Episode Transcript
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Word to First Corinthians Eleven, if
you would remained standing. Please remain standing,
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if you're able. First Corinthians Eleven, versus one through sixteen. The
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Apostle Peter says in one of his
letters that there are places in the apostle
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Paul's writings that are difficult to understand, that are challenging, and so if
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Peter can say that, I feel
like I can say that too, and
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this is one of those. It
is a really challenging passage for all kinds
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of reasons, exogetically, understanding how
to interpret it and, of course,
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as with all of scripture, are
challenging on our hearts as well. As
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we approach it, we will do
so with humility and with honor and with
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reverence, and I'm asking, as
we already have done, for the Lord's
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Blessing. So let's hear God's word. First Corinthians Eleven, one through sixteen,
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be imitators of me, as I
am of Christ. Now I commend
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you because you remember me and everything
and maintain the traditions, even as I
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delivered them to you. But I
want you to understand that the head of
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every man is Christ, the head
of a wife is her husband, and
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the head of Christ is God.
Every man who prays or prophesies with his
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head covered dishonors his head, but
every wife who prays or prophesied with her
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head uncovered dishonors her head, since
it is the same as if her head
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were shaven. For if a wife
will not cover her head, then she
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should cut her hair short. But
since it is disgraceful for a wife to
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cut her hair, to cut off
her hair or shave her head, let
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her cover her head. For a
man ought not to cover his head,
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since he is the image and glory
of God, but woman is the glory
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of Man, for man was not
made from woman, but woman from man.
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Neither was man created for woman,
but woman for man. That is
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why a wife ought to have a
symbol of authority on her head, because
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of the angels. Nevertheless, in
the Lord, woman is not independent of
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Man, nor man of woman,
for as woman was made from man,
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so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God.
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Judge for yourselves. Is it proper
for a wife to pray to God with
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her head uncovered? Does Not Nature
itself teach you that if a man wears
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long hair, it is a disgrace
for him. But if a woman has
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long hair, it is her glory, for her hair is given to her
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for a covering. If anyone is
inclined to be contentious. We have no
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such practice, nor do the churches
of God. Amen, you maybe see.
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So I want to start by just
saying that I'm as I mentioned,
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it is a difficult passage and it's
difficult for several reasons. One of them
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is that in almost every single verse, and in Sometimes Multiple Times in one
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verse, you have many reasonable choices, interpretive choices that can be made and
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as you read commentators, modern,
past, reformed, non reformed, even
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within the narrow camps, even in
places where there's a lot of theological agreement
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and trusted scholars and people that you
would normally look to, is your kind
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of go to folks for help on
these issues, you'll find that there's a
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lot of variation because there's a lot
of different possibilities and as you take each
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possibility, it affects all the others. I've kind of been comparing it to
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a Rubik's cube in my mind.
As you move one side, everything else
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changes, and then you change this
and everything I'll change. You kind of
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have to solve the puzzle all at
once. You have to kind of keep
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every single verse of all of its
choices in your mind find at the same
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time and and that's difficult to do. That being said, what I want
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to say, then, is that
my goal today is not to run through
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every possible choice and tell you why
I've come to every single conclusion that I
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have. We'd be here for weeks. I will not also try to recount
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the history of various interpreters and quote
lots of authors. And if you're interested
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in a particular question, in a
particular verse, how things fit together,
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I'm more than happy to talk to
you about it and point you to places
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where you can do some work on
this in your own my goal today is
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to present very clearly and simply my
best understanding of this passage, and my
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hope is that it is faithful to
the Lord and compelling to you as the
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word of God, with that throat
clearing, as they say. In writing.
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I want to begin with this.
There's this universal truth that we human
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beings express ourselves in our clothing.
Find this across cultures, across time.
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Now, this varies a lot from
place to place. If you go and
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you can look up an article on
the history of clothing in and then you
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name the country, any country,
you will find all kinds of fascinating things,
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varying from even within the same region, from time and place. There's
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a lot of variations, regional variations, variations in time, culture, political
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environments, all kinds of things.
Clothing change it a lot, but it's
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true, even though the outward forms
of clothing changes in there are some consistencies
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here there, that we express ourselves
through clothing, sometimes very intentionally, sometimes
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not so intentionally. Sometimes it's just
what is sort of clean, sometimes it's
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what you can afford. Sometimes you
have a lot of choice, sometimes you
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don't have a lot of choice,
but as a general rule this is a
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true thing. It's also true that
as we express ourselves, as one of
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the chief ways that we express ourselves, there's a lot of things that go
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into those choices that we make,
and this is will be saying what you
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already know to be true. But
just to meditate on this for a moment,
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in our clothing choices we often express
things like class, wealth, age,
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time of year. I'm seeing a
little less red and green still still
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there, but right there's certain maybe
neckties or or dresses or things that we
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bring out certain times of the year
and other times we put away. Right.
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So, seasons warm, hot,
cold, our frame of mind.
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Am I feeling sad today? Am
I feeling happy today? Am I grieving?
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My excited? Our frame of mind, our gender, which is one
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of the considerations that comes up here
in this passage. An event. Right,
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we dust differently when we were going
to the gym than we do when
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we're going to church. Then we
do when we are going to a funeral
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than we do when we're a police
officer, and so on and so forth.
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We have uniforms, we have all
kinds of things. Now again,
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we can pick all these things out
for ourselves in our time, even without
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our families. There might be certain
customs. This will vary a lot depending
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on your own personal circumstances in the
culture we live in, and that's true
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for the Corinthians as well as it's
true for all people in all time times,
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in all places. And so what
this passage will teach us at its
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core, without laying any specific burden
on us regarding our clothes or our specific
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clothes, is that what we wear
in worship and in general, but particularly
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in worship, which is the focus
here. It matters and it ought to
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be decent not to be honorable to
the Lord. That's the main point.
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That's the thing, the law,
the thing, that part of God's will
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that we ought all to take away. But we think, what does God
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want me to do? That's what
God wants you to do. He wants
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us, when we join for worship, to be about honoring and glorifying him,
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not ourselves, not one another.
There might be a time to dress
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to the nines and put on lots
of fancy stuff and and go out and
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show yourself off. There's a time
in a place for that, but it's
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not when we're here to worship the
Lord. It's not when we're here for
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him. That's the main thing to
take away, without laying any specific burden
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on us regarding our specific clothing choices. Now the first now, the Corinthians
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were in a specific time and place
and did have very specific choices that they
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were making, some that were good
and some that were not good, and
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we'll talk about this for a minute
so we can see some of the specific
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a fix of the text. The
specific issue that the Corinthians were dealing with
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related to distinctions and clothing regarding honor
and dishonor generally focusing around men and women,
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but not entirely because, as you
see it's translated here, some of
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the women are specifically wives. It's
not addressing, likely not addressing all women,
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but wives in particular. In Rome
at the time, and remember Corinth
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is a Roman colony, also very
influenced by the Greek world, but very,
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very very Roman, there were very
specific rules and laws and customs practices.
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I'm surrounding clothing women. Married women
were supposed to wear a very specific
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type of garment, a kind of
cloak or not a head covering. So
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sometimes it says veil here, but
it's not over their face. It's something
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that would be pulled up over the
head and that would mark them as a
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married woman, kind of like wearing
reading wedding rings sometimes does for us today.
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I'm perhaps you've seen in a movie
or read in a book a scene
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where, maybe you know, a
guy walks into a guard takes his wedding
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ring off and slides it into his
pocket it before he slides on up to
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the counter. Why? What's going
on there? Well, we all know
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what that means, right. It
means he's making himself available even though he's
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married. He doesn't want it to
look that way. He wants to say
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to everyone there at that bar that
he is he's available, he's looking.
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A similar thing was happening here in
Rome. Now, Rome had a very
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double standard when it came to men
and women, which was not right.
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A men were basically allowed to do
whatever they wanted. There's some qualifications on
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that, but generally men could do
whatever they wanted regarding a sexual practices,
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and that was not true of women. Women were expected to be chased and
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modest and various in their various relationships. The double standard was bad. I'm
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not the requirement on women. So
it was not that women shouldn't have had
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that restriction on them, it's that
men needed a restriction on them. Yes,
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the unfairness was not right, but
the solution was not to release the
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women to do whatever they wanted to
do. But that's exactly what some people
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were saying. There was a movement
at the time, sometimes referred to in
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the scholarship as the new women,
and these women were saying enough with this,
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I'm going to do what I want, I want to live what I
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want. I don't want to be
chased, I don't want to be modest,
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I want to be like the guys. And so they would take their
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head coverings off as a way to
symbolize and mark themselves as somebody who was
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a free woman, a new woman. And of course, as often happens
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with these things, it was also
a class thing. Usually you don't get
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to make these kinds of choices and
have this kind of freedom unless you're politically
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connected and wealthy and those kinds of
things. And so there was not only
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a sense of releasing yourself, marking
yourself as released from these obligations in a
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certain kind of morality, but it
was also way of expressing yourself. Is
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connected with, you know, the
cool people, right the the people in
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power, the people with money.
You're you're you're marking yourself as being a
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part of this new emerging cool thing. Now, this happens, of course,
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in all kinds of cultures and cross
time and crossplay. So that's what's
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going on here. When they did
this, though, it was, Paul
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says, a dishonorable thing, just
like the man who takes his wedding ring
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off and slips it into his pocket. It goes in the bars, like,
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what are you doing? You're dishonoring
your wife, you're dishonoring your relationship,
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even yourself and your own morality.
What do you what are you doing?
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She was doing a similar thing.
Not also talks about men who were
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dishonoring themselves, and there's a couple
possibilities here on one possibility is that men,
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by covering their heads, I'm we're
trying to act like some commentators think
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that they were trying to act like
I'm Jewish priests or something like that,
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and there was a judaizing tendency here. I think that's not likely. Another
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possibility is that they were acting like
like Roman priests, adopting certain practices that
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were going on in the time to
sort of again look like the culture,
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look cool, that kind of thing, and so they put on men would
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start we're starting to put on these
head coverings, and the and the other
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our third possibility. It was perhaps
a sort of a gender bending kind of
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thing that was going on, where
they were trying to look like the women,
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the married women, who would wear
these head coverings. It's not totally
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clear which of these options it is, but the it seems to probably be
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related to the third. The bottom
line is this. You have two groups
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of people. You have men and
married women. Unmarried women would not wear
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these having head coverings. In fact
you couldn't, according to Roman law,
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not allowed to. There were even
these, I'm trying to figure out how
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to translate, like women, law
enforcers, people, officers of the Roman
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government, who would go to especially
festivals, parades, things like that,
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and make sure that the women were
addressing appropriately. If not, they could
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take your clothes, they could tear
your clothes and dedicate them to one of
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the Gods. This was a big
deal. There was it was very important
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established in law it self that honor
be protected, that men and women dress,
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I'm properly. But, however,
this was not happening in some cases
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and Christians, converts to Christianity,
were coming into worship and bringing some of
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these these new cultural movements into worship
with them. And this isn't the first
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time we've seen this. This is, in fact, been the recurring theme
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over and over and over again in
Corinth, whether it's dealing with class or
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food, sacrifice to idols or wealth
or parties. Are All kinds of things
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you see the church and Corinth struggling
to be the church, struggling to keep
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Christ at the center, struggling to
keep God and his glory as the first
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and most important thing, and instead
bringing in Prett controversies and and I'm questions
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about leadership and public speaking and dress
and and a government and money and all
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these other things, bringing those things
into worship and bringing them into how they
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related with one another. And over
and over again Paul saying stop it,
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stop it, stop it. We
are here as one body, United Together
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under Christ for the glory of God. What's Paul? What's Apolois? What's
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all these divisions? It's not about
that, pulse says at the beginning,
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all these people that think they're well
the and wise and honorable. God chooses
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what is foolish in the world to
shame the wise, what is weak in
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the world to shame the strong.
And so God calls the men and women
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within the Church and Corinth to do
what, and this is paraphrasing the passage,
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what you know you ought to be
doing anyway. He says this in
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a couple ways at the beginning,
or at the beginning and end of the
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chapter. Notice this is one of
his arguments for why these women should undressed
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like women, like married women,
on those who are married, and why
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men should dress like men, and
one reason he gives is example, his
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own example. On he says in
Verse Sixteen, if anyone is inclined to
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be contentious, we have no such
practice, and here he's probably speaking of
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himself and Sosthenes, who is also
a writer of this letter, perhaps his
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other colleagues and people who are with
him. He also says of the Churches
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of God. None of the Churches
of God are doing this. This is
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not how it's practiced among God's people. Corinth, these practices that you're bringing
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in from your culture, you're bringing
in from Rome, and your desire to
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be a part of them is not
right. This is not practiced in the
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Church of God. It's not practiced
by us. And you remember, back
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at the beginning of the chapter,
he says the imitators of me, as
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I am of Christ. I commend
you because you remember me and everything and
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maintain the traditions, even as I
delivered them to you. So Paul's own
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example, the example of the Churches, and remember the Paul's example is connected
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with Christ. He says, be
imitators of me, not just because of
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some other reason. It's because he
has he represents Christ to us as Christ's
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apostle. He also tells them that
this is appropriate according to custom. On
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the word nature in verse fourteen has
many different possible meanings. I think likely
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it means here on what is naturally
so, according to the environment that they're
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in. Does not this teach you
that if a man wears long hair,
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it's a disgrace for him, if
a woman has long hair, it's are
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her glories like? Look around you, there is a distinction between men and
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women here. This is how we
mark it, this is how it is.
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Why are you trying to deny these
distinctions now again? I've said this
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already, but to emphasize it yet
one more time. Long and short our
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relative terms, and they depend on
all kinds of times and places and cultures.
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In the point isn't particularly about hair
length. It is about it is
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about making these distinctions appropriate. The
NAZRITES, for example, in the Old
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Testament, had long hair. We
have other examples of Theo of men with
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long hair and women with short hair, people who are holy and right,
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and this again depends on time and
place. The point is the distinctions that
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God has made in the world,
these distinctions that are exhibited in our cultures
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and which vary from culture to culture
but are nevertheless there. Do we blow
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past them, do we deny them, do we say they don't matter at
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all, or do we respect them
in the world that God has made?
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So that's three things. Are Two, two or three things so far?
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He says this is important for the
example that he sets, for the practice
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in the churches, the the nature
of the situation that they are in.
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As a third one, he also
says because of the angels. Another interesting
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verse, in Verse Ten, he
says it's because of the angels. There's
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a couple possibilities here. On one
possibilities he's speaking of the immaterial beings right
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in the heavenly places, in the
spiritual realm, the the angels from.
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Some think it might refer to demons
or something or other, but I think
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if it is to be meant the
spiritual beings, he has in mind the
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good angelic angels of God. What
would he what could he mean then,
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if he says he says because of
the angels? How are we to understand
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the reason behind that? One possibility
is he wants us to remember a truth
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that is placed another portions of scripture, that when we come to worship,
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we not only come to worship with
one another, but we come to worship
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in a company of angels. When
we are in Christ, we are in
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with him in the heavenly places.
And when we think about the hundreds of
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millions of angels that surround the Throne
of Christ, that are honoring him and
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glorifying him and praising him, some
of them who are covering their faces and
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their feet and who are showing all
kinds of honor and submission to God,
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who are calling out as praises,
are we going to just waltz in and
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well, I'm going to do what
I want today. Can you imagine walking
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into a King's throne room? Right? Imagine all of its gold and it's
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precious things, everything, and it's
perfect spot, every cordier, every person,
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exactly where they're supposed to be,
wearing exactly what they are supposed to
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wear. And then you walk in
and Oh, sorry, I drop my
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thing and I can't find my you
know, and it's not about you.
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We're not there for you. This
is about the king and his glory and
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his honor and reflecting on the angels
helps us to remember that that's true and
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if that's what Paul means here,
that's a really good thing to remember.
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There's another, very different possible interpretation. I realize I'm maybe going into the
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weeds a little bit more than night
and intended to at the beginning, but
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here we are. Another possible interpretation
of this is the word angel also means
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Messenger and, as I mentioned before, there were people within their society who
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were very keen to find out not
only what the women were doing but what
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the Christians were doing. There were
laws about how often you met, about
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public assembly, about how what happened
in those meetings. The Roman government was
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very concerned to control things and keep
things peaceful. Imagine how they might feel
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if there were groups of people gathering
together to worship a king whose name was
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not Caesar. This is a big, big deal, and we know this
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not only from the natural implications of
what I just said, but in the
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writings in these first few centuries we
see the Christians being very explicit in their
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apologetics, speaking to their neighbors and
saying we still submit to Caesar, we
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still submit to Caesar, but Jesus
is our ultimate king and we see them
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explaining this and talking about this,
even in terms of clothing and food and
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all kinds of other issues. I
was very much on their hearts and minds.
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What what goes on there? And
it was very much on Rome's minds
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and hearts. Who? What are
these people doing? What are they doing?
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And so there is put the potential
concern that Paul has in mind that
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there are people, and he talks
about this and other portions of scripture,
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there are people sometimes who slip into
Christian assemblies pretending to be one thing but
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are in fact another. This word
Messenger is sort of a broad way of
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speed, of relaying messages. We
might according to this interpretation, we might
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translate it more like spy, right, somebody who communicates not a message to
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them but about them to someone else. And so here the the sense,
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if that's what he means. The
sense, is that the world is watching.
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You have a witness. What are
you about? What are you doing?
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Are you going to shame and honor
and disgrace yourselves in front of a
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watching world, in front of people
who are already antagonistic against you? Don't
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do it, he says. He
doesn't mean that our job is to appease
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the spies or to always being worried
about what the world thinks. But he
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does want us to be moral,
much like Peter Talks about. Don't fall
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into disgrace and suffering because of immorality. That's not the kind of suffering the
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Christians are supposed to experience, the
suffering that we experience. If we experience
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shame, it's because of Christ,
because of Christ who, the Scriptures say,
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despised the shame and went to the
cross. Jesus said, dishonored me,
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disgrace me, strip me of my
clothes, my my dignity, hang
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me on a cross, do it
you feel must needs to be done.
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Why? Why did he despise the
shame? Why was he willing to endure
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all of that so that he might
glorify and honor us in him? So,
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whether it's before the watching angels or
the watching Roman government, Paul is
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saying, I believe we need to
be aware of our witness here. We
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need to be aware that if we
choose to go against to go against the
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practice of the churches and the practice
that is known in our in our culture,
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about what distinguishes men and women,
you are bringing disgrace on yourselves.
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You are dishonoring yourselves. The thing, and I'll close with this, the
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thing that we have to remember is
Christians, is that our glory, in
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our honor and our dignity does not
come from US standing on our own and
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getting what we want when we want
it. That's what Satan told eves she
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could have. That's what kings and
princes and people all over the world are
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constantly trying to achieve and and promising
to us as well, that independence,
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sense of I can be my own
God, I can do what I want,
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no matter what other people say,
no matter what culture says, no
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matter what the law of God says, no matter what the practice of the
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churches, that I can't do what
I want because I feel like it,
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I will attain my own honor,
my own glory and my own dignity.
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Others do it in another direction,
which Paul doesn't mention here, but I'll
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mention it. Instead of going off
a totally in our own way, doing
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what our own want, we decide
that we are going to get our honor
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and dignity and glory through legalism,
by looking at everyone else and saying,
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you are not doing it you are
not doing it, and look how great
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I am by controlling and conquering,
commanding. But the glory and honor that
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we receive in Christ is neither of
these. They are simply given to us,
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bestowed upon us. They are not
achieved by us. When we come
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to worship God in the Lord,
when we come to worship God in Christ,
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who gave himself up for us,
who despise the shame and went to
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the cross, we come not bringing
gifts, but bearing like having the gifts
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of God placed upon us. Christ
pours out on as so many blessings,
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so rich. He gives us eternal
life, he gives us union with one
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another. He breaks down dividing walls
in even worship spaces, where previously race
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and culture and and education and gender
and all kinds of things would divide us.
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He brings us together in a common
humanity, kind of Utopia. But
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the world is always promising and never
delivers. Christ makes it actually happen.
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He does it do it by denying
all distinctions and saying or saying anybody can
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do whatever they want. He does
it by making us who he has called
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us to be, but as one
body, distinct and different and is interesting.
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Various and diverse. Man and woman
is one example here from our passage,
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distinct and different yet inter dependent.
In the Lord, woman is not
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independent of Man, nor man of
woman. Woman was made from the man,
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and now man is born a woman. We cannot live without one another,
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totally, totally mutually dependent on one
another as one common a humanity.
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The world is always breaking these apart. We are always breaking these apart,
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and if we go against God's law
and say we're going to do whatever we
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want to do, we disgrace ourselves
and disgrace the name of Christ, may
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it never be instead, brothers and
sisters, when we want glory and honor
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and dignity, would we want to
enjoy both unity and diversity within ourselves and
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within the body, when we want
to shine forth with true pleasure and true
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life and true beauty, we will
find, and we must find all of
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those things in Christ, and in
Christ alone. The first Adam, our
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first father, he failed in all
of it. All of it broke apart,
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everything fell apart, every aspect of
of our world, but in Christ
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it's brought together. In Christ there's
wholeness in Christ, there's love in Christ,
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there's dignity. So let's put our
faith in him and let's do that
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together, and when we come together
from worship, let's do it honoring the
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distinctions that he has made, but
trusting that he is the one who brings
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us of these things that we need
and give him all the glory and honor
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and praise and not ourselves. Let's
pray
