Head Coverings in the Church (Part 2)
How angels affect our worship
Passage: 1 Corinthians 11:10-13 (Part 2)
Topic: Head Coverings
Question: How should angels affect our worship?
Due to the significance of Paul’s conclusion as to why women should have a symbol of authority on her head, in specific circumstances in the church, I have separated this into 2 parts. View the first in this series here: Head Coverings in the Church (Part 1).
Also, in an effort to regularly remind myself and my readers, I want to reiterate that I am in a perpetual state of learning and growing. We pursue Christ together, as his children, and all have a vital role to fulfill within his body, for one another, as we seek his honor and glory. The accuracy of what I write is only as valuable as it is interpreted and applied correctly. “So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” - Romans 14:12
How angels affect our worship
How quick are we to make God’s word about us? Even when we are aware and fight against our inclination to do so, we still fall victim to it.
The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
In Paul’s exhortation to the church at Corinth, he clearly articulated God’s created order and why that affects how we worship. Why did I keep verses 10-13 for their own article? In God’s providence, I have been captivated by the conclusion Paul made regarding head coverings… Because of the angels!
Later in his same letter, Paul addresses the practice of tongues and prophecy. On that topic, he correlates, in part, how spiritual gifts impact both believers and unbelievers. But he didn’t do that for the topic of head coverings. No. Head coverings correlate to creation. God’s design of man and woman. Let’s take a deeper look.
A symbol of authority
10 Therefore the woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
Paul exhorts that woman ought to have a ‘symbol of’ authority. More literally, “the woman ought to have power on her head” or “the woman ought to have authority on her head.”
His argument for woman covering her head when she prays or prophesies is based on creation (v.8-9).
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” - Genesis 1:26
We are going to see, momentarily, that Paul plainly displays why this is not about value, but the image of God. For now, we see in Genesis 1, that God created male and female in his own image. He created man with distinct purpose and woman with distinct purpose, but both to image him wholly and completely as one. There is an essential completeness to the image of God that is displayed in the proper unity of male and female.
Man is the image and glory of God (v.7) but is incomplete apart from woman (Genesis 2:18) because she is the image and glory of man (v.7). Man, alone, does not image God as he desires to be portrayed in creation.
Because of the angels
While it would be wonderful for Paul to elaborate on this a bit more, we can make a couple of assertions. 1) Angels are ministering spirits sent to serve the church (Hebrews 1:14); and 2) Angels eagerly watch and learn about the wisdom of God by observing how he works out our salvation, specifically through the work of the Holy Spirit (1 Peter 1:12)!
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. - Colossians 1:16
We exist for the glory of Christ. All things exist for the glory of Christ. Something that has deteriorated from the practice in our churches over time is understanding it’s not just the act of worship that honors and glorifies Jesus… it’s how we worship that honors and glorifies Jesus. This is known as the regulative principal.
How we worship forms our understanding of God
How we worship forms our understanding of God. And as Paul appeals to here, how we worship also teaches the angels of the wisdom and beauty of God. It’s not just Christians that worship God in the gathering on the Lord’s Day, the angels also worship God as they revel in his wisdom, as they watch us, worship him!
Authority—or casting off authority—on the head of woman also reveals to the angels how to minister to the church. Is it comfort for a submissive woman in the gathering who’s husband was harsh with her that morning? Is it answered prayer for a man who is convicted for not leading his household well? Is it protection from the lies of the Enemy who whispers into the ear of a woman that she would do a better job at teaching than the elders shepherding her soul? There are many ways that angels minister to believers.
11 However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as the woman originated from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God.
The idea of man being superior to woman is removed from any possible thought of the reader. Woman are subject to man but they are not independent of each other. It is the same type of language Paul uses when exhorting husbands in Ephesians 5.
So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are parts of His body.
Men are designed as protectors. A modern attack on the image of God today is the feminist claim that women no longer need protecting. Likewise, women today are told they can be independent of man, casting off his God-given authority and taking his place in the home, church, and society.
Paul asserts, neither of you are independent of the other. Ironically, it is the pursuit of liberation from the opposite sex that causes the subjection and abuse of woman and the cowering of men into weak boys.
Woman came from man and now man is born of woman. Everything is from God.
13 Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?
This is a rhetorical question. It was covered in part 1. Why did I bring it over here? Because the answer is, no. It’s not proper. Paul answered that even if you don’t understand why it’s improper, there is no other practice among the churches. Uphold tradition, which is what he praised the church for doing at the beginning of the passage (v.2).
Why is this a contentious issue?
I feel, like Paul, there are bigger issues at hand here.
God’s judgement on woman for her sin was increased pain in childbearing and a desire to take authority over man. It was also that rather than the man nurturing and protecting her, he would lord his authority over her. Genesis 3:16.
To the woman He said, 'I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you shall deliver children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.'
God’s judgement on man for his sin was pain and difficulty in providing and protecting, and returning to the cursed ground rather than living in the presence and glory of God.
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; With hard labor you shall eat from it All the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; Yet you shall eat the plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
The purpose of women having a symbol of authority on their head is to display the restoring and redemptive work of God in all creation and mankind, for the angels that turn in praise and worship to the wisdom and glory of God.
“If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.” - 1 Corinthians 11:16