Dwell in the Word 1 Corinthians 11:2-16

Contemplate these questions while you dwell in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16:

1. How does the cultural context of first-century Corinth impact our understanding of Paul's teachings on head coverings in this passage? What are some of the key cultural differences that make it challenging for us to interpret this passage accurately?

2. Paul emphasizes the complementary nature of men and women in verses 11 and 12, highlighting that both are interdependent and designed by God to work together. How can this perspective shape our view of gender roles and relationships in the context of our faith?

3. Despite the specific cultural nuances in this passage, what overarching lesson can we draw from it about valuing the differences and roles that God has ordained for men and women? How can we apply this principle in our daily lives to bring glory to God through our relationships and interactions?

Transcript:

 As I mentioned, we find ourselves in another difficult passage here in 1 Corinthians with this beginning of chapter 11. There is so much cultural distance between us and the first century that we struggle to understand what this means. In fact, there's multiple interpretations of what it means. We do our best, but the culture is so different then, and there's so much time.

We really do not know best how to interpret this fully. Also, uh, I really don't have the time to go into everything I read about this. I, I spent, just spent a lot of time trying to understand it, uh, to go through and to explain it and to give all the different viewpoints would take far more time than a devotional video is supposed to undertake.

And so, I will do my best to distill the basic understanding that I've acquired here and then try and find some.  application for us to step out into the world with today.  So, what is the big deal with head coverings? Well, As I said, there's so much cultural distance. We don't understand this. Well for the men Pagan men would cover their heads in worship This was not something that men would want to do in a Christian setting because they weren't being pagan worshipers and for women If you uncovered your head, it, uh, disrespected the husband because it essentially implied a, for lack of a better term, availability, uh, in a  marital or sexual sense, um, women would, uh, Often have shaven heads if they've been convicted of prostitution and things like this again There's a lot of different information.

I'm doing my best to distill it down  And so this is why Paul is bringing this up He isn't saying well, you didn't come to church with a hat on shame on you for that there that it's not about style it's not about a submissiveness even because as Chrysostom, a second century Christian theologian said, if this was about submission, if this was about men controlling women, why would Paul talk about marital things?

He would be talking instead about slavery, about slaves. There was plenty of people in that culture who were in submission that if he wanted to be oppressive with this text, he could have used that as examples. But instead, what does he talk about? He talks about Here, as I have highlighted in verse 11, how there's a dependence between, um, men and women, husbands and wives, and, and the Lord.

That's what Paul's point is here. And so, even though it comes across as harsh to us, and I'm not saying that some of these things... Aren't true for us or are true for us. I'm saying that through the cultural distance. We truly struggle to understand what this means and so we have to come to it and try and understand it as best we can and Distill out all these different ideas to figure out how it fits in with how we want to believe and understand not because not because we don't want to take the word at it, at what it says, plainly, but because we just cannot understand this because we don't have a category for a woman with a shaved head coming into our church meeting that she's available.

We just don't have that. So, what do we do with this? I think we want to look at verses 11 and 12 because that is where we understand how Paul views these relationships between male and female. While he talks about the man as the head, there is a complementary nature to what Paul is talking about. We need each other.

Men and women work together and we do so to glorify God and God designed it this way. So, we see here in verse 11 nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman, for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. We are designed by God to work together. We have roles that God ordains, and it says, and all things are from God.

And so, we understand who we are in the light of how God designed us. So, as we think about this passage and we scratch our head over it when we come to it, chances are a lot of us, maybe even. Uh, just sort of read over it and just sort of go, I have no idea what this is saying, and we jump by it.  As we do that, uh, it's important that we slow down and think about the one thing that I think that we can really take away from this at a devotional level.

There's other stuff in here if we could take the time for 45 minutes and dig through this, but what we see is that God has designed us to work together. You know, man and woman, we are not, men and women, we are not at odds with one another. God designed us in a particular way. He gave us different desires, different purposes, different ways of seeing the world.

Each and every one of us, even as individuals, in such a way that we can bring glory to him. He works all things together for his good, and all of these things are from God. So may we see the differences between us. You know, what was that famous book, men are from Mars, women are from Venus, or whatever, as if we're just total polar opposites.

And in many ways, you could say that is true, but God designed those differences. Uh, for our good and for his glory. And so may we come across passages like this and, and may we understand that underlying theme in scripture that, that God elevates the roles that we have. He created them and he desires that we use them for his good.

And so, may we be thinking about that good goal of glorifying God, not only in the jobs that we do, but in our relationships with other people, and between men and women, and husband and wives. So may that be our focus as we come away from this passage, and not the things of the world.