Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all
things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you [1 Cor. 11:2].
Up
to this point he had said, “I praise you not,” but here Paul has an item of
praise for them. He praises them because they have remembered him in prayer
and in their giving, and they were practicing the ordinances he had taught
them.
But I would have you know, that the head of every man
is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is
God [1 Cor. 11:3].
I realize full well that there are people today who like
to emphasize the middle statement: “the head of the woman is the man.” But,
my friend, when you put all these statements together, you don’t come up
with a lopsided viewpoint. Paul is putting down another great principle
here: This is authority for the sake of order, to eliminate confusion.
This principle is important in the church as well as the
home. Several years ago a pastor was having trouble in his church, and I
asked him what the problem was. He said it was that he had too many chiefs
and not enough Indians—everyone wanted to be a leader. Today we find
churches which have courses in leadership training. I’d like to know where
you find that in the Bible. There are organizations which exist solely for
the purpose of training young people to be public speakers. Paul says we are
to “study to be quiet” (1 Thess. 4:11). I wish we could put the emphasis
where the Bible puts it. We don’t need all this leadership training. We need
folk who will act and live like Christians. That is the important thing.
The important word here is
head. “The head of every man is Christ; and
the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” The head
is that portion of the body that gives the direction.
This verse does not say that the head of every Christian man is Christ.
The word man is
generic—it is a general item. It says the head of every man is Christ. It is
the normal and correct order for Christ to be the head of every man. Until a
man is mastered by Christ, he is not a normal man. Some men are mastered by
drink; some are mastered by passion; most are mastered by the flesh. Every
man should be mastered by Christ.
Augustine said, “The heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in
thee” (Confessions,
Bk. 1, sec. 1). The heart of man is restless until he makes Christ the head.
Men who have accomplished great things for God have done this. I think of
Martin Luther and Wilberforce and Augustine who were profligate until they
were mastered by Christ. I hear it said of a man today, “He is a Christian
man.” Is he mastered by Christ? That is the important thing, and that is
what Paul is saying.
“The head of the woman is man”—there is no article in the
Greek, it is not the
man. Notice it is not every
woman; it is not an absolute. It refers to marriage where the woman is to
respond to the man. It is normal for the woman to be subject to the man in
marriage. If a woman cannot look up to a man and respect him, she ought not
to follow him and surely ought not to marry him. But a real woman responds
with every fiber of her being to the man she loves. He, in turn, must be the
man who is willing to die
for her—“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church,
and gave himself for it” (Eph. 5:25).
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan told about a friend of his and his
wife’s who was a very brilliant woman. She had a strong personality, was an
outstanding person, and was not married. He asked her one day the pointed
question, “Why have you never married?” Her answer was, “I have never found
a man who could master me.” So she never married. May I say that until a
woman finds that man, she would make a mistake to get married. If she
marries a Mr. Milquetoast, she will be in trouble from that day on.
“The head of Christ is God.” There is a great mystery
here. Jesus said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), but He also said,
“… for my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). In the work of redemption,
He voluntarily took a lower place and was made lower than the angels. He
walked a lowly path down here. We are admonished, “Let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it
not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and
took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men”
(Phil. 2:5–7).
Now Paul is going to apply this principle of headship to
the situation in Corinth. An unveiled woman in Corinth was a prostitute. The
situation in your church or in your community may be different than it was
in Corinth, but there is a principle here and it still applies today.
McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible
Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997,
c1981, S. 5:49-50