Long Hair, Head Coverings, & the Local Church // 1 Corinthians 11:2-16

The letter of 1 Corinthians is a treasure. It contains more teaching on the resurrection, spiritual gifts, marriage, and the virtue of love than any other book in the Bible.

But it is not cold theology. 1 Corinthians is an urgent call for us to remember the gospel. And as a result, it's a call for us to be a cross-centered, holy, and united people until he returns.

Listen in to what God has to say to us through this inspired letter. 1 Corinthians 11, beginning in verse 2. It says, Now I commend you because you remember me in everything.

And maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ. The head of a wife is her husband.

And the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors himself. But every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.

Since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it's disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair and shave her head, let her cover her head.

For man ought not cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God. But woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman for man.

Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. This is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head. Because of the angels. 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. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves. Is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered?

Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him. But if a woman has long hair, it is her glory. For her hair is given to her for a covering.

If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practices. Nor do the churches of God. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated.

Please be seated. You know, like many kids, each summer I grew up going to camp. I did all the different activities you would do, one would do at camp over the years.

Capture the flag, archery, paintball, canoeing, swimming in the lake, fishing, ropes course, and so on. But one activity, when I was growing up, gained a legendary status among us.

It was called the pamper pole. Now, it was, I've actually never heard of anybody else doing this activity, but it was a 50-foot or so telephone pole.

Seven to eight feet out from the pole was a dangling trapeze. So, the way it worked was you put on some sort of harness. Then you climbed all the 50 feet to the top of the pole.

Then you somehow kind of bent your body up on top of the seven to eight inch diameter top of the pole. You stood up there. And then when you were ready, you jumped out to the trapeze.

Trusting in that harness, right? And I guess you escaped the pamper. Now, it sounds easy enough, but one particular year, I remember, kids would climb up the pole.

They would somehow manage to get on top of the pole, having smaller feet. They can stand up there. Then they'd inevitably look down and fear would set in.

All their mates are saying, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump. But often, they would climb back down, presumably to go get a pamper because they had just wet their pants.

I must admit, this week, as I stood over the text, I felt like I was on the pamper pole. I wasn't so sure I wanted to jump.

Didn't see much wind in jumping. These verses are some of the most difficult in the New Testament. Some of the most controversial, too. After all, what is the meaning of head that occurs 11 times, 13 times in these verses?

What does it mean to have your head covered or uncovered? What exactly is this covering? What is authority? It's a symbol of authority, but really the word is authority. Authority that's meant to be on a woman's head.

And why does it matter what the angels think? And if those questions aren't hard enough to answer, how would it make sense of these verses when we don't know so many things in these verses? And we're also 2,000 years removed from these verses?

That's the question. That's why I felt like I was on a pamper pole. But because we're so far removed, I want to take a few minutes to set the context. You know, in our culture, largely due to the pervasive influence of feminism, not to mention the near erasure of differences between man and woman, my guess is you flinched a little bit as I read that text.

There was probably a part of you that was uncomfortable. Me too! What in the world is going on? But we must remember that any first century reader of the New Testament would have been stunned by how lofty the position of woman was there.

In a patriarchal society in which men were educated, held power, led in politics, owned property, had the right to marry and divorce as they plead, Jesus repeatedly treated women differently.

We can think of the numerous episodes where Jesus met women with kindness, compassion, dignity, and respect. And Jesus calls women to occupy important places in the advance of his gospel.

They're the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection. Their testimony was not even accepted in court, and yet Jesus says that'll do. They participated in Christian worship, which we see right here, praying and prophesying.

You think women can't make a contribution. No, sir. No, ma'am. They were co-workers in the mission. We think about Phoebe and Priscilla, these ones who opened their homes up.

Lydia, their husbands, were called to love and cherish them as Christ loved and cherished the church. That would not have resonated with a first century secular audience.

And so they were well cared for when they became widowed. One historian in his book, The Rise of Christianity, he says, Christian women enjoyed substantially higher status within the Christian subcultures than pagan women in the world at large.

You must see that in the New Testament or you're reading it wrong. But it seems that the women in Corinth were taking it too far.

They're free to worship God, to gather with the men in the congregation. They're free to pray and prophesy. And they began to assume that the difference between men and women didn't matter anymore.

After all, doesn't Galatians 3 says there is no Jew or Greek or slave or free, male or female, but all are one in Christ Jesus. Now, in that culture, men and women dressed in distinct ways.

Men would wear their hair short. Women, to honor their husbands, would wear their hair long and would cover their hair in public with a shawl of some sort. Not a veil like Muslim women, but some sort of wraparound, scarf-like garment.

And in Corinth, it seems that when the church gathered, some women began to throw off their shawl because of their newfound identity in Christ.

And Paul says, if you look down there with me, I commend you that you remember me and everything. So he's thanking them once again for remembering him. But he says, I want you to maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.

All throughout the gospel, all throughout this letter, Paul has been applying the gospel to what's going on in their life. I mean, he's warning them that the influence of Corinth, they're more Corinthian than they are Christian at times, the influence of Corinth is great.

So he's talking about how the gospel applies to divisions. Remember, I follow Paul, I follow Paulus, or pride, or sexual immorality, or freedom, idolatry. And he's doing the same thing here.

The reference to traditions, I believe, is a reference to the gospel. The message of first importance, which he received from the Lord and delivered to you. That word, delivered to you, is repeated again in 11.23 and 15.3.

He's saying, remember the gospel. Remember to walk in sound doctrine. As he says in 1 Timothy 1, walk in the pattern of sound words. The idea of the gospel is not just a doctrine to confess, but a way of living.

And so Paul's saying, run back to that. What he's saying is the gospel does not set you free from God's good design for man and woman. Rather, he says, and this is where we're going, whether male or female, devote yourself to God's good design in all of life, especially in the worship of the church.

Whether male or female, devote yourself to God's good design in all of life, whether, sorry, I got lost, especially in the worship of the church.

So we're going to break this out in three points, kind of three ways in which he defends this. So he kind of makes the first point, then he kind of gives us that context of head coverings, which I've kind of tried to do at first.

And so it's just three points in which he defends this. The first is the gospel. Having set the scene a little bit with maintaining the traditions, Paul makes a startling reference to the gospel, you could say, in verse 3 when he says, and this is really like the center of the text, he says, but I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, the head of Christ is God.

Paul wants everyone to see that everyone has a head and it's important to know who your head is. But before we go too far, we got to understand what the meaning of this word head means.

This word head has killed a lot of trees because people have been arguing about it for the last 50 plus years. There are places where it refers, in this text, quite obviously, it refers to the top of the body where it talks about a head covered or uncovered or shaven.

But in other places, it's clearly a metaphor. It's referring to something else, not the physical head that's atop your shoulder. Many scholars throughout history, including many today, think it refers to authority, like the head of state.

That's when we use that word head in that way. Some say it refers to source, like the head of a river, so the source from which the river flows. Still others say it refers to the most prominent or foremost part of the body, like you might say a head of cattle.

You're not saying you just want the cattle's head. You're saying it refers to the most prominent part of the body. I would argue that the best definition is a reference to authority, like the head of state.

It's teaching that there's an order to relationships in all of life in which there's authority and submission, leadership and support. Beyond the meaning of head, and if you've caught this, and I'll explain more as we go, but beyond the meaning of head and knowing who your head is, you need to know who your head is because you're supposed to honor your head or dishonor your head.

And that doesn't work if it's a reference to source or how this thing came to be because it's a reference to more than that. It's a reference to authority that stays in place. And so you can only dishonor someone who is over you.

You can only honor someone who is over you. And that's what traces and holds this argument together. And it fits with the way Paul uses this word kephale, or head, in the rest of the New Testament.

He says, Jesus is the head of all rule and authority. Quite obviously, Jesus is the one through whom everything was made. But that's not what that text is saying. It's saying he is the ruler.

He's also, Paul says in Ephesians 1, God has put him above all rule and authority and power and dominion and put all things under his feet as head of all things. And Ephesians 5, tying it to the marriage, he says the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church.

So what this text is saying is that there's an order to relationships in all of life. In fact, I believe that one of the best things you can do as a parent, we just happen to have a parenting seminar coming up, is to teach your young child about authority.

I would argue that one of the major problems with our cultures is a whole lot of us running around that never learned about authority from our mom and dad. The world includes numerous authority structures, coaches, players, police, citizens, presidents, teachers, students, all these things.

You're meant to know how to relate to authority in the home. The home is a little mini world where you're meant to learn authority rightly.

And so, yet, if Paul is talking about authority, why does he not structure the sentence in a top-down way? Or perhaps a bottom-up way.

Why does he not say the head of Christ is God, the head of man is Christ, the head of woman is man? That's not what he says. Why does he not say that? I think the ordering is to underline that even though the gospel has set you free, it doesn't undo these structures.

The accent of the verse is on Christ. Right there at the beginning, the head of every man is Christ. And the head of Christ is God.

It's accenting what this text is, accenting all along, or this book's accenting all along. Every Christian is no longer their own. They were bought with a price. They have a new Lord, a new master, a new ruler is in town.

Christianity is a transfer of allegiance to Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus means when he says, follow me. It's likely that first century readers wouldn't have been shocked by what's in this verse, but by what's not in there.

There's no reference to pagan idols. There's no reference to the Roman emperor. Why? Because Jesus Christ is the Lord and the Christ.

So often we can think about Christianity. You just need to ask Jesus into your heart to forgive you of your many sins, but really you also need to realize that this one is the one whom every raven obeys and every hair on your head obeys.

And part of coming to Christ is turning all over to this one. Saying, I will follow you. I worship you, so I give you the invitation of the gospel.

Come to Jesus Christ. And so he says, the head of every man is Christ, yet still the head of every wife is her husband. Now, then it concludes the head of Christ is God.

Now, this does not mean, as Arius argued in the third century, that Christ is inferior to God, that he was a maid, albeit the first creature maid.

That's not what this means. Rather, it's teaching that in the plan of salvation, authority and submission were a part of the working out of salvation in our world. God, or Jesus Christ, shares the same deity essence and nature of God, and yet in the plan of salvation, he obeyed God to advance, to bring about salvation for us.

As the scriptures say, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, but Jesus did not just hand over the keys. Scripture tells us that he himself offered up himself, was obedient to the point of death.

He cried out, not my will, but your will be done. And when he had done the will of the Father all the way, he said, it is finished. It's helping us to see this so far from disregarding the difference between man and woman.

The gospel teaches to us to honor God's good design in the ordering of our relationships in all of life. The example of Christ teaches us how to lead and how to follow.

That's what's going on here, and that's what is shocking in the New Testament. It doesn't undo authority. Rather, it sends authority through the gospel of Jesus Christ, or any authority that's not conformed to the gospel becomes unbiblical, ungodly authority.

Do you see? And so Christ teaches husbands to exercise authority well, to build up and protect others sacrificially. And Christ teaches wives how to honor authority, submit, respect, support, follow.

The gospel does not set us free, but urges, whether male or female, to devote ourselves to God's good design in all of life. So, the gospel. Point two, creation.

Creation. Creation. Now, we address the context up front. When the church gathered to worship, some men began, or some women began to throw off their shawl because of their newfound freedom in Christ, and Paul says that is a misunderstanding of the gospel.

It's also a misunderstanding of creation, of the creation order. Verses 7 to 12 unpack the differences between men and women in creation. Verses 8 to 9 teach us that differences between men and women are foundational and fundamental.

Look down there in verse 8 and 9. These are some of those flinching verses. For man was not made from woman, but woman for man, nor with neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

Man was not made from woman. Man was made from the ground. Right? God took up some of the ground and from it made man. He filled the man's lungs with air.

But the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. Good things happen when you sleep in the Bible. And he plucked a rib out from the man's side, from Adam's side, and created woman.

Right? So, man was not made from woman, but woman for man. He continues, man was not created for woman, but woman for man. Now, before we rush to conclusions or rush to objections, we must return to Genesis 2.

Again, why did God make woman? You remember? God created man, and then he showed all creation. They had a partner, or had a similar, but wonderfully different person like them.

And then Adam said, man, I need one of those. And God created woman to come alongside him. The scripture says, to be a helpmate, a helper.

Someone like him, wonderfully unlike him, to help him in his mission, to fulfill the mission from God. So, what does all this mean? The difference between man and woman are foundational and fundamental.

They're the essence of who we are. Boys may be boys, but boys cannot be girls, and girls cannot be boys. The differences are foundational and fundamental. They're structural and non-reversible.

So, regardless of what you pour into your body or cut off of your body, you cannot change this aspect of who you are. Man was made in the image of God.

Gender is not randomly assigned. Man is divinely designated through our biological sex. Gender is not incidental to our identity. Contrary to what you read in any paper nowadays, being something we can receive or reject, gender is essential to our identity.

Now, you may be saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, our culture's lost its mind. But do you live as if gender is incidental or essential?

As if it's secondary or fundamental? Does man, or being made man or woman, is essential to who you think you are and what you think you're called to do?

That's a critical question to ask because our culture is trying to get you to think that you're just a neuter and you get to decide what you'll be. And I'm not just talking about anatomy, but about what you're called to do in this world.

Paul says before that, so kind of what that, those two verses anchored, Paul says, look at verse 7, he says, man ought not cover his head since he's the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

Probably your least favorite verse in this text. What does that mean? Well, it's the authority structure. So man honors God, glorifies God when he puts God first and relates to women in an appropriate way.

So he doesn't cover his head because it would be shameful in that culture for man to cover his head since he's created in the image of God. Now, woman is no less created in the image of God, but that's not Paul's point.

He's argued that point in other places. It's not his point. Here he's saying a wife honors and glorifies her husband, her head when she supports, respects, and follows him in appropriate ways and that's how she honors God as well.

Now, this is not the attitude of our culture. Our culture, I think, is trying to get men to hate women and women to hate men, making us increasingly uncomfortable with the differences that God has given.

A scene from the movie, the 2015 movie, The Intern, hits the nail on the head. It said, boys, this is, I quote, what can I say? Sorry, didn't mean to call you boys. No one calls men, men anymore.

Have you noticed? Women went from girls to women and men from men to boys. This is a problem in the picture, in the big picture.

You know what I mean? Here's my theory. We all grew up during the take your daughter to work day thing, right? And they all nodded in the room.

So we were always told that we could do anything, be anything, and I think somehow the boys got maybe not left behind, but not quite as nurtured. We had Oprah, you know?

The boys seem to still be trying to figure it all out. And here's another thing. You ever notice how the husband on every commercial on TV is always such a dope? Somehow that's just stuck in Hollywood for like 40 years.

Has it always been that way? Or is the husband the new dumb blonde? In one generation, men went from guys like Al Pacino and Harrison Ford to you fill in the blank.

I apologize for the tirade. I have to go now. But that's about right, isn't it? I mean, who wants to support, respect, and follow a man like that? But maybe our resistance to these verses has less to do with following the Bible and more to do with cultural indoctrination, the cultural programming as seen on your TV.

Verses 11 and 12, sorry, not meaning to laugh at it, but just to laugh at how this is so not in what is going on in our culture. Verses 11 and 12 are added to qualify what he said and to teach us.

Though different, men and women are nevertheless dependent on one another. So these differences are foundational and fundamental, and yet men and women, though different, wonderfully different, they're meant to, nevertheless, dependent on one another.

Man was not made from woman in the beginning, but man is born of woman now. Look at that. For as woman was made from man, so now man is born of woman.

That's meant to be a shot across the bow. Man plus man equals too much sports talk. Man plus woman equals the human race.

Man on his own is fruitless. Man and woman is fruitful. Man is not independent. Man is dependent interdependent with woman and woman upon man.

This is critical. So often we see the difference between man and woman as first place, second place. That's not the way the Bible sees it. It sees it as ordering, as bringing order out of chaos.

That's what God does, right, from the beginning of the Bible. So he's doing it in these relationships. It's not first place, second place. Divine design and divine order. So man and woman are both created in the image of God.

Man and woman are both heirs of the grace of God. Man and woman have been granted access to God through Christ. Man and woman in the new covenant are both filled with the Holy Spirit. Man and woman are both called to pray and prophesy in the church.

Did you see that? So a little humility is in order for all of us. perhaps especially men.

Commenting on Ephesians 5.22, the great preacher Charles Spurgeon, I guess doing a wedding, he said to one groom, my dear friend, don't you begin to feel proud because the Lord says the husband is the head of the wife.

Solomon says a virtuous wife is the crown to her husband. And the crown goes on top of the head. That's supposed to be pretty funny. I thought it was pretty funny. Y'all didn't think it's funny.

That's alright. You know, this is a funky verse. All these things, what this means is we believe that man and woman are equal in personhood, dignity, and value, and yet we believe we're called to reflect and represent God in distinct, complementary ways.

that's complementary with an E instead of an I. Not paying one another compliments but completing the picture, right? God created an image of God, male and female he created them, and whatever.

And it's unity again at the end. It's completing, it's a fuller picture. You can't know all that you need to know about God with just one side. God might reveal himself as Father, Son, and Spirit, yet he reveals his character or his character is reflected and imaged in male and female.

So it's complementary. The differences are fundamental and foundational and part of God's good design so that we complement and help and complete one another. We believe that men are called to take leadership, to build and protect in appropriate ways, but we do not believe that men are superior, better, smarter, or something like that.

We believe that women are called to support, respect, and follow leadership in appropriate ways, you know, a very important way when they get married, but we do not believe that this means they're inferior, worse, or whatever.

Being a complementarian, which is kind of a newer word, about 50 years old, but I think it's important for defining what the Bible says about men and women. Being a complementarian does not mean it doesn't matter who does what in the home.

That's not what it means. As long as the stuff is done, being a complementarian means we believe there's an order to relationship, the order of the way things should work out in all of life, including the home and the church. Yet, being a complementarian does not mean that man makes every decision for the family.

That's not what I believe. But, it does mean he has a responsibility to make sure the right decisions are made. He bears an overall responsibility. After all, in the garden, before the fall, although this was the Lord revealing, but it was a structure in place before the fall, when woman sinned and ate the apple and gave it to Adam, what did God say?

He didn't say, Eve, come here. He said, Adam, why? There's a greater responsibility. And being complementarian does not mean life in the home should be defined by the man's preference.

I remember one wife telling me my husband doesn't like pot roast or something like that. I love pot roast. We've been married 20 years and I haven't had pot roast for that long. And I said, honey, whatever that is, that's not complementarianism.

That's not what, that's not what the point is. And the onus for getting this right rests upon the man.

Kevin Young says, I'm convinced that in most cases if men behave and lead as godly, humble, self-sacrificing, biblical men, then women will happily live and flourish in the responsibilities God has designed for them.

The biblical burden rests primarily with men. Complementarianism is often caught before it's taught. And men are the ones who do most of, do the most to make complementarianism look like catching the flu or winning the lottery.

So guys, let's not make the heartbeat of our message, women sit down when it should be men, stand up. I think that's right, biblically. the onus on men to run at things.

And yet, wonderfully, the gospel has so much to say about this structure, this foundational, fundamental structure.

in so many ways, I think in a good, godly home, there's not like a tug most days because there's a you first.

No, no, no, you. What do you need? Okay, I'm on it. I love the way Chad Van Dixhorn said, our marriages must be characterized by a mutual respect, care, and service a kind of quiet competition to put others first.

That's what the gospel does. It's hard to know who's getting their way, right? Because no one's after getting their own way. A you first, a please let me do that for you attitude.

Why? Because the husband's love like Christ. He gave himself up. And so true authority in the home is, it bleeds. And a wife supports and follows like Christ in the church and follows like Christ did doing the will of his father.

So, the gospel, secondly, creation, thirdly, nature and culture. Now, we address that problem up front.

The women who were thrown off that shawl is a misunderstanding of the gospel, of creation, and of nature and cultures where Paul turns to next. Look in verse, well, 13 through 16, but look in verse 13.

He says, judge for yourself. Is it proper? So, that's a reference not to what's biblical or unbiblical, but what's proper in a certain culture.

For why, is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature teach you that if a man wears long hair, it's a disgrace for him? But if a woman has long hair, it is her glory.

Now, there's a curious mix of culture and nature in these verses. Nature teaches us, as we know from the previous verses, nature teaches us that men are different from women and women are different from men, or men.

Nature also should teach us that a man should dress like a man and a woman should dress like a woman, but our culture, at least to some degree, teaches us how men and women should dress.

Nature does not change, but culture are different. Nature is expressed in different ways in different culture. After all, Scottish men wear kilts, but the rest of us call it like it is, a dress, a dress.

Whatever culture we're in, our desire should be to avoid what confuses men and women in our respective culture.

Because we don't care, right? We've been bought by Christ, so we don't care. We're trying to express what is timeless in whatever culture. I think we'd all agree that a man should never wear a dress, but this verse urges us to consider other things.

How can I think more carefully about our dress? Now, if you just notice, our dress has radically changed in the last 50 years, even the last 20, radically casual. And it communicates something.

And I don't want to fall into another sermon, but we should be thinking, how can I communicate femininity, masculinity in dress? You guys do a wonderful job.

In the first century of Corinth, it was disgraceful for a man to have long hair, and it was disgraceful for him to cover his head. It was a symbol of subordination or submission when he is a man, and he should not.

It was out of place. It was feminine. But it's not always wrong for a man to have long hair, even in our Bible. Samson, after all, was commanded not to cut his hair.

Others took a Nazarite vow. Likely Samuel and John the Baptist had long hair, and Jesus, in all the pictures found at your local pawn shop or secondhand store, has long hair.

Also Anglo-Saxon, which is very confusing. Or Scandinavian with blue eyes. Men can grow as much hair as women. While it was disgraceful for a man to have long hair in the first century of Corinth, it does not communicate the same thing in our culture.

I heard Taylor had long hair in preschool. Maybe that's why it fell out. It fell out. So early. In addition, in first century Corinth, it was disgraceful for a wife to cut her hair short and disgraceful for a woman not to cover her hair with some sort of shawl in public.

It was seen as rebellious. It was seen like she was saying, I'm no longer under authority. I'm an available woman. It's the way you might dress if you were looking for a suitor.

But it's not always wrong in every culture for a woman to have hair short or have her head uncovered. So, should a wife still cover her head when she prays or prophesies in church?

While I would not encourage you to go against your conscience, I think the answer is no. These verses are encouraging us to take cultural cues for how a woman or man should dress.

Today, except in certain religious groups, a wife who prays or prophesies without her head covered is not seen as rebellious. Perhaps we think she has a sweat problem.

A wife with her head uncovered does not communicate rebellion. More importantly, while Paul anchors the differences between man and woman in the creation order, he does not explicitly anchor head coverings in it.

The closest we get is verse 10 where he says the woman should have a symbol of authority is what the ESV says. But literally, the text says she should have authority on her head.

So, she should just have authority up there. But we're not told what that authority is. So, the point is, in my opinion, that a wife should have a, the point is not, in my opinion, that a wife should have a head covering on her head.

The point is that a wife should communicate in some way that she has a husband and is under authority. Now, in our culture, as I said, the head covering does not communicate what it did in the first century.

But there are ways to communicate, ways for a wife to communicate, that she respects God's ordering and wants to honor her husband.

Everywhere, but especially in the church, you can wear a wedding ring. Communicates. What's the first thing you look to often when you're talking to somebody before you ask them a question?

Is there a wedding ring? So, for a wife to wear one, she's communicating, I'm taken. I'm not playing the field, so to speak. wife can also take her husband's last name.

And that's not in every culture. My wife's Vietnamese, and that's not a thing in most Asian cultures. But in American cultures, I think it's a wonderful way to communicate, I'm a woman respecting the authority God has brought into my life.

She can dress modestly. She can show, because, you know, I say that because of the context a wife with her head uncovered is communicating openness, availability, things like that.

So, she can instead dress modestly and show deference, gentleness, and respect. You know, in a culture, the idea of all this is, or maybe I'll say this now, and all of this in a culture that's losing its mind and losing its way on the difference between men and women, we should jump at opportunities to communicate through cultural cues that these differences are real and are beautiful.

people. And this applies to men as well. You know, when a man walks into the room, we probably say, what's that? You know, or something like that. That's what I say.

My kids are like, that's that Budweiser commercial from 25 years ago. Actually, they don't know that commercial, but that's always I think about. When a woman walks in the room, I was taught to stand and greet her.

that just pushes up against our culture. I mean, the feminist narrative. Could we value a woman?

She is, after all, the fair sex. I was taught to open the door to help her carry things. Whatever I could. We should jump at a chance to do these things.

You know, our culture says you can be anything, do anything. But God's called us to preserve an order. So in the same way in the first century that women were treated with a dignity and a value that was unlike the surrounding world, how much more should it be the case here?

Part of that is retaining distinction. Like, it's no surprise that the church has kind of gone the way of evangelical feminism because the whole culture has.

But part of what we do when we hold on to some of these things and always seek to make sure we root them biblically and apply them right, we're preserving distinction. Why?

Because we have a mission. And it's not to see how fast we can dissolve into the world like Alka-Seltzer or something like that. Our mission is to be salt and light.

To stand out. this culture does not have many good pictures of leadership, of godly, self-sacrificial leadership.

But you know what? This culture does not have many good pictures of godly submission and support. It's just a get out of my way and let me go first culture.

What a wonderful opportunity. I really feel like the T, the ball's been set up on the T for us. In this culture, these things are seen as so crazy. We have an opportunity to communicate who we follow, who we worship, and the wonder of being made in his image, whether it was male or female.

And so we want to devote ourselves to godly good design in all of life, especially in the worship of god. May god help us to do that. Amen? Father in heaven, we thank you. Thank you for the joy of sitting under your word.

Lord, I pray that anything unhelpful will be forgotten. And yet, Lord, I pray that all of us would see how you have made us, how you've called us, what you've purposed us to do and be in this world and help us, God.

I pray that this would continue to be a church where godly masculinity is pursued. It's self-sacrificial and building and protecting.

I pray also be a church where godly femininity is pursued. That we would not just jettison these things, but would instead believe that these truths are meant to shape us deeply and profoundly.

Help us, God, we pray, in a culture that needs the gospel and needs clarity. Help us, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to a message on 1 Corinthians during a Sunday service at Trinity Grace Church.

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