Question
Can you explain the “hair issue” in I Corinthians 11?
Response
I don’t have anything specifically written up on that issue, but I can give a brief synopsis of my understanding of what’s going on there. First of all, the issue of the “covering” in the passage is “hair,” not a hat or a veil, etc. In connection with this, the situation in Corinth was one in which certain ones thought it best to conform to the prevailing “custom” (note verse 16) of their day when it came to hair, rather than appreciating and going by what God said about it. The prevailing “custom” was for the women in particular to not have their hair long. This they had always done undoubtedly in connection with emulating the goddesses of their idol-worship, before they had heard the gospel, believed it, and turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. And this was still naturally the prevailing “custom” among society in Corinth. But as with most Gentile “customs,” they usually go contrary to some very fundamental issue with God and so range from being “vain” to “abominable” to Him. (See, for example, Leviticus 18:30 and Jeremiah 10:3.) And this is just what this Corinthian “custom” was. It was going contrary to something very fundamental that God established when He created the man and the woman in the first place. And this is what Paul teaches these saints as he deals with this matter.
For example, the women ought to understand and appreciate that, as Paul says, “if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.” (vs. 15) It is God that gave it to her as such, and, as Paul is teaching, this “custom” goes against that. It also goes against the issue of the differentiation of position that God also established at creation, which He not only set forth by His words on the matter, but made evident by difference of appearance between the man and the woman. Therefore the man, as Paul says, “indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.” (vs. 7) A Christian man and woman therefore ought to understand and appreciate this, and not only honor this in their thinking, but in their appearance as well. A woman ought not look like a man, nor a man like a woman. There is no uni-sex, or uni-position with God. But, once again, Corinthian society and “custom” thought differently. However, the Corinthians should have been, should have judged it, more “comely” to conduct themselves in line with what God established and with what He thinks, along with that which the angels think (vs. 10), than to want to fit in with the “custom” of society.
Keith Blades
Enjoy The Bible Ministries
19970516 B25