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I Corinthians 11:2-34
In this study Paul starts 'meddling' in something that comes close to home, … the male – female equality controversy and then corrects a a distorted method of taking communion.
As Paul 'eases' into this topic we must assume that he is responding to a problem in the church (house churches) that he has been made aware of. This probably comes under the category: ¶ Now for the matters you wrote about: (1Co 7:1). Using our imagination as to what was written, we have a wide range of possibilities. Perhaps something like this,
“Paul, you have no idea what is going on in some of the churches! Woman are acting like men! They are cutting their hair short and standing up bare headed, praying and prophesying in front of everybody! They are really taking what you said about 'freedom in Christ' way too far! There needs to be some kind of balance here. What do you say Paul?”
Paul answers, “ I am glad that you are referring back to something that I said when I was there, and that you are trying to make it work in your church groups. Let me start by giving you some of the basics.”
He says that there is a divine order.
The head of man is Christ. The head of the woman is man. The head of Christ is God.
Let's talk about the last one first. How is 'God' the head of Christ? We understand the equality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity. We understand the centrality of Christ in the New Testament1. We gather from chapter 15:28 that the Son is presently above all. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. This verse is referring to a future time (after the 1000 year reign) when the distinction between Father and Son merges to become as it was in eternity past. So for Paul to be saying that the head of Jesus is God must be referring to when Jesus was on earth.
The following passages bear this out:
John 5:30 "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.
John 12:49 "For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.
John 14:10 "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.
John 10:18 "No one takes it ((my life) from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father."
Jesus took on this position of being 'under the Father' voluntarily and Paul points this out in his letter to the Philippians.
Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be. For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God’s equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man. Philippians 2:62
When we consider the fact that the head of man is Christ, we can accept that without much difficulty. After all, Christ is invisible and is not here is person to 'call us on it' when a man seems to be operating on his own authority and not under Christ. But when we take the last one … the head of every woman is man, we get a bit nervous.
After laying out the divine order, he makes reference to what is appropriate and inappropriate in a church service. Let's read the verses from 4 - 9
He did not say that a woman should not pray or prophesy … He did not say, “Leave that up to the men.” But he does mention head coverings as being something that has some kind of effect on whether we honor or dishonor our head.
So, fact: Honoring our 'head' is important and that is the issue here. It is important to state here that there are a lot of other ways to dishonor your head, besides just doing something wrong in the matter of your head coverings.
The head covering seems to be something symbolic. Why is the man to keep his head 'uncovered' while praying or prophesying in church? It has to do with God. He made man out of the dust of the earth and breathed life into him. He did not create woman in the same way, but purposely took her 'out of man'. Mankind is the 'capstone' of God's creation. God said, “Very Good!” after creating man.
When a person wears a 'symbolic' head covering, they are indicating that the are 'under' another. It is a symbol of humility or at least a symbol stating a position of being under another person.
We see this clearly in our order of society. A man (or woman) wearing a certain kind of cap, and wearing black pants with a yellow stripe down the side, is wearing clothing that is making a statement. The dress code indicates that he or she has been placed over us to maintain and enforce peace. It is not the dress code that makes the difference. A person could 'duplicate' the dress code without authority, and as an impersonator, find themselves in trouble.
We are told to honor those who are wearing that particular dress code (legitimately) For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Romans 13:4
When 'the man' prays with his head 'uncovered' he is showing himself to be 'over creation' where God placed Adam to begin with. In the sense of God's creation there is no creation or creature that he is under. He was left here as God's 'agent'. I will say it this way … there is no VISIBLE person in a higher position. Christ, man's head, is higher but He is invisible.
So Paul is talking about visibility and the kinds of statements we make publicly by our appearance.
In verses 7 and 8 Paul is giving his main reason for the difference between man and woman as dating back to creation. He says that because man was made totally by God … the link to the Creator is direct. But because Eve was taken from Adam, Adam is a link between Eve and God, creatively speaking.
The 'symbol' of this link was a head covering and veil. In verse 5 Paul says that for a woman to pray in public 'bare-headed' is inappropriate and indicates an attitude of disrespect to men. He adds a remark, “She might as well appear in public with her head shaved … it would be no worse”. Why did he say this? Two possibilities: One, “Many men appear in public with no hair at all … you want to act like a man … you might as well look like one!”
or Two, “You want to appear as a woman who is under no man? You might as well shave your head like the Corinthian temple prostitutes who claim to be totally independent beings.”
For a woman to appear 'liberated from man' is a dishonor in Christianity. Show appropriate honor and respect.
After reminding us that woman was created for man as a suitable helper he goes on to say some things that can be a bit hard to grasp.
He gives a reason for the woman to wear her 'covering'. He says that a woman should be wearing her symbolic head covering because of the angels. What do angels have to do with anything here? Are we starting to think about Genesis? “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.” Ge 6:2
I don't think Paul is opening a dimension to this topic that swings way over there. I think he is still talking about what is appropriate in church. He now adds, “By the way, I want to emphasize the fact that men and woman are equal in the sense that one comes from the other. There is no superiority here. We are equal and we all came from God. (11-12)
But what about the angel thing? He is still talking about it in verse 13. “Does it LOOK good for a woman to pray with her head uncovered?”
Since the covering was a symbol of connection to man, a particular man... her husband, for her to pray bareheaded 'looks' like there is a problem at home. We have a woman praying who wants everyone to know she is under no man, including her husband!
So Paul opens up the topic of 'looks' here. And he mentions nature. (We still have not dealt with the 'angel' thing.) Paul says that long hair looks better on a woman than on a man. He says even nature will tell you that! How so? How many bald men do you know? How many bald women do you know? What does the phrase 'male pattern baldness' mean? Why can baldness in men be hereditary? If baldness was so terrible why does God allow it to go into the genetic code? Nature says, a man does not have to have long hair to look OK. Baldness is OK too.
On the other hand … when a woman has long, gorgeous hair … that is another thing altogether. It is her glory! Then why cover it up? Because of the angels.
Just as I pointed out earlier that there is more than one way to dishonor your head than by what you wear or don't wear on your head … even so there is more than just hair that looks beautiful on a woman. A woman can show her glory … her hair, and her attributes, and be admired. In church? Who do we meet together to 'glorify'? Women? Sorry, no. It is God that we want to focus on, not the beautiful women that are there.
In a house church the meeting area fills up with people sitting wherever they can find a spot. For the most part, people like to sit where they can at least see the speaker. In that arrangement it may not be possible for each person to see everyone else, but at least one could see the speaker, face-on.
In a time in which all women, except the prostitutes, wore coverings when outside of their homes, to appear in a public church meeting with head uncovered, glorious hair completely visible, would be inviting a lot of attention to oneself. Well, “So what?” if a few men's heads 'turn' for a few minutes? What is the harm? And what about the speaker … the 'angel', the messenger? He is doing his best to have everyone's attention focused on God. Including his own attention. He certainly does not need a 'distraction' like that at such an important moment when he delivering God's message to the people.
The distractions that we have in our day and time differ somewhat. When we meet together let us try our level best to not draw attention to ourselves.
Paul ends this with … “That's it. We have no variation on this anywhere!”
In the verses from 17-34 Paul changes the subject.
The house churches, the Paul churches, the Apollos churches, the Peter churches, the Jesus churches … were so divided it showed up many areas, but none so critical as in the way they took communion.
In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 1Co 11:18
The phrase, 'come together as a church' is important. Most certainly they would have regular communion in their own house churches. That is not what Paul is criticizing here. He is remarking on what happens when they ALL COME TOGETHER. This tells me that periodically the house churches had a custom of all coming together. How they did this, or where, we are not told. It is not important to us to know what kind of a venue they used. But we know that coming together was viewed as being important. Paul likely hoped that coming together periodically would produce unity in doctrine and practice. But because of their extreme polarization it was not producing unity at all.
Paul summarizes what seems to be going on. Some of the groups, let's say the Paul groups, agreed to come at an earlier time than what was being announced. Perhaps is was their turn to bring the elements for the supper. By coming earlier (on purpose) they could have a good chuckle when the others showed up, only to find that they missed it.
Paul severely reprimands them for this loose and callous attitude toward things as serious as communion. Notice again verse 22.
Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not! 1Co 11:22
The very word communion carries the thought of connection. Connection with God, to be sure, but because we are a body of believers, it shows how we are collectively connected to God. To act in a 'disconnected' way toward other believers, on purpose, is to eat and drink in an unworthy manner.
That is what they were doing … and they were being judged by God for it3. Paul has to tell them that. This means that they were not making the connection on their own. People were sick and some were dying. I suppose they thought it was just life as usual. Paul has to point out that God is doing this and unless they shape up it will get worse.
This judgment from God, Paul says, is good. He loves us. Whoever He loves He disciplines. Discipline is not what a parent does TO a child, it is what he/she does FOR the child. Verse 32 tells us that God does this NOW so that we don't continue to slide downhill until one day we won't be at the judgment of believers at all …
So Paul tells us to respect one another. Waiting for one another at communion was only one of those ways. The church is the bride of Christ. Paul has a personal take on this. He said in second Corinthians …
“For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” 2Co 11:2
Coming up … Now, about spiritual gifts, Chapters 12- 14 should prove to be very interesting … and may hit even closer to home than this section did. At any rate, we will find it helpful in many ways.
1 1Co 2:2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
2 J.B Phillips translation
3 Re 3:19 "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.
Heb 12:7 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?
8 But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.
As Paul 'eases' into this topic we must assume that he is responding to a problem in the church (house churches) that he has been made aware of. This probably comes under the category: ¶ Now for the matters you wrote about: (1Co 7:1). Using our imagination as to what was written, we have a wide range of possibilities. Perhaps something like this,
“Paul, you have no idea what is going on in some of the churches! Woman are acting like men! They are cutting their hair short and standing up bare headed, praying and prophesying in front of everybody! They are really taking what you said about 'freedom in Christ' way too far! There needs to be some kind of balance here. What do you say Paul?”
Paul answers, “ I am glad that you are referring back to something that I said when I was there, and that you are trying to make it work in your church groups. Let me start by giving you some of the basics.”
He says that there is a divine order.
The head of man is Christ. The head of the woman is man. The head of Christ is God.
Let's talk about the last one first. How is 'God' the head of Christ? We understand the equality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity. We understand the centrality of Christ in the New Testament1. We gather from chapter 15:28 that the Son is presently above all. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. This verse is referring to a future time (after the 1000 year reign) when the distinction between Father and Son merges to become as it was in eternity past. So for Paul to be saying that the head of Jesus is God must be referring to when Jesus was on earth.
The following passages bear this out:
John 5:30 "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.
John 12:49 "For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.
John 14:10 "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.
John 10:18 "No one takes it ((my life) from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father."
Jesus took on this position of being 'under the Father' voluntarily and Paul points this out in his letter to the Philippians.
Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be. For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God’s equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man. Philippians 2:62
When we consider the fact that the head of man is Christ, we can accept that without much difficulty. After all, Christ is invisible and is not here is person to 'call us on it' when a man seems to be operating on his own authority and not under Christ. But when we take the last one … the head of every woman is man, we get a bit nervous.
After laying out the divine order, he makes reference to what is appropriate and inappropriate in a church service. Let's read the verses from 4 - 9
He did not say that a woman should not pray or prophesy … He did not say, “Leave that up to the men.” But he does mention head coverings as being something that has some kind of effect on whether we honor or dishonor our head.
So, fact: Honoring our 'head' is important and that is the issue here. It is important to state here that there are a lot of other ways to dishonor your head, besides just doing something wrong in the matter of your head coverings.
The head covering seems to be something symbolic. Why is the man to keep his head 'uncovered' while praying or prophesying in church? It has to do with God. He made man out of the dust of the earth and breathed life into him. He did not create woman in the same way, but purposely took her 'out of man'. Mankind is the 'capstone' of God's creation. God said, “Very Good!” after creating man.
When a person wears a 'symbolic' head covering, they are indicating that the are 'under' another. It is a symbol of humility or at least a symbol stating a position of being under another person.
We see this clearly in our order of society. A man (or woman) wearing a certain kind of cap, and wearing black pants with a yellow stripe down the side, is wearing clothing that is making a statement. The dress code indicates that he or she has been placed over us to maintain and enforce peace. It is not the dress code that makes the difference. A person could 'duplicate' the dress code without authority, and as an impersonator, find themselves in trouble.
We are told to honor those who are wearing that particular dress code (legitimately) For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Romans 13:4
When 'the man' prays with his head 'uncovered' he is showing himself to be 'over creation' where God placed Adam to begin with. In the sense of God's creation there is no creation or creature that he is under. He was left here as God's 'agent'. I will say it this way … there is no VISIBLE person in a higher position. Christ, man's head, is higher but He is invisible.
So Paul is talking about visibility and the kinds of statements we make publicly by our appearance.
In verses 7 and 8 Paul is giving his main reason for the difference between man and woman as dating back to creation. He says that because man was made totally by God … the link to the Creator is direct. But because Eve was taken from Adam, Adam is a link between Eve and God, creatively speaking.
The 'symbol' of this link was a head covering and veil. In verse 5 Paul says that for a woman to pray in public 'bare-headed' is inappropriate and indicates an attitude of disrespect to men. He adds a remark, “She might as well appear in public with her head shaved … it would be no worse”. Why did he say this? Two possibilities: One, “Many men appear in public with no hair at all … you want to act like a man … you might as well look like one!”
or Two, “You want to appear as a woman who is under no man? You might as well shave your head like the Corinthian temple prostitutes who claim to be totally independent beings.”
For a woman to appear 'liberated from man' is a dishonor in Christianity. Show appropriate honor and respect.
After reminding us that woman was created for man as a suitable helper he goes on to say some things that can be a bit hard to grasp.
He gives a reason for the woman to wear her 'covering'. He says that a woman should be wearing her symbolic head covering because of the angels. What do angels have to do with anything here? Are we starting to think about Genesis? “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.” Ge 6:2
I don't think Paul is opening a dimension to this topic that swings way over there. I think he is still talking about what is appropriate in church. He now adds, “By the way, I want to emphasize the fact that men and woman are equal in the sense that one comes from the other. There is no superiority here. We are equal and we all came from God. (11-12)
But what about the angel thing? He is still talking about it in verse 13. “Does it LOOK good for a woman to pray with her head uncovered?”
Since the covering was a symbol of connection to man, a particular man... her husband, for her to pray bareheaded 'looks' like there is a problem at home. We have a woman praying who wants everyone to know she is under no man, including her husband!
So Paul opens up the topic of 'looks' here. And he mentions nature. (We still have not dealt with the 'angel' thing.) Paul says that long hair looks better on a woman than on a man. He says even nature will tell you that! How so? How many bald men do you know? How many bald women do you know? What does the phrase 'male pattern baldness' mean? Why can baldness in men be hereditary? If baldness was so terrible why does God allow it to go into the genetic code? Nature says, a man does not have to have long hair to look OK. Baldness is OK too.
On the other hand … when a woman has long, gorgeous hair … that is another thing altogether. It is her glory! Then why cover it up? Because of the angels.
Just as I pointed out earlier that there is more than one way to dishonor your head than by what you wear or don't wear on your head … even so there is more than just hair that looks beautiful on a woman. A woman can show her glory … her hair, and her attributes, and be admired. In church? Who do we meet together to 'glorify'? Women? Sorry, no. It is God that we want to focus on, not the beautiful women that are there.
In a house church the meeting area fills up with people sitting wherever they can find a spot. For the most part, people like to sit where they can at least see the speaker. In that arrangement it may not be possible for each person to see everyone else, but at least one could see the speaker, face-on.
In a time in which all women, except the prostitutes, wore coverings when outside of their homes, to appear in a public church meeting with head uncovered, glorious hair completely visible, would be inviting a lot of attention to oneself. Well, “So what?” if a few men's heads 'turn' for a few minutes? What is the harm? And what about the speaker … the 'angel', the messenger? He is doing his best to have everyone's attention focused on God. Including his own attention. He certainly does not need a 'distraction' like that at such an important moment when he delivering God's message to the people.
The distractions that we have in our day and time differ somewhat. When we meet together let us try our level best to not draw attention to ourselves.
Paul ends this with … “That's it. We have no variation on this anywhere!”
In the verses from 17-34 Paul changes the subject.
The house churches, the Paul churches, the Apollos churches, the Peter churches, the Jesus churches … were so divided it showed up many areas, but none so critical as in the way they took communion.
In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 1Co 11:18
The phrase, 'come together as a church' is important. Most certainly they would have regular communion in their own house churches. That is not what Paul is criticizing here. He is remarking on what happens when they ALL COME TOGETHER. This tells me that periodically the house churches had a custom of all coming together. How they did this, or where, we are not told. It is not important to us to know what kind of a venue they used. But we know that coming together was viewed as being important. Paul likely hoped that coming together periodically would produce unity in doctrine and practice. But because of their extreme polarization it was not producing unity at all.
Paul summarizes what seems to be going on. Some of the groups, let's say the Paul groups, agreed to come at an earlier time than what was being announced. Perhaps is was their turn to bring the elements for the supper. By coming earlier (on purpose) they could have a good chuckle when the others showed up, only to find that they missed it.
Paul severely reprimands them for this loose and callous attitude toward things as serious as communion. Notice again verse 22.
Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not! 1Co 11:22
The very word communion carries the thought of connection. Connection with God, to be sure, but because we are a body of believers, it shows how we are collectively connected to God. To act in a 'disconnected' way toward other believers, on purpose, is to eat and drink in an unworthy manner.
That is what they were doing … and they were being judged by God for it3. Paul has to tell them that. This means that they were not making the connection on their own. People were sick and some were dying. I suppose they thought it was just life as usual. Paul has to point out that God is doing this and unless they shape up it will get worse.
This judgment from God, Paul says, is good. He loves us. Whoever He loves He disciplines. Discipline is not what a parent does TO a child, it is what he/she does FOR the child. Verse 32 tells us that God does this NOW so that we don't continue to slide downhill until one day we won't be at the judgment of believers at all …
So Paul tells us to respect one another. Waiting for one another at communion was only one of those ways. The church is the bride of Christ. Paul has a personal take on this. He said in second Corinthians …
“For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” 2Co 11:2
Coming up … Now, about spiritual gifts, Chapters 12- 14 should prove to be very interesting … and may hit even closer to home than this section did. At any rate, we will find it helpful in many ways.
1 1Co 2:2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
2 J.B Phillips translation
3 Re 3:19 "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.
Heb 12:7 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?
8 But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.