Head Coverings in Worship
11: 2-16
The one common thread that links Chapters 10 and 11 together is the idea of submission and yielding one’s “rights.” Many people today view these words negatively, as if they imply some forced limitation of their freedom. How unfortunate. The biblical concept of submission conveys the idea of someone voluntarily giving up or yielding his or her rights to another.
In Chapters 8 through 10, Paul elevated the ideal of submission to a place of integrity and benefit. He encouraged his readers to willingly yield to others their “rights” to eat meat sacrificed to idols if eating such meat would spiritually harm their weaker brothers and sisters. They not viewed as being inferior when they did so. Such submission was, in his view, a supreme act of love, love for God and love for one another.
By voluntarily yielding his right to eat meat, Paul followed the example of Messiah, who voluntarily yielded His “rights” when, as God, He chose to humble Himself and become a man. Yeshua further yielded His “rights” when He voluntarily allowed Himself to be put to death to save us from our sins. Throughout these three chapters Paul encourages the Corinthians to follow his example (of yielding his “right” to eat meat), just as Paul followed Messiah’s example (of yielding His “rights” as God).
Paul will do the same thing in Chapter 11. Just as Messiah submitted Himself to His Father, so each of us should voluntarily yield our rights according to a clearly organized biblical framework. The purpose of this God-ordained framework is to maintain order in a world of chaos and confusion. YHVH has brought order out of chaos from the beginning. Before the earth was formed, the Spirit of God moved to create order out of disorder (Genesis 1:1). By so yielding, we are following Paul’s example as Paul followed Christ’s example.294
Evidently some “emancipated” Corinthian women had dispensed with the head covering in public worship, and Paul argued that they should not do this. Jewish women were always veiled in public in the first century; thus, it can be assumed that respectable Greek women also wore a head covering in public. If so, the practice of the Corinthian women believers was wholeheartedly rejected by Paul. This was against his principle that with all kinds of people, both Jews and Gentiles, (the Corinthian women) might have become all kinds of things, so that in all kinds of circumstances (they) might save at least some of them (9:22b).
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