it’s disgraceful for a man to have long hair? And isn’t long hair a woman’s pride and joy? For it has been given to her as a covering. But if anyone wants to argue about this, I simply say that we have no other custom than this, and neither do the churches of God. Wow. Interesting stuff.

My son and his new wife are going to Corinth, Greece in a few weeks, actually, kind of a delayed honeymoon. Should be a fascinating trip. Not only is southern Greece Mediterranean coastline very beautiful, but there’s just so much remarkable history around there. You can visit the actual physical ruins of that civilization and see the places the Apostle Paul actually visited. I wish I could go along with them, but they didn’t invite me for some reason. In reality, what I really wish I could do is go there, yeah, but go there transported back in time to visit Corinth of circa 52 A.D.

So I’d like a time machine so I could stop in for a service or two at that young Corinthian church that Paul founded there, the one he’s writing these letters to. I really want to experience for myself, see with my own two eyes what was actually happening there. Paul’s concerns about this church were not doctrinal. That is, unlike Galatia we looked at a while back, things weren’t being taught in Corinth that he knew were heretical or badly misleading. In fact, he says here initially, I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the teachings just as I delivered them to you. By teachings, or some translations say traditions, he’s referring to the truths he had taught them about Jesus and the Christian faith when he was there.

What he had passed on to them that he himself had learned or been taught, that is, the foundational truths on which the Christian faith is built. They were apparently pretty square on those things. His concerns were more about their behavior. For one thing, how people were showing up for worship and behaving during church services. And the first issue he addresses in this section sounds like it has to do with the roles of men versus women and how those roles were reflected in how men and women dressed and acted when they were in church settings. Before I give you my take on this, I want to remind you of an interpretational principle we discussed a while back.

I believe it was during the last episode of Romans 16 where I talked about form and function. We talked about Paul’s instruction there, Greet one another with a holy kiss, remember? And I explained why it is important to remember that the scripture writers were addressing people in a particular time and place. Kissing on the cheek or forehead was a common form of greeting then, but the underlying function was welcoming and accepting people by greeting them warmly. We’re not being disobedient to God’s word if we don’t kiss everybody that comes to our church. That might be off-putting to many people today.

We have different forms of greeting today. What’s important is not how we greet people so much as that we greet people in a way that shows they are recognized and valued. Well, in this case in 1 Corinthians 11, we’re talking about that society’s dress and styles, and again, they’re quite different than ours. So we have to kind of disentangle the part of this that has to do with these first-century cultural practices. That’s the form part. From what Paul is stressing, that is in fact an underlying timeless principle.

That’s the function part. Paul is talking about the practice of women in that culture, especially married women, wearing a head covering when in public. Wearing a head covering was one way women showed that they were married. As I understand it, it was acceptable for unmarried women not to wear a head covering and wear their hair loose, but for married women, no. That would be seen as rebellious or disrespectful to their husband. By the way, Paul uses the word head in this passage a couple different ways.

Literally, your noggin sitting on top of your neck, as when he says, A woman who will not wear a head covering may as well shave her head. In that culture and time, a head covering for a woman was a visible expression of being married, as I said. And for a woman, a Christian woman at least, it was further than that, a sign of being submissive and recognizing the authority of her husband in her marriage. But then he also said head in a non-literal sense of leadership or authority, as when he says, Christ is the head of every man, the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. I realize when I use the word submissive, that makes many women bristle. We live in a time much different than when this book was written, and the idea of male leadership has come to be very much denigrated in my lifetime.

And women have been told that to accept the concept of male leadership in their marriage, being submissive or respecting their husband’s headship, is a sign of weakness or admitting they are in some way less or inferior. Frankly, that’s not true. And here’s how we should know as Christians it’s not true. In the same sentence Paul talks about a husband being his wife’s head, he compares that relationship to God the Father being Christ’s head. Was Christ inferior to God? Historic Christian doctrine teaches that Christ is God.

He’s fully God. He’s equal with God the Father in power and glory and majesty in every way. They are in fact one, as a husband and wife are supposed to strive to be one. But, and this is important to understand, there’s also the aspect of order. Remember our key verse for this whole section: Let everything be done properly and in order. There is an order even among the Godhead, even among the Trinity.

Although they are equal, Jesus, God the Son, willingly submitted himself to the Father’s will. Have you ever thought about that? Christ, who is God the Son, was willingly submissive to God the Father. Not because he was less, not because he is inferior, not because he is less intelligent or less powerful or less anything. He was and is submissive in the interests of order. Things function best when there is order and a line of authority is respected.

The New Testament teaching on this subject, which we’ll see more of in Ephesians, is that in the very way Christ was voluntarily submissive to the Father as his head, so men are to be submissive to Christ as their head, and wives submissive to their husbands as their head, and children submissive to their parents as their heads. It’s not about value. It’s not about intelligence or inferior versus superior. It’s about divine order. Now, what I’m going to say next is very practical, and I hope you guys who are females out there will listen to me. If you’re a Christian woman and considering marriage and want to honor God, you should think very hard about this.

Are you ready to follow this guy’s leadership in your family? Do you trust and respect him enough to do that? I’m not suggesting wives should have no input in family decisions, but that ultimately, after being heard, after discussing and praying about things together, someone has to make decisions. Someone has to take the lead. And God is holding husbands responsible for those decisions as His appointed leader in that family. Husbands are, as we used to say, the head of the family.

That’s the terminology here. And that is not just a concept we can dismiss as culturally based either, something only true at certain times and places, because the Bible’s teaching on that basic point is rooted in the order of creation. This is what Paul is talking about when he writes here, For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is in the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of man. For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man. He’s talking about the original creation story of Adam and Eve.

For indeed, he goes on, man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake. Remember, Eve was created to complete Adam and as a partner suited for Adam. Therefore, he concludes, a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head. You can hear Paul’s concern here, and it’s about divine order, God’s original intentions for a man and his wife. Actually, every societal relationship God has designed includes an authority structure so that order is built into it, whether it’s two people in a marriage, several people in a family, fifty or more people in a workplace, five hundred people in a church body, or millions of people in a nation. God always wants to see order and has established divine chains of command, so to speak, to promote that.

Things done properly and orderly are most productive. So, what’s the deal with the head covering, head shaved, head uncovered, and so on part? That’s the part that was cultural. This was the form through which the principle of authority and order was being visibly expressed at that time and place. The head covering for women was a visible expression—I’m saying this for the third time now—of their submission to their own husbands. This is why Paul says if a woman refused to do that, to cover her head, she might as well shave all her hair off, meaning refusing to do that would be an act of rebellion against God’s divine order.

Some commentators have suggested that women shaving their heads in Corinth was part of the look of the Aphrodite cult prostitutes we talked about in the introduction to this letter. Maybe that’s what Paul is thinking about and alluding to here. But I do think even in our day, it’s true that when you see a young woman with her hair shaved off, usually accompanied by spikes and piercings and so on, it’s a look that says what? I’m rebellious. She’s trying to say that. Even in our culture, it’s a visible way of expressing and acting out against traditional norms and saying, I’m rebellious.

Am I wrong? In the same way, I might add, 50 years ago when I was young, many guys my age were growing their hair out very long, as long as most women’s. That was also a form of rebellion, a way of saying visibly, challenging what were societal norms. That’s part of what the hippie movement was all about at its core. At least that’s how I understood it at the time: rebellion. That was my generation.

What I’m pointing out is that in the same way how men and women dressed and wore their hair and so on in Paul’s day, in that society also made a statement. And for Christians, Paul was concerned that the statement they made be consistent with God’s divine order and that they were sending out the right message to people. A big part of the divine order part of this had to do with then and now and always, because this is timeless, the fact that God created us male and female. The whole bending and blurring of the gender thing that is happening now in our society was also happening then. It’s a mark of a culture in serious moral and spiritual confusion and at the root of that, rebellion. Put simply, God wants men to look like men, to look and be masculine, and women to look differently than men, to look and act feminine, and that should be demonstrated visibly, for one way, by hairstyles.

There are masculine and feminine hairstyles. When Paul writes in verse 14, A woman’s hair is her glory, and a man with long hair like a woman’s, he means, is a shame, he is underscoring that God made us male and female and we should look like men if we are men and women if we are women. Blurring the lines between the sexes is not a Christian or God-honoring thing. Just the opposite, actually. He says it’s a shame and an act of rebellion against God’s natural order. So here’s my impression.

If I could time machine my way back to a church service in mid-first century Corinth, I’m pretty sure I would see this. I’d see some biological males strutting around before and after the service with real long hair like Fabio, you know, tossing it with a gentle snap of their head, constantly needing to brush it out of their face. And from behind, it’d be kind of hard to tell whether they were male or female. And I’d see some women, even married women, with their heads uncovered, acting very independent of their husbands, you know, drawing attention to themselves in different ways, maybe some with very short hair, hard to distinguish whether they are male or female. You may be thinking, So what? Why should that even matter?

Did you just say that to yourself? Be honest. Well, apparently it matters to God for these two reasons, and maybe more we don’t even understand. First, God designed a relationship between husband and wife to reflect the relationship between Christ and His church, and even God the Father and God the Son. There should be interdependence, but also godly headship, leadership, and godly submission. That is a divinely appointed order reflected in how a man and wife relate to each other.

Married women should be careful to look and act like they are in fact married. And second, God designed us male and female, and that difference should not be blurred. The whole men dressing and acting effeminate and women dressing and acting butch thing, it’s not new. As I said, it was going on in decadent Corinth 2,000 years ago. But Paul is saying, not in the church, not by believers. That’s not who we are.

Unbelievers and their styles and choices are not our concern. But what goes on in the church among God’s people should be proper and according to God’s order. And part of that is men looking like men and acting like men and dressing like men, and women looking, acting, and dressing like women. Now, if unbelievers come into a Christian assembly looking and acting differently, they should be welcomed right where they are. We’re not talking about them. We’re talking about Christians.

So those are the big ideas here. Beyond that, people have struggled over how exactly to apply this passage today, especially the part about the head coverings for women. There are still some denominations where women are expected to wear something on their head when they come to worship. The conservative Christian college I went to required women to wear some kind of hat to Sunday services, for example. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. If your conscience says do that, then do it.

But today, wearing a hat or something on your head for a woman would be seen more as a fashion statement than a spiritual statement, even among Bible-believing evangelical churches. Remember the form and function principle. In our society, a woman wearing something on her head to a church service does not necessarily serve the same function as it did in Paul’s day. That form, that custom, has changed over time. But what doesn’t change is the principle which the custom represented then, and that is women accepting from God their role in marriage, one of respecting and cooperating with and even encouraging their husband’s headship.

I’m not sure we even have an outward form or symbol of that today, but it can certainly be seen in a woman’s behavior, in her demeanor, the way she acts around her husband when she’s in public as well as private, in the way she talks about her husband to others, in the way she responds to him when he makes a decision for the family that she may not be all on board with. And I believe that’s what God is looking for that matters, matters much more than what she does or doesn’t put on her head in church services, I think. He’s looking for Christian men and women to be demonstrating His divine order in our relationships, respecting authority in our lives, not showing rebellion toward God or those He has appointed to be in positions of authority. If you’re a Christian, I hope your heart attitude is in tune with this.

Regardless of what the culture around us is doing, we need the courage to go against the flow and be loyal to God’s ways. Our heart and our attitude need to reflect submissiveness to Him and His will first of all, and then to others He has designated as leaders in our personal chain of command, if you want to call it that. Our behavior, even our personal style, should reflect His divine order too. So if you’re a man, look and act like one. If you’re a woman, look and act like one. But if the underlying principles Paul is writing about in this section grate you and your instinct is to react against them, I hope you will think about why.

And if necessary, discuss your feelings with a good Christian counselor if you’re really having problems with this idea of being a man or being a woman. I know it is very confusing to some people today. Is it because you are taking your cues from the world system in opposition to God, or perhaps is there something going on deeper in your psyche? Paul ended his instructions on this topic with, If anybody wants to argue about this, I simply say that we should have no other custom than this, and neither do any of the churches of God. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul.

There’s certainly a similarity as to what was going on in Corinth and the issues that we are facing now. And what a brilliant way how Satan continues to divide and conquer. If you consider the fact that Satan has had almost 2,000 years of practice in the ways of swaying beliefs and having us divided over the simple fact of what a man is and what a woman is. Humanity’s lust and sins of the flesh are also used to separate us from God. As Christians, we should always represent the truth of God in the manner in which we were created and for His purpose. Be a beacon and a direction to God, not a distraction from God and from His truth.

From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.