1 Corinthians 11:2-21
You can be seated. Turn in your copy of the scriptures to 1 Corinthians 11. Today we’ll be looking at verses 2 through 16. You should probably ask how many of you read this passage this week after the Wednesday email. Anybody? One or two of you. So you know what we’re in for here.
1 Corinthians 11, 2-16 is a passage that speaks to customs that were known to the New Testament church that differentiated between male and female. Today, we live in a culture that is very confused, we would say, as believers of what is a male, what is a female. Remember a couple years ago, we had a Supreme Court justice candidate who could not, or I think it was would not, define what is a woman. I think the answer was, I’m not a biologist. Which was an admission, there’s some biology involved at least.
But we live in a world where, let’s just say in the last 50 years or so, feminism has risen up. And in one particular case of interest, this will really interest you, a raging feminist who probably would affirm transgender surgery as a wonderful thing can’t say that a man who’s been transition to a woman really is a woman for authority sake. Her feminism trumps that. And so you see how the problem created sort of like Frankenstein has become now the monster that will eat us.
So this is a passage about New Testament customs. We don’t know exactly what they were, but it has to do with worship and it has to do with how men and women differentiated themselves physically in their appearance before one another and in the company of worship.
So probably of all Sundays before we read, we should pray and ask for the Holy Spirit’s help. So let’s do that.
Lord, when you made the world and everything in it, you spoke and there was light, there was day, there was night, there were planets and stars and greater and lesser lights to rule the day and night and seasons. You formed and fashioned everything. We know that you continue to speak through prophets, through especially your son, Jesus. We have the scripture that is your final revelation. We thank you for this. We also know that you speak into the tombs and you raise the dead. And you speak by your word and spirit now into the lives of your believers, your people, to comfort and build us up in our most holy faith.
So, Lord, where things aren’t so plain to us, show us what we can know and what we can benefit from in your holy word. We pray now in Christ’s great and gracious name. Amen.
So first Corinthians 11 beginning at verse two, Paul says, now I commend you because you remember me and everything and you maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ. The head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.
Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head.
For a man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels.
Nevertheless, in the Lord, a woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman, for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory, for her hair is given to her for a covering?
If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God. Amen.
God’s great word. Probably 25 or so years ago, there was a translation of the Bible. It was one of those paraphrases. And back in the days of seminary, we referred to it as one of those loosey-goosey Bible paraphrases. their advertisement for their Bible, right, you print Bibles, you got to sell them. So you got to have some propaganda. Their advertisement went something like this, the, I won’t name the translation, because that wouldn’t be nice. But let’s just say that the easy to read Bible, and their slogan was, we make the Bible easy to understand. Well, back in Seminary New Testament or somebody professor at had a make a joke of it. And so they took it this advertise it Advertisement out of the magazine they they increased the size of it on the copy machine and they put it on their office door and what they did is right below it they went to Peter and where Peter, if you remember, says some things that Paul writes are not easy to understand. And so this Bible set out to make things easy to understand, but the Bible itself, through the pen of Peter, says not all things in Paul are easy to understand.
Now, I don’t know what part in Paul Peter found hard. I suppose it was Romans and all that hard doctrine For us today, what is going to be hard to understand is 1 Corinthians chapter 11, 2 through 16. Yesterday, Caleb and I went down the Hall River and the water was kind of low. And so we found every single rock. And I’ll have to admit, I was in the back of the boat and the back of the boat scraped quite a bit. I probably have him by 50 pounds, but we found every single rock, but we made it through. And I hope that’s what we can do today. We’re gonna see several rocks in this passage, but we will make it through.
Let me point out a handful of the rocks that pop up. So Monday morning rolls around, I open my Bible, I get out my books, I get out this big sheet of paper. This is my little magic sheet here. Put the verse on, mark it up. And I think, oh boy, when I get to this one, there is so much here. In fact, I believe the men’s group talked about it a little bit because in the confession of faith, our subject, our topic for last Monday was, Scripture interprets Scripture. So when we come to a place in the Bible we don’t understand, we need to go to other places in Scripture and it should help us understand. So what is not plain in Scripture, what’s obscure, can often be made plain by the more clear parts of Scripture. That’s why we read Genesis chapter 2.
In our passage, some of the rocks that will make scraping bottom, as it were, possible are a lot for this passage are creation ordinances. God made man, God made woman. There’s an order of creation. It kind of pops up throughout the scriptures in Ephesians. It pops up in first Peter chapter three, it pops up in this passage. So you got some creation order ordinances that have to do with marriage, headship, submission, all the rest. Another rock is how is the word head used? Head appears in this passage a bunch. Is it the noggin? Or is it the head as in like a leader? Well, the New Testament uses the word head in a handful of ways. It can simply mean the noggin, you know, the melon sitting on your shoulders. But it can also mean source. It can also mean like Lord or leader. It can have hierarchy or hierarchical sorts of meanings. So how is head used in this passage?
Well, sometimes it means the head. If the head is uncovered, it’s this. But when we dishonor the head, it’s dishonoring the person under whom we live in submission. So there’s that. And then you have what we might call like natural law. There are things written into the way God made the world and everything in it that are just natural. And for example, verse 14, does not nature itself Teach you if a man wears long hair. It’s a disgrace if a woman has Long hair, it’s her glory. So Paul’s going to appeal to nature things that are written You know today in our crazy Culture trying to redefine everything When you define things contra nature against nature You sort of have an explosion in the laboratory and we are seeing that today in all sorts of ways.
Well, what are some of the other rocks? The big one perhaps is cultural. We don’t know what this head covering was. We don’t know if it was some kind of shawl, some kind of, you know, wrap. You know, maybe they had a hair bow shop in Corinth that we don’t know about. Who knows? We don’t know. And so there’s some issues there. But what we do know is that in the context of worship, there were women not dignifying themselves according to nature and bringing shame to their husband, and then therefore their shame to Christ and to God, if you sort of go up the hierarchy, but there apparently were also men covering their heads that they were now bringing shame to Christ and also to God. So there is a whole lot here. And again, we take the principle, scripture interprets scripture, When something is not clear, not explicit, maybe it’s vague, those are the places we probably shouldn’t create a brand new doctrine.
Now, if you’ve swum in the waters of the reform world, did I say that right? Swim, swim, swim. If you have swum in the waters of the reform world, perhaps you have been in a church where head coverings are required of women. They may show up to church already wearing them. Or I’ve seen out and about preaching, as the minister is getting up to read the Bible and pray, that’s when the heads get covered. There’s a few different practices. And so this is not something unfamiliar to many of us who have been around in some of the Reformed circles. We don’t require head coverings here. You’ll hear probably why. Probably we haven’t even really thought of this, but here it is in 1 Corinthians. But again, scripture interprets scripture. What is clear and plain in other places helps us interpret what is unclear or obscure in other places.
Okay, so how do we dig into this passage? Well, we want to understand something really important. And it goes back to the Garden of Eden. We read chapter 2 of Genesis, but we did not read chapter 3. Now, just before service was starting, Freeman and I were having a very deep conversation about why Satan disrupted God’s good created order. Why did Satan fall from heaven? And why did he come to earth and tell Adam and Eve to fall from their state of glory? And remember, Satan is a usurper. Satan is a deceiver. Satan is a devourer and a destroyer. And so he wants to take what God has put into his creation. He wants to take that order and he wants to disrupt it. That’s why Satan came in the garden. And did he attack Adam? No, he attacked Eve, God’s greatest gift. And now he’s going to come into the church at Corinth. He comes into churches all the time and says, these people are giving glory to God. Let’s try to mess with that. Right? That’s going to be his point of attack, the good gifts of God.
And so we need to remember when we worship, there is somebody really unhappy with us. We need to remember that when we gather to worship, it’s not just the world that hates us. And in fact, in some parts of the world today, people will worship with doors locked and perhaps armed guards at the ready. We’ve been hearing of genocides over in other parts of the world. And so it’s not just that humans hate God worshipers, Satan does as well.
And so in the Corinthian church, you’ve got Satan getting the people of God out of creation order and it’s sort of doubling and hitting their worship service. So we’re going to just go with today that men and women in the Corinthian church, this will come up later and we’ll deal with it later in Corinthians, but we’re going to assume that men and women in the church both prayed and prophesied. We’re pretty clear what praying is, right? Dear God, adoration, thanksgiving, confession, supplication. We’re not terribly sure what prophesying was and then You know, if you’ve read the rest of Corinthians and other places in Paul, prophesying can get a little dangerous. Is it apostolic prophesying? Is prophecy still today? What should women do, not do in church? It gets into a whole bunch of sticky stuff.
We’re just gonna put that aside today, because that’s gonna come up later, and we’re gonna assume men and women in worship, in Corinth, both prayed and prophesied. It’s not that they did it, it’s how they did it is the problem. And how they were doing it was casting off the authority that Jesus or that God had written into creation order. And it surrounds the word authority or the word headship. And that’s what our passage is about today. So we wanna pick through it and first think about apostolic tradition.
If you look at the passage, at the very beginning in verse two, and at the very end in verse 16, you have a statement Paul is making to the church about the way church should conduct itself. And so in verse two, he says, I commend you because you remember me in everything and you maintain the traditions, even as I delivered them to you. Then if you jump down to verse 16, if anyone is inclined, to be contentious. We have no such practice. That is the men covering their heads, the women uncovering their heads. We have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.
So here you’ve got the apostle Paul, a sent one. You’ve got the apostle Paul, a God ordained man to take the gospel of grace into the world. Now, I mentioned a bunch of rocks, and there are a lot more we didn’t mention, but one of the rocks is this. We hold the position that the apostolic age ended when all the apostles died. The scriptures were written and fully finalized and canonized. And so we hold to the position, not everybody in Christendom does, but we hold to the position that when the apostolic age ended, God primarily, teaches his people by his word, that’s the Bible, by his spirit, through the ministry of ministers and elders. Now, there are some today who say, no, we still got prophets, we still got apostles and all the rest. We don’t hold that position. And so in our view, when the apostle Paul says, I commend you because you remember me in everything and you maintain the traditions as I delivered them to you, we believe that his traditions were brought into the canon. So 1 Corinthians chapter 11, head covered, head not covered, male, female distinctions. It’s not just a tradition of men. It’s a tradition of God because by the word and spirit, by the spirit, these things were written down.
Now there were probably other things done in the early church that were considered traditions. They’re not in the Bible, so we’re not held to them. But the apostolic tradition of Paul that’s now in the scriptures, is the teaching of the Bible. And so what do we do with the passage like this? We must take it to heart. We must consider what we can understand. But we also see that the church needs to order itself after the word of God and after the creation order of God.
You know, a lot of people today want the church. A lot of people today want the church. They want the salvation. Maybe they want the community. They want the relationships, but they don’t want the Lord. Question six of our church membership vows, um, says something like this. Do you promise to submit, uh, in the, uh, in the spirit to the Lordship of Christ, uh, to the Bible doctrine and leadership of this church? And so the way we show submission to the Lord is we read the Bible, do the Bible. We go to the church and we submit to the church. And there’s a little phrase at the end of the vow number six. And it says, even if you are found delinquent in life or doctrine. And so the way we submit to the Lord is we say we believe the Bible to be true. It’s our only rule of faith and practice. We hold to the apostolic traditions.
In fact, if you Look at the little motto we have for our church on our website. We are, how does it go? A welcoming family of reformed believers committed to the historic Christian faith and life. Okay. We, we, we like to say we go to the Bible, we go to the apostles, we go to the early church fathers. We, um, we, we look to the giants who have held fast to the Christian faith. And so the apostolic tradition that Paul is speaking of here. is simply submitting to the Lordship of God, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, through the teaching, through the Bible.
Well, that’s one way to look at this passage. Bible sometimes has some strange things in it, has some odd things in it. But if we are Christians, we come to Jesus both as Savior and Lord, and so we submit to him in all things. What’s the end? Encouragement, don’t be contentious. You know, so if you guys come to start coming to church with your heads covered, you know, we’re gonna have to tell you to quit. Don’t be contentious. Sort of a way to lighten the load here, make a joke.
All right, second thing, we want to think about the teaching of some doctrine here that the apostle gives. He says in verse three, I want you to understand, and here’s where the head word gets a little confusing, He says the head of every man, the head of a wife and the head of Christ. Is that the noggin or the leader’s thing? That’s the leader thing. So the head of every man is Christ. That’s the leader. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m getting myself confused. The head of every man. Yeah, it’s the whole leader thing, right? Uh, the head of every wife is her husband. The head of every Christ is God. So that’s leadership. But then when it comes to every man who prays or prophesies head uncovered, does that mean he took Christ off his head? Or if a wife prays with her head uncovered, she took her husband off her head. No, it’s the leadership thing. So you see the idea here.
But it gives us what we call a creation order principle. The head of every, well, let’s go backwards. The head of Christ is God, the head of man is Christ, and the head of a wife is her husband. And so there’s what you might call a divine pecking order. These things are written into creation. These things are written into the scriptures. This is the order that God has given.
And if you bump along down to verse 11, nevertheless, in the Lord, the woman is not independent of man or man of woman. For as woman was made for man, so man is now born of woman. There is this interdependence. both in the Godhead and in husbands and wives.
Now, in the Godhead, we say that there is one God, but how many persons? Three. Are the three persons each unique and distinct? Yes. Are they still one God? Absolutely. Is there confusion? Say it louder. No. Bunch of heretics. Is there mixture? No. Say it louder. No. Some of y’all need to come on Sunday night.
Um, and, and is there, is, is there any disunity in the Godhead? Is it right to say God, the father saves? Yes. Say it louder. Is it right to say God, the son went to the cross? Is it right to say God, the Holy Spirit, um, works in believers, guiding them and teaching them. Does God the Father do that too? Does God the Son do that too? Yes. So we speak of the work of the Trinity. In theological terms, it’s often called the economic Trinity. God the Father does some things. God the Son does some things. God the Spirit does things. But do they all do it? Yes.
So throw that down into the marriage relationship. Does Is the husband the head? Yes. Is the wife to submit? Of course. Is there work they do? And don’t get into trash and dishes, please. But can a man bear children? Please say no. Not even with modern technology? No. there’s nurture, right? There’s all kinds of ways men and women are different. And in the same way, the Holy Spirit, the son, the father have their economy, husbands, wives have their economy. Does it mean one is lesser than the other? Is the Holy Spirit lesser than the father? Is Jesus lesser than the father? Absolutely not. And the same with husbands and wives.
So you have this teaching that the apostle Paul gives, where we understand in the Trinity the nature of God, but also the work of God. And Paul’s applying this into the life of the home, the life of church.
So the third thing we wanna think about, okay, first was apostolic tradition, it became scripture. Second is this interdependence, this submission, headship, whole business. Third thing we wanna think about, what’s the Corinthian problem? And the Corinthian problem, we can find by reading verses four through six, we can find it by reading verse 10, and we can also find the Corinthian problem by reading verse 13. So if you work backwards, verse 13, judge for yourselves, is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? So what were some of the wives doing? They were praying to God in church, head not covered. Okay, back up to, is it verse 10? This is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head. Okay, so when she prays, remember we’re assuming they prayed prophesied, but when she does it, should she have her head covered or uncovered? Should be covered, symbol of authority. And then you go back to verses four through six and you see the problem. Men and women are praying, prophesying, head covered, head not covered. whichever one’s appropriate, inappropriate, it’s dishonoring the head that is above them. And then it throws in the thing, if a woman’s going to pray or prophesy with her head uncovered, might as well shave your head. Okay, he’s sort of throwing a big bomb into the mix.
If you were a unchaste person in early American Puritan colonies, what did you receive? The scarlet Letter. And what’s the scarlet letter? A for adulterous, right? So back in the days of Corinth, if you were an adulteress, what do you think they did with your hair? They shaved it off. And so if you saw somebody walking through the market looking like Madonna or Sinead O’Connor, those are the two people I can think of from at least modern history that had their head shaved. You saw a head shaved, what did your mind say? Shame, trouble, right. So he’s saying, in church, praying prophesied with your head uncovered, if you’re a lady, might as well shave. Pretty bombastic, pretty big thing to say.
So the Corinthian problem is public worship, praying prophesying, head covered, uncovered, depending on whether you are a guy or girl. Now, most of us, when we were bumping along from babies into toddlerhood, We learn things by example, right? We learned what a horse is, because we’re riding along in the country and we say, mom, dad, what’s that? That’s a horse. So how did you learn what is a horse? By example, there’s a horse. You learned a lot of things by example just riding along.
There’s a famous story of my childhood. My parents each had their own car. Dad drove his car. Mom drove hers. Mom had a Datsun station wagon. And dad had an old Jeep Wagoneer. Well, mom always drove the Datsun. Dad always drove the Jeep. Well, we’re riding along about six years old, and I see a woman driving a Jeep. And what do you think I exclaimed in the backseat? She can’t be doing that, right? Because we learn. And haven’t we learned male-female distinctions by example, by watching? Generally speaking, if someone has long hair, it’s usually a girl. Right? I know we’ve had the whole hippie thing, and some of y’all want to be Fabio or the long-haired Clemson quarterback who’s now down at Jacksonville. Sometimes we want to go a little crazy. But generally speaking, you see somebody with long hair, girl. You see somebody in a dress, girl. You see somebody with short hair, pants. But y’all have been around. It’s very confusing today. And sometimes you have to wonder. Sometimes you have to ask. And what’s Paul saying here in his teaching? It should be clear who the guys and the girls are by what’s on your head. So this is, is it becoming a tad bit more clear? Hopefully so.
So we got the Corinthian problem. We got the apostolic teaching. We got this Trinitarian and husband-wife interdependence thing to understand. The fourth thing I want to think about, what’s the solution for Corinth? What’s the solution for our day? Well, we say with the Apostle Paul to Timothy, all scripture is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching and for rebuking and for correcting and for training in righteousness so that the man of God is fully furnished, fully equipped to serve our God and King. And so Paul here is giving his apostolic authoritative teaching. Going to pray and prophesy and you’re a guy. What’s the rule? Head uncovered. gonna pray and prophesy in church and you’re a woman, what should your head be? Should be covered.
Now the $64,000 question is, what is the covering? You know, is it a big Easter hat? Is it hair? Long hair versus short hair? Maybe you can tell by the sermon title where I fall. But nevertheless, the people at Corinth, many who have just now been saved out of Greek and Roman paganism. Others have been saved out of Jewish orthodoxy. They’ve come to faith in the Messiah or they come to faith in Jesus. They’re both cases having to shed a lot of fallen condition, bad, bad habits.
And perhaps a part of the Corinthian problem is, I mean, we’re in the South here, you know, you go to church, especially on Easter, you gotta look good, right? You got to have a new dress. You got to have a new tie. You know, you probably go to the beauty parlor the day before, get your hair done, makeup done, all the rest. We like to look good in church. And when we come and adjust ourselves in our pew, you know, we move our heads, our little feather moves. And what are we hoping deep down? Yeah, you’re hoping to be noticed. There could be a little something of that in the Corinthian church.
Some of the husbands, they know their wives’ heads ought to be covered in some way. It probably means their hair pulled up and nice and neat, because to let your hair down was probably a sign of harlotry, waywardness. He’s correcting maybe some status things, but also some gender, male, female sort of issues. But all in all to say, they’re out of order. What will get you in order? It’s the scripture. Scripture will correct and rebuke. It will pick up what is knocked down. It’ll fix what is broken.
So we live in a very wacky world. We live in a world that is very much broken by sin. And indeed, we are seeing it creep into the church. You know, you see the rainbow flags out in front of churches. You see male, female distinctions are completely gone, not only in real gender, but for a long time, they’ve been gone both in marriage and in ordination and in other parts of the life of the church. And so it’s a wacky world. And we’ve got to be careful, don’t we? Because it’s such a very sensitive world.
But what is creation order? What is God’s intention for man? What is male and what is female? Is there headship within the Trinity? Is there headship within the home? What’s the big thing here? What’s the big practical thing here? When we dishonor, Those that we are under, for men it’s Jesus, for women it’s your husband, and then it’s Jesus, and then it’s God. It’s like an ascending hierarchy. What happens when we bring shame on those above us? It’s not a very good witness. It’s not a very good picture of what God is and what Christ can do.
So ladies, do you have to come next week with a head covering? No. I think, I land, and a lot of trees have been cut down and turned into paper and ink has been spilled on it, I think it’s just hair. Now, if you wanna wear a shawl and put your hair up and all the rest, that’s great, there are people with that conviction. But I think it’s the difference between male and female, long hair, short hair, or no hair in some cases.
But here’s the verdict, here’s the thing we need to leave with today. God’s order is orderly. Man’s disorder is chaotic. And that’s what Paul is speaking into the church. Chapters 11 through 14, he’s gonna speak to more worship issues. Satan is trying to cause chaos in the little church at Corinth. Just as he may in our own churches today, he may be sowing seeds of chaos.
God is a God whose order is orderly, and his pecking order, as it were, is for our good, and it’s for his glory.
And let’s now pause and go to him in prayer. Father, we thank you for the chance to think on a hard passage, a strange passage, probably a lot of it still unclear. But we know one thing, you are God, you are Lord, And we’re to serve you.
And so, Lord, help us when we come to worship to submit ourselves to your lordship so that our lives will reflect the goodness of God in Christ. And we thank you for Jesus being willing to leave the riches of heaven. He who is rich beyond splendor for our sakes. became poor in order that we might become rich.
Thank you for Jesus and may his example shine brightly to us today. And we ask all this in his name, amen.
Let’s continue in our worship of God, singing song number 108.