According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): If you've done some international traveling, you know that it's a good idea to study up on the culture so you don't do anything that would be offensive. For instance, not all cultures appreciate the kind of humor we enjoy as Americans. In some countries, public displays of affection may be taken the wrong way. And you go into another culture and you might be surprised to find out that haggling is pretty much expected.

Today on According to the Scriptures, we will learn to be sensitive to the culture around us. With 1 Corinthians chapter 11 in front of us, here's Damian Kyle.

Damian Kyle: The reason Christian women in the church at Corinth were wearing head coverings in that church was because that was the cultural expectation of women in that part of the world in that day. To fail to honor that cultural expectation would have been viewed by others as an act of rebellion against their husband's authority, and thus as rebellion against God's authority structure within the home.

If they refused to wear head coverings in the face of a clear New Testament command, if that's what Paul was addressing here in this passage, his instruction would be entirely different. He would have given them chapter and verse to bring them into line with God's commandments. But he doesn't do that in this passage for the simple reason that in taking off their head covering, they were not violating a biblical command in doing so, but violating a local cultural expectation.

I bring this up because so very often when a person takes the position that I do and that Paul is addressing a cultural issue in this passage—and I know many who would argue with me on that issue and they are friends, and it just shows you how liberal I am; I'm willing to have friends who are wrong in my life—but so often someone will raise the accusation against someone like me and says, "Well, you're taking this passage and you are accommodating a clear command of God to the culture."

No, I'm not doing that at all. There is no clear command of God. I'm not accommodating anything to the culture. I'm accommodating our culture to the culture of Corinth, which is exactly the big point that Paul is trying to make here. So someone will then argue with someone like me, "Well, if you're going to explain away the clear demands of the passage by saying that Paul is addressing a cultural issue, then you are giving everyone the right to explain away any demand of the Scriptures on the basis of culture."

But that position assumes that head coverings for women in the church at Corinth was a biblical requirement when it was not. It was a cultural expectation. I would never attempt to explain away any clear demand of Scripture on the basis of culture, but we are free to recognize a cultural expectation for what it is as we see it in this passage and then to receive the point that the Apostle is making here that God is making to us, and then applying it to our culture that we live in and in our lives.

What is the big point that Paul is making in this passage? Again, as Christians, we need to be sensitive to the culture we live in concerning the expression of our Christian liberties and be willing to forgo any Christian liberty if it would reflect badly upon God or it would cause anyone to mistake God or misunderstand Christianity within our culture on the basis of the practice of our liberty.

Perhaps the closest equivalent that we have in our culture to a head covering issue in the culture of Corinth would be wedding rings. So you put yourself—what if in our culture, for instance, there's a cultural expectation related to wedding rings? What if the majority of wives in our culture, upon becoming Christians, then chose to cease wearing their wedding rings?

Technically, they could choose to do that. After all, a wedding ring is not commanded by God in the Scriptures. It is purely a cultural thing. But if every woman who, when she became a Christian as a married wife, took off her wedding ring, that would sure raise some eyebrows among all of her family, her friends, her coworkers, and everybody else.

They would think to themselves, "I notice that since you've become a Christian, you no longer wear your wedding ring. That concerns me. Tell me a little bit more about this Christianity thing that you're involved in and the influence and the impact that it's having on you." Far from making Christianity attractive to them, it would confuse them, make them fearful and suspicious of it, and make them look and say, "I don't ever want to become a Christian because if that's what you have to do as a Christian, then I don't need to have that baggage added into my life."

I don't want anything to do with Christianity then. That's way too high a price to pay for the expression of our Christian liberties. This was the risk that these Corinthian Christians were taking in their culture. The same thing could be true of any culture if a wife becomes a Christian and then suddenly ceases to take the reputation of her husband in that culture into account in her liberties, or ceases to regard it in terms of her actions, her decisions, her dress, or whatever it might be. Those things would raise the same concerns.

I've mentioned it earlier in our series through this book. I've had the privilege of going to India a number of times in my life related to ministry. In the part of India that I was in—I can't say that it's true of all of India; perhaps it is—but at least in Southern India, a culture that is hundreds of years old, if not thousands of years old, husbands and wives do not show any public affection toward one another.

They do not hold hands. They do not kiss. They don't even walk alongside one another when they go out for a walk in public. So when in public, the wives will walk several steps behind their husbands when it's just the two of them out for a walk because in that culture, that's one of the ways that a wife shows respect toward her husband.

When I first went to India, as I've mentioned before, I'll say it again, and I witnessed this refraining of any public show of affection—and I knew these Christian husbands and wives who were Indian, that they loved each other, they would love to do that as much as we would want to do that—and as I witnessed them refraining from all of this, I thought to myself, in just processing something that was new for me at the time, "Why should Christians, why should we take and submit to these kind of cultural restrictions? Wouldn't it be better just to throw all of them off and let India then see the beauty and the freedom that Christianity brings to the marriage relationship?"

It was very naive on my part, but those are the thoughts we process in life as we encounter it. I soon realized that if Christians did this, being the small minority that they are within India and trying to reach the larger group of their people for Christ, if they did that in that culture, Christianity would likely be completely rejected. Not on the basis of the claims of Christ, not on the basis of the Gospel, not on the basis of the Word of God, but Christianity would be rejected on the basis of a violation of a cultural expectation within the culture.

That's how high the stakes are. And so the Christian takes, and the Christian wife, the Christian husband, liberties that they possess anywhere they are in the world, and they take that liberty and they put it in the backseat to the endeavor to reach their people and reach that part of the world with the Gospel. To take and to hold hands and to walk side by side in the context of that part of Indian culture would have been far beyond what the culture was—this is many years ago; I don't know what it is now—but would have legitimately been able to bear at the moment.

In other words, you could win the battle and lose the war. That's what Paul is saying here. You can win the battle, you can win the liberty battle. "You want to sit me down and you want to liberty me on this? You can beat me on it." But you will lose the war if the war is to glorify God and to make him known in the world. You'd be winning and communicating to the world the liberty that we have, but it would be a bigger shock to people than they could process, and they might never want to turn to Christ ever for the rest of their lives as a result.

So as Christians, we're to be sensitive to our culture. Allow me to close by addressing a couple of odds and ends. I certainly don't apologize at all for being thorough on this passage. This is the kind of passage that can so often, as we're teaching the Bible, make it flyover country and just say it's this, this, this, and this and then move over and not carefully explain it.

Then what happens is, if it's not well explained, it raises more questions than it answers. No one is allowed to fill a pulpit and preach a sermon or teach God's word in a way that raises more questions than he answers or she answers, as she would teach women. So there needs to be a thoroughness related to this so that we not only understand it as Christians, but we can explain it then to others as this area of submission, authority, all is so much under attack and misunderstood in terms of Christianity within the culture.

One of the odds and ends relates to angels in verse 10. Notice once again, "For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels." So in a nutshell, Paul is saying that angels were present in the services there in Corinth, even as God is present right now in this service and angels are present in this service as well.

Don't say hi or anything like that, but here they are. They're always a part of any service like this and present. You might remember that in the Garden of Eden, the angels witnessed how Eve usurped the place of headship that had been given to Adam and partook of the forbidden fruit offered to her by Satan, and then proceeded to take the lead in the marriage and tempted Adam to sin.

The result was the fall of Adam and Eve. But what God wants to see when angels are present in a Christian worship service is to see wives expressing submission to their husbands. Again, in ancient Corinth, that was best expressed by wearing a head covering.

In verse 13, in the light of his instruction in verses 2 through 12, the Apostle Paul sums up his argument by asking a rhetorical question. Notice once again, verse 13, "Judge among yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?" A rhetorical question and the answer is no.

Additionally, in verses 14 and 15, Paul is saying that in whatever culture we're in, Christians should not do anything that blurs the healthy distinctions that need to be present between the sexes. He says in essence of what he's talking about here, Christian men should be men and Christian women should be women, because that's how God wants it, having expressed it in nature.

Concerning men and long hair, he says, "Does not nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it's a dishonor to him?" there in verse 14. I find it much easier to preach this particular passage now than I once did in my life. This speaks to the fact, all kidding aside, that a man should not wear his hair in such a way that causes people to question his sexuality, in a way that makes him look feminine.

That differs from culture to culture as well, but it also applies to every culture as well. There is a way that men wear their hair and women wear their hair, and when a man crosses a line and everybody can recognize it, that is recognized as being way too feminine in terms of a confusion in terms of the distinction of the sexes.

For the most part, in the ancient world and even today, men wear shorter hair and women wear longer hair. But it wasn't always true in every culture and it isn't always true in every culture today. It's not a prohibition in terms of men not wearing their hair long, as long as that doesn't create confusion in terms of their masculinity and how they're trying to present themselves to the culture.

Think about the Spartans in the ancient world. You couldn't have had braver men that existed, and they wore long hair. The American Indians, George Washington, Samson, George Whitefield, John Wesley—all wore long hair. And yet it was no one would ever question their masculinity. So it isn't just about the length of the hair, it's the how it's viewed within the culture.

In our culture, a man can have long hair, a big bushy beard, complete with greasy coveralls, and no one's going to take him for looking feminine. It's not going to happen. I think about who's that center that played for Oklahoma? Big guy from New Zealand. I think he got traded to Houston or something like that. Steve something. Steve Adams. There we go. Thank you, Pastor Jeremiah. Bailed out this sermon last moment.

So Steve Adams, you see him, he's got his hair in a big ponytail in back. Nobody would look at him and say, "Look at that big sissy." Not to his face you wouldn't say that to his face. Big gigantic guy. So in every culture, including our own though, there is that line concerning hair and many things where now a man is creating confusion in people's minds about their sexuality and masculinity. No Christian is to go there.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 27, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." And we are to honor that, whether we are male or female. In verse 15, when he talks about women and long hair, in general, women have been given a natural ability to grow a beautiful head of long hair that most men don't possess.

Mankind in comparison, men in comparison to women, we lose our hair and grow bald at an alarming rate in terms of any kind of a one-by-one comparison. So what he's saying here with women and long hair, he's saying essentially, just embrace your femininity. God has given it to you. It doesn't mean that Christian women in our culture can't wear shorter hair. In our culture, we view all kinds of hair lengths in women as being feminine. They're not no hair length is viewed as being non-feminine necessarily.

But in the ancient world and much of the world today, long hair is a visible expression of her uniqueness between the two sexes. My favorite verse in the whole passage is verse 16. "But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God."

Paul concludes all of this by declaring that if anyone is contentious concerning all of this, he said, "I'm not going to fight with you about it. I'm not going to fight with you over this issue. I've explained it the best way that I know how to explain it. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink. I've made my case."

But what he is also determined to do is to make sure that all through history, not just in Corinth 2,000 years ago, but all the way through till the day that the Lord returns, he's determined not to make Christianity about head coverings and hair length or anything on that level. So obviously what he's teaching here to even the Christians in Corinth concerning hair coverings and hair lengths cannot be a commandment to all churches in all places throughout all of time, otherwise Paul would never yield the point in verse 16.

He expects us to be mature to understand the principle that he's making, to apply it to our own lives with real sobriety, and not to get into some kind of fight over it. Then you notice that he declares that if it becomes a point of contention, then let this custom or this practice that he's advocating here, then let that side give way in the contention.

Again, he's very determined not to make this more than it is. He's not interested in making Christianity about head coverings and the length of hair men should wear in the minds of Christians, and certainly not in the minds of those who are yet unsaved.

So here he closes this long section that he's been involved in in 1 Corinthians in talking about how we exercise our liberty as Christians within the culture. We need here, as Christians, to be sensitive to the culture we're living in regarding the expression of our liberties and be willing to forgo any liberty that would reflect poorly upon the Lord by me exercising them, or would reflect poorly upon Christianity and Christians and that certainly that would cause anyone to say, "I never want to be a Christian," by virtue of witnessing us practice that particular Christian liberty. So it's a sobering lesson and it's a searching lesson for Christians in any culture, and it's an important one, and I'm glad we were able to study it tonight.

Guest (Male): Well, that's Pastor Damian Kyle on According to the Scriptures. We've been looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 11 today, and what an interesting discussion it's been on being sensitive to our culture and how we choose to exercise our liberties.

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According to the Scriptures with Damian Kyle is presented by Calvary Chapel Modesto. We'll catch you back here next time when we'll get back to our helpful series in 1 Corinthians.