1 Corinthians 11

What’s Happening? 

The church in Corinth is full of believers who have come from pagan backgrounds. As such, they are bringing their past pagan practices into the church. Two such practices, namely head coverings and communion meals, led to broken relationships between men and women, human beings and spiritual beings, and rich and poor. So Paul shows them how to heal these relationships by looking less like pagans and more like Jesus. 

Paul tells men not to use head coverings in the church the way pagans do in their temples. In pagan temples, elite men covered their heads to show their unseen spirits were superior to their physical bodies. But Paul reminds them that humans, made in God’s image, reflect his glory through their bodies (1 Corinthians 11:7). By covering their heads, Christian Corinthian men were reinforcing a false, pagan view of God’s creation and relationship with them (1 Corinthians 11:4). So, to look more like Jesus, Paul urges them to uncover their heads and humbly reveal the glory of God. 

Paul also tells women how their use of head coverings is making them look more like pagans and less like Jesus. A Corinthian woman’s hair signified her fertility and sexual availability. In public, married women covered their heads to avoid sexual attention. However, in pagan temples, women would uncover their hair to attract men who wanted to worship their gods through sexual encounters. Further, enslaved women had shaved heads to publicly mark them as available for sexual exploitation without the chance of fertility. Therefore, Paul tells the Corinthian Christian women to cover their heads (1 Corinthians 11:5-6). Paul instructs Christian Corinthian women to cover their heads, not to diminish them, but to keep worship centered on God’s glory, not man’s glory. 

Paul also warns the Corinthians that their gatherings shouldn’t resemble the sexually immoral ways pagans communed with evil spiritual beings. In what sounds like a strange command, Paul tells the Corinthian women to cover their heads for the sake of the angels (1 Corinthians 11:10). He recalls Genesis 6 and the height of human and spiritual evil, when spiritual beings desired to lay with human women (Genesis 6:2-4). But the gathered church does not commune with Jesus through physical acts of revelry but through the physical act of coming to the Lord’s Table. Given their pagan context, Corinthian Christian women cover their heads to show they aren’t inviting attention from spiritual beings. The Corinthian Church gathered solely for communing with Jesus.

Corinthian Christians were also using the meal of Communion to look more like pagans and less like Jesus. Corinthian pagans participated in over-indulgent feasts of revelry in honor of their gods. At these feasts, the rich would overeat to the point of vomiting and overdrink to the point of drunkenness. Some Corinthians treated the Lord’s Supper in the same way. The rich gorged themselves and got drunk, leaving the poor with nothing (1 Corinthians 11:17-21). But Paul reminds them that Communion is not about overindulgence but about proclaiming Jesus’ sacrificial death. Jesus is the rich one who gave his flesh and blood to feed the poor (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). For the rich to partake selfishly is to despise Jesus’ sacrifice for them. All Christians, regardless of status, are meant to be united around the table of Jesus (1 Corinthians 11:27-29). 

Where’s the Gospel?

Corinthian pagans sought divine communion through broken relationships between men and women, human beings and spiritual beings, and rich and poor. So Paul explains how communing with Jesus heals their relationships and is real communion with God. 

This is why Paul talks about headship. Headship is about origin or source, like the head of a river is the source of a lake. Paul says that the source of every man is Christ, the source of every woman is man, and the source of Christ is God (1 Corinthians 11:3). Paul is saying that men, women, rich, poor, elite, and enslaved all share their origin in God. They are one in Jesus where there is no division. 

What’s incredible about this is that men and women get to share in a relationship that reflects the relationship between God and Jesus. God is the head of Jesus—the Son comes from the Father, yet they share one divine nature (Hebrews 1:3). Likewise, man is the head of woman—Eve was taken from Adam, yet they share one human nature (Genesis 1:27, 2:22). And all find their source in God through Jesus. Though we are in different and dependent relationships, we are one in Christ.

Paul instructed Corinthian men not to cover their heads and veil the glory of God. Jesus is the ultimate man who unveiled God’s glory to us. The man Jesus is the image of God and God himself (Colossians 1:15). Whatever Jesus looks like is exactly what God looks like. Jesus reveals that God uses his headship to humbly serve all those who find their source in him. Jesus submitted to God’s headship when he died to save his church, of whom he is the head (Colossians 1:18).

This is what we celebrate in the Lord’s Supper. In Communion, all Christians to the same table and commune with the same God (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Whether you are rich or poor, male or female, rich or poor, as Christians, we all find our source and life in the humble body of our head, Jesus. 

See for Yourself 

I pray that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes to see the God who is the source of all life. And may you see Jesus as the image and glory of God who died to feed us and make us like him.