This sermon explores 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, discussing the meaning of head coverings and their significance as a symbol of God’s established order and authority in worship. It emphasizes integrity in worship, reflecting God’s nature, creation, and the witness of angels.
Transcript
Hello, if you would open your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 11.
Let me just point out before we read that chapters 11 all the way through 14, the apostle was dealing with issues related to worship in the local church, worship-related issues.
Today we read this most interesting passage in verses 2 to 16. It has to do, of course, with the role of women in the church, it has to do with head coverings. Let me first read this. This is God’s holy, inherent Word.
Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and that man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head. For she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and the glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man. For man does not originate from the woman, but the woman from man. For indeed, man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake. Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor man independent of woman. For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman, and all things originate from God. Judge for yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that for a man is long hair, it’s a dishonor to him? But if a woman has long hair, it’s a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering. But if one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God.
Let us pray.
Father, as we look at this passage this morning, we pray for Your special grace and help. Lord, I pray that You keep us into Your truth. As we explore the words of the Apostle Paul, help us to understand what they mean for us today and that we would understand how to live this out in our life. We ask for Your protection and blessing through the power of Your Spirit, Your guidance, and grace. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Major Interpretive Views
Just to summarize one of the main takeaways from this section before we began to explore it, it has to do with symbolism. Any symbolism in worship should be directed by God through His Word and should illustrate what’s true of God’s nature and design for the world that He created, with the goal of submitting to Him and glorifying Him.
A few weeks ago on Sunday evening, I quoted Stephen Charnock, the Puritan, who has that wonderful volume on the attributes of God. He wrote, “When we believe that we should be satisfied, we should be satisfied, rather than God glorified. We put God below ourselves, as though He had been made for us, and not we for Him.” As I was reflecting on this, I thought it might be a very good quote to begin with as we reflect on this passage. Before I explain my approach to the passage, what I try to always do when I go to the Bible and study it is to— this may sound odd to you at first, but I think you’ll understand—I try to disinterest myself from the text in the sense that I don’t immediately start thinking about the application and how this text applies to me. My first concern is, what does the text say? What is being said in this passage? The problem that I have is that if I start the other way, and I start thinking about how am I going to apply this, and what does this mean for us, before I understand what is actually said, then my view of application begins to shape my understanding of the passage. I don’t want that to happen. As a pastor, I think that I’m responsible to the people that God’s entrusted to me to teach scripture and to explain what it means. Then understanding what it means, we can begin to explore application from there.
So, let me just begin by talking about some of the major views of how people understand this passage. Let me, before I do that, the key idea in this passage, one of the key doctrinal issues, has to do with the role of women in the church in the sense of authority in the church. That’s something that is emphasized throughout this passage, and it’s one of the major points of the passage. But you have questions. What is, what is a head covering mean? Let’s just begin with that because it’s what this whole topic is. We’ve read all of these verses from verse 2 to verse 16, and it’s all having to do with the head covering. What does that mean? What is the head covering?
The Head Covering
One of the major views, and one of the most common understandings of this passage, is that the head covering that is being described is the lady’s hair, long hair. The argument for that comes from verse 15: “But if the woman has long hair, it’s a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering.” The idea is that the hair itself is the covering. To make sense of that, it is sometimes nuanced a little bit. With the nuance, the idea is it’s not you have a lady has long hair, and she should have long hair, is the idea, and as she worships, when she is in a worship service, which for us happens on Sunday mornings, we have other meetings in the church but our formal worship service is right now. If she was, if there was a lady who was about to in this text, if she was to pray in public, pray as part of the service, or if she was to give a prophecy, present a message of some kind, it says that she is to have this covering. So in verse 15, this understanding is that that covering would be her hair.
Well, that is nuanced because it’s difficult to hold up in the passage. So one of the ways that people have tried to argue for that view is by trying to understand the meaning of what it means to cover and to uncover. That’s pretty easy normally speaking because you can just look it up in the lexicon. When you look it up in the lexicon and the meaning isn’t there, then sometimes you have to get creative to find the meaning. One of the arguments has been to quote from Numbers 5:18, which describes a woman who in shame and judgment has her hair let down. To read that meaning of “let down” into the word of the idea of “covering” and “uncovering.” The argument sounds pretty good when you first hear it. The idea there is that in Numbers 5:18, the woman was accused of repudiating her relation to her husband, giving herself to another. It’s an adulterous situation. Her hair, which was done up on her head, was let loose. Then the argument goes like this: “The Hebrew word which is used to describe both the letting loose of the hair and being unveiled, is translated by the Greek Old Testament by the word *akatakalyptos*. It’s the word that Paul uses for ‘uncovered’.” That’s really a powerful argument in itself. In other words, if the Apostle Paul is reading from the Old Testament, and he’s going to be very familiar with the Old Testament. He comes to this word *akatakalyptos*. When he thinks of this word, the idea of covering, that passage comes back to his mind. That would be a powerful argument. He’s going to be very familiar with the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. So, when he thinks about this, if this passage would come back to mind because it’s the Greek for that, and it’s used in that passage, the problem with that is that word is not found in the Septuagint as a translation for that passage. It’s just not there at all. In fact, the word in all of the Septuagint is found only one time, not even exactly there because it’s not in the main text, it’s in a variant that is in the text. You can find it there. Then the understanding of that in that passage is a little bit uncertain.
I was reading this from Dan Wallace’s has an interesting article. I encourage you to look it up online and read it about this topic. He’s a wonderful New Testament scholar, especially having to do with grammar, Greek grammar. But he said, “You know, that’s kind of like trying to argue that way, it’s kind of like saying all Indians walk in a single file line. I know that that’s true because the one that I saw does.” I know that whole illustration is pretty offensive in every way, that’s the point, and the point is, it’s very well taken. A stereotype that’s based on a marginal usage that I mean, it may be there, probably isn’t. You take from that one example, and you extrapolate a whole understanding.
If you want to look this word up, what it means, you can look it up in Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, Danker’s, a lexicon of the New Testament Greek text. They don’t ever give a meaning, not even suggest that, of being let down. They’re dealing with the whole Koine period. So it probably doesn’t have to do with hair being let down, it has to do with a covering that is put on.
So, if this tradition has to do with a doctrinal truth that’s communicated to us, and it is a real head covering, then we need to understand what Paul’s doing with the rest of this. Paul is making an argument. Another thing about this idea of tradition is the arguments that he makes for it. If Paul was arguing and his whole argument was in verse 16, this is what the churches are doing. You should do this too. Well, churches can do a lot of different things. You would say that that’s social. But look at the way he makes the arguments in this passage.
Argument from the Trinity/God’s Nature
First of all, Paul argues from the nature of God. Look at verse 3. He’s making an argument from the doctrine of the Trinity. He says, “I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.” What he’s saying there is that just as Christ and the Father are both have equality, and yet there is in the role, particularly in the role of Christ as Savior, there is a subordination of the Son to the Father. Even though there’s an ontological equality, that’s absolutely real, they’re of the same essence, they’re the same worth and value. But he says, “I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and that man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ.” So you have the Father, you have the Christ, you have Christ, then you have man, and you have woman. This is a line that Paul is teaching. There is a subordination, not out of not to bring about humiliation, but just practically speaking, in the outworking of God’s plan, in His creation.
Argument from Creation
The other argument, not only does he argue from the Trinity, but he argues from the creation account in verses 8 and 9. “For man does not originate from the woman, but the woman from man. For indeed, man was not created for the woman’s sake, but the woman for man’s sake.” Therefore, for that reason, “the woman should have a symbol of authority on her head.” So the second argument that he makes has to do with the creation account. He’s not arguing from the culture of the day. He’s arguing from the creation. So God established this pattern in the beginning. God created man, and God created from man, woman, and then He created from man and woman, children. There was a pattern.
Argument from the Angels
The next argument that he gives is because of the witness of the angels in verse 10: “The woman should have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels.” Which is really intriguing. We don’t exactly know, that’s all it says here. One of the things that you know is true is that because Paul didn’t elaborate on what that meant, he understood that the Corinthians when they read that, they’re going to understand it. There are all sorts of wild things people do with that phrase, “because of the angels.” I think that the fact that the Corinthians understood it should rein us in. We should eliminate these wild views. One of the things, when he says “angels,” he’s clearly talking about the holy angels. Otherwise, that would be qualified in this verse. He’s talking about the holy angels here. The fact that it’s not unusual in scripture for the holy angels, it’s mentioned repeatedly that the angels are observers of us, especially in our worship. So I think the idea is that when we worship, we should be very careful not to offend the holy angels. Think about all the miracles of the Bible, what Jesus did, and the connection between them and the work of angels. We probably should take care of our angels and not offend them.
Argument from Nature
In verse 5, I mean, the fifth argument in verses 13 to 15 is an argument where he’s arguing from nature. He says, “Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it’s a dishonor to him? But if a woman has long hair, it’s a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering.” The argument there is from nature. And finally, the practice in the churches.
Conclusion
So how do you apply it? If this has to do with a covering, what does it mean for us today? First of all, we need to remember that it’s describing a man who, if a man is not, who had his head covered in temple worship. They did that when they sacrificed, they covered their head. So they might think something like, if we did this to honor Dionysius, shouldn’t we show this kind of humility when we’re worshiping Christ? What Paul does is he says, “No, that’s not appropriate at all. What you did in your pagan temple worship is not to be done with Christ. You should illustrate God’s order, God’s creative order. You should illustrate it through His nature and His Trinity. You should illustrate it through the creation that He has given and the order of the creation. We should honor God in all these things. That should be foundational to all of our expressions of worship.” That’s true for the man, as well as for the woman. It’s true for the man, as well as the woman.
We are to honor God through the order that He has given. So in our worship, you know, if a woman is to pray or prophesy in the worship service, there should be a symbol of authority on her head as it says. There should be a symbol of authority that means something, that’s describing a place of submission to God’s authority within the roles that He has given. So that’s the minimal application. I’m going to leave it to you how to apply this. But I would say that in this passage, the context is in a worship service, where a person is speaking or prophesying in the worship service. If they’re speaking, or they’re praying in public in that worship service, these things should apply.
Okay, I know I’ve been faltering and struggled with this. It’s a passage that can be confusing as you read through it. I’ll try to do this in a way that is clear, as much as I can make it clear. But I think in our application, we should remember that any symbolism in worship should be directed to God, and should illustrate what’s true of God’s nature and design for the world that He created, with the goal of submitting to Him and bringing glory to Him. We should avoid doing anything that dishonors us, dishonors our head, as it says, and remembering that our head is the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray.
Father, we thank You for the truth of Your Word. We thank You for recognizing that this isn’t about anyone being humiliated in any way. We should do nothing that causes that. This is about us showing reverential care to You Yourself and all that we do in worship. Help us, Lord Jesus, to be obedient to Your Word and I pray that for all of us in every way. Help us, Lord Jesus, to understand Your Word and to apply it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.