1 Corinthians 11:1

Paul, having answered the cases put to him, proceeds in this chapter to the redress of grievances. The first verse of the chapter is put, by those who divided the epistle into chapters, as a preface to the rest of the epistle, but seems to have been a more proper close to the last, in which he had enforced the cautions he had given against the abuse of liberty, by his own example: Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ (Co1 11:1), fitly closes his argument; and the way of speaking in the next verse looks like a transition to another. But, whether it more properly belong to this or the last chapter, it is plain from it that Paul not only preached such doctrine as they ought to believe, but led such a life as they ought to imitate. "Be ye followers of me," that is, "Be imitators of me; live as you see me live." Note, Ministers are likely to preach most to the purpose when they can press their hearers to follow their example. Yet would not Paul be followed blindly neither. He encourages neither implicit faith nor obedience. He would be followed himself no further than he followed Christ. Christ's pattern is a copy without a blot; so is no man's else. Note, We should follow no leader further than he follows Christ. Apostles should be left by us when they deviate from the example of their Master. He passes next to reprehend and reform an indecency among them, of which the women were more especially guilty, concerning which observe,

I. How he prefaces it. He begins with a commendation of what was praiseworthy in them (Co1 11:2): I praise you, that you remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I delivered them to you. Many of them, it is probable, did this in the strictest sense of the expression: and he takes occasion thence to address the body of the church under this good character; and the body might, in the main, have continued to observe the ordinances and institutions of Christ, though in some things they deviated fRom. and corrupted, them. Note, When we reprove what is amiss in any, it is very prudent and fit to commend what is good in them; it will show that the reproof is not from ill-will, and a humour of censuring and finding fault; and it will therefore procure the more regard to it.

II. How he lays the foundation for his reprehension by asserting the superiority of the man over the woman: 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. Christ, in his mediatorial character and glorified humanity, is at the head of mankind. He is not only first of the kind, but Lord and Sovereign. He has a name above every name: though in this high office and authority he has a superior, God being his head. And as God is the head of Christ, and Christ the head of the whole human kind, so the man is the head of the tow sexes: not indeed with such dominion as Christ has over the kind or God has over the man Christ Jesus; but a superiority and headship he has, and the woman should be in subjection and not assume or usurp the man's place. This is the situation in which God has placed her; and for that reason she should have a mind suited to her rank, and not do any thing that looks like an affectation of changing places. Something like this the women of the church of Corinth seem to have been guilty of, who were under inspiration, and prayed and prophesied even in their assemblies, Co1 11:5. It is indeed an apostolical canon, that the women should keep silence in the churches (Co1 14:34; Ti1 2:12), which some understand without limitation, as if a woman under inspiration also must keep silence, which seems very well to agree with the connection of the apostle's discourse, ch. 14. Others with a limitation: though a woman might not from her own abilities pretend to teach, or so much as question and debate any thing in the church yet when under inspiration the case was altered, she had liberty to speak. Or, though she might not preach even by inspiration (because teaching is the business of a superior), yet she might pray or utter hymns by inspiration, even in the public assembly. She did not show any affectation of superiority over the man by such acts of public worship. It is plain the apostle does not in this place prohibit the thing, but reprehend the manner of doing it. And yet he might utterly disallow the thing and lay an unlimited restraint on the woman in another part of the epistle. These things are not contradictory. It is to his present purpose to reprehend the manner wherein the women prayed and prophesied in the church, without determining in this place whether they did well or ill in praying or prophesying. Note, The manner of doing a thing enters into the morality of it. We must not only be concerned to do good, but that the good we do be well done.

III. The thing he reprehends is the woman's praying or prophesying uncovered, or the man's doing either covered, Co1 11:4, Co1 11:5. To understand this, it must be observed that it was a signification either of shame or subjection for persons to be veiled, or covered, in the eastern countries, contrary to the custom of ours, where the being bare-headed betokens subjection, and being covered superiority and dominion. And this will help us the better to understand,

IV. The reasons on which he grounds his reprehension. 1. The man that prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonoureth his head, namely, Christ, the head of every man (Co1 11:3), by appearing in a habit unsuitable to the rank in which God has placed him. Note, We should, even in our dress and habits, avoid every thing that may dishonour Christ. The woman, on the other hand, who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head, namely, the man, Co1 11:3. She appears in the dress of her superior, and throws off the token of her subjection. She might, with equal decency, cut her hair short, or cut it close, which was the custom of the man in that age. This would be in a manner to declare that she was desirous of changing sexes, a manifest affectation of that superiority which God had conferred on the other sex. And this was probably the fault of these prophetesses in the church of Corinth. It was doing a thing which, in that age of the world, betokened superiority, and therefore a tacit claim of what did not belong to them but the other sex. Note, The sexes should not affect to change places. The order in which divine wisdom has placed persons and things is best and fittest: to endeavour to amend it is to destroy all order, and introduce confusion. The woman should keep to the rank God has chosen for her, and not dishonour her head; for this, in the result, is to dishonour God. If she was made out of the man, and for the man, and made to be the glory of the man, she should do nothing, especially in public, that looks like a wish of having this order inverted. 2. Another reason against this conduct is that the man is the image and glory of God, the representative of that glorious dominion and headship which God has over the world. It is the man who is set at the head of this lower creation, and therein he bears the resemblance of God. The woman, on the other hand, is the glory of the man (Co1 11:7): she is his representative. Not but she has dominion over the inferior creatures, as she is a partaker of human nature, and so far is God's representative too, but it is at second-hand. She is the image of God, inasmuch as she is the image of the man: For the man was not made out of the woman, but the woman out of the man, Co1 11:8. The man was first made, and made head of the creation here below, and therein the image of the divine dominion; and the woman was made out of the man, and shone with a reflection of his glory, being made superior to the other creatures here below, but in subjection to her husband, and deriving that honour from him out of whom she was made. 3. The woman was made for the man, to be his help-meet, and not the man for the woman. She was naturally, therefore, made subject to him, because made for him, for his use, and help, and comfort. And she who was intended to be always in subjection to the man should do nothing, in Christian assemblies, that looks like an affectation of equality. 4. She ought to have power on her head, because of the angels. Power, that is, a veil, the token, not of her having the power or superiority, but being under the power of her husband, subjected to him, and inferior to the other sex. Rebekah, when she met Isaac, and was delivering herself into his possession, put on her veil, in token of her subjection, Gen 24:65. Thus would the apostle have the women appear In Christian assemblies, even though they spoke there by inspiration, because of the angels, that is, say some, because of the evil angels. The woman was first in the transgression, being deceived by the devil (Ti1 2:14), which increased her subjection to man, Gen 3:16. Now, believe evil angels will be sure to mix in all Christian assemblies, therefore should women wear the token of their shamefacedness and subjection, which in that age and country, was a veil. Others say because of the good angels. Jews and Christians have had an opinion that these ministering spirits are many of them present in their assemblies. Their presence should restrain Christians from all indecencies in the worship of God. Note, We should learn from all to behave in the public assemblies of divine worship so as to express a reverence for God, and a content and satisfaction with that rank in which he has placed us.

V. He thinks fit to guard his argument with a caution lest the inference be carried too far (Co1 11:11, Co1 11:12): Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord. They were made for one another. It is not good for him to be alone (Gen 2:18), and therefore was a woman made, and made for the man; and the man was intended to be a comfort, and help, and defence, to the woman, though not so directly and immediately made for her. They were made to be a mutual comfort and blessing, not one a slave and the other a tyrant. Both were to be one flesh (Gen 2:24), and this for the propagation of a race of mankind. They are reciprocal instruments of each other's production. As the woman was first formed out of the man, the man is ever since propagated by the woman (Co1 11:12), all by the divine wisdom and power of the First Cause so ordaining it. The authority and subjection should be no greater than are suitable to two in such near relation and close union to each other. Note, As it is the will of God that the woman know her place, so it is his will also that the man abuse not his power.

VI. He enforces his argument from the natural covering provided for the woman (Co1 11:13-15): "Judge in yourselves - consult your own reason, hearken to what nature suggests - is it comely for a woman to pray to God uncovered? Should there not be a distinction kept up between the sexes in wearing their hair, since nature has made one? Is it not a distinction which nature has kept up among all civilized nations? The woman's hair is a natural covering; to wear it long is a glory to her; but for a man to have long hair, or cherish it, is a token of softness and effeminacy." Note, It should be our concern, especially in Christian and religious assemblies, to make no breach upon the rules of natural decency.

VII. He sums up all by referring those who were contentious to the usages and customs of the churches, Co1 11:16. Custom is in a great measure the rule of decency. And the common practice of the churches is what would have them govern themselves by. He does not silence the contentious by mere authority, but lets them know that they would appear to the world as very odd and singular in their humour if they would quarrel for a custom to which all the churches of Christ were at that time utter strangers, or against a custom in which they all concurred, and that upon the ground of natural decency. It was the common usage of the churches for women to appear in public assemblies, and join in public worship, veiled; and it was manifestly decent that they should do so. Those must be very contentious indeed who would quarrel with this, or lay it aside.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Ch. 1Co_11:1. This verse belongs to the former chapter, and concludes the argument, as in ch. 1Co_4:16.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_11:1-2

Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

Follow Paul and follow Christ

I. Be ye followers of Paul. But how can we be like a man who has been dead for centuries, whose language and occupations were wholly different from ours? Can the nineteenth century be changed into the first? No. There are hundreds of points in which we cannot be like him; and yet Paul is more capable of being an example to us than he has been to almost any previous age of the world. He is truly the apostle of Englishmen, because--

1. He is the apostle most congenial to our peculiar excellences. There is a real likeness between the English character and the freedom and love of truth which is the fibre and tissue of the teaching of St. Paul.

2. He is the apostle of progress. Are any of us inclined to think that Christianity is worn out, that it is too contracted for these broad, enlightened times? Some forms of it may have become so, but not the Christianity of St. Paul. He is the apostle of the vast and unknown future. St. Paul is always looking, not backward, but forward. He went beyond his own age, beyond the ages that followed; and, however far we have advanced in enlightenment and liberation, he has gone before us still.

3. The apostle of toleration. Have we outgrown the noble lessons of Rom_14:1-23.? Are we more able to bear with those who differ from us, more tender to the rights of conscience, than he? Let us separate the essential from the non-essential, the temporal from the eternal, as he did.

II. Even as he was of Christ.

1. In many forms this is the burden of all his Epistles (Rom_13:14; Col_2:6; Rom_8:29; Gal_6:14; Gal_2:20). He is but a servant of Christ. To carry in his own life a copy, however imperfect, of what Christ had said and done; to be one with Christ now and hereafter was his highest ambition and hope of salvation. And to this he calls us still.

2. True, we cannot imitate Christ in the letter, but we can in the spirit; we cannot put on His outward garb and actions, but we can put on the mind which was in Christ Jesus. We cannot attain to His perfection; in great part He is rather the likeness of God than the example of man; but we can study in His life and character the will of God and the duty of man. He should be to us as a second conscience, to fix our wills, to calm our scruples, to guide our thoughts, the conscience of our conscience, the mind of our mind, the heart of our heart.

III. How shall we bring home this joint example to ourselves? How shall we concentrate on our own lives the rays of this double light, the greater light for ever going before, the lesser light for ever moving behind? Turn from the text to the context, and you will find laid down two fundamental principles of Evangelical religion--

1. For the service of God (1Co_10:13.). Whatsoever ye do, in commerce and in labour, wheresoever it be, there is what you have to do to the glory of God. Here, joining in the prayers and hymns, etc., you are preparing for the service of God. But there, in your daily life, is the true Divine service, in which we must all bear our parts.

(1) Paul was ever employed in driving the enthusiasm of his followers into homely, useful, practical channels.

(2) What was true of Paul was still more true of Christ. He did not retire to the wilderness. He lived and died in blessed companionship with men. In labour and in festivity, in moving multitudes and in crowded ship, He found alike His Fathers work.

2. How are we to follow Paul and Christ in the service of man? (1Co_10:33; 1Co_9:22). Not by one uniform mode, but in ten thousand was, ever fresh, every varying with the wants and characters of each.

(1) Every face that looks up from this crowd is different from every other; it expresses a history, a character, a weakness, a strength of its own. To every one the apostle would have been, as it were, a different man; he would have transformed himself into the thoughts and would have borne with the infirmities of each. No outward difference would have prevented him from seeing the good which lay beneath. He would have made straight for that and built it up, and so would have saved the soul in the midst of which he had discovered it.

(2) And this example is not only for teachers or special times and places. It is for all times, places, and persons; for it is the example, not only of Paul, but of Christ Himself. He, too, became all things to all men, if by any means He might save some. He came with a gracious word and touch for each. And as Christ and Paul have done to us, so ought we in our humble measure to do to our brethren; so ought we humbly to hope that they each in their turn will do to us, if by any means some of us may be saved. (Dean Stanley.)

Following Christians and following Christ

I. We ought to follow the example of former saints, so far as they walk in the laws of God.

1. Though by nature all be sinners, yet by grace many in all ages have been saints.

2. The lives of many saints are recorded for our imitation (Jam_5:10-11; Jam_5:17; Php_3:17; Php_4:9).

3. But everything recorded of them is not to be followed.

(1) Not such actions as are condemned.

(2) Nor all such which are not condemned (Gen_19:8; Gen_27:25-27; Gen_42:15-16).

(3) Nor all such as are approved. For--

(a) Some things are only in part approved (Luk_16:8; Exo_1:19-20).

(b) Some things were done by the extraordinary call and instinct of God (Num_25:7-8; 2Ki_1:10; Luk_9:54-55). So Abraham offering Isaac.

4. In our imitation of the saints we must observe--

(1) Whether what they do be according to the law of God.

(2) The circumstances of their actions (Amo_6:5). Read, then, the lives of former saints, and follow their examples, especially the particular graces wherein they were eminent (Num_12:3; 1Sa_3:18; Job_1:21; Act_5:41).

II. Christ is the grand example which we ought to imitate.

1. What is it to imitate Christ?

(1) As He did it.

(a) Understandingly (Joh_4:22).

(b) Obediently (Luk_2:49; 1Sa_15:22).

(c) Sincerely Joh_4:24; 2Co_1:12).

(d) Wholly (Mat_3:15; Joh_17:4).

(e) Believingly (Joh_11:41-42).

(f) Cheerfully (Isa_53:7; Heb_10:34; Rom_12:8).

(g) Humbly (Mat_11:29).

(h) To the glory of God (1Co_10:31).

2. What are those works which we are to imitate Christ in? Christ was truly God from eternity (Joh_1:1; Joh_8:58). He became truly man in time (Joh_1:14; 1Ti_2:5), and He was and is truly both God and man in one person (Act_20:28). Whatsoever He did in the flesh He did under one of these three notions.

(1) We are not to follow Christ in what He did as God; such are His acts--

(a) Of omnipotence. Healing the sick, casting out devils, raising the dead, etc.

(b) Of omniscience (Luk_11:17; Luk_13:32).

(c) Of sovereignty (Mat_16:2; Mat_16:7).

(2) Nor in what He did as God-man, in the acts--

(a) Of His prophetical office (Deu_18:15; Joh_15:15; Act_3:22).

(b) His priestly office. Satisfying for our sins (1Jn_2:2), and interceding for our souls (Heb_7:25).

(c) His kingly office (Isa_9:7).

(3) But we are to follow Him in what He did as mere man.

(a) He was subject to His parents (Luk_2:51). This subjection consisteth in reverencing them (Lev_19:3); in obeying them, by hearkening to their instructions (Pro_13:1; Pro_23:22) and performing their lawful commands (Col_3:20; Eph_6:1); in thankfulness, by acknowledging their care and providing for their necessities (1Ti_5:4; Gen_47:12; Joh_19:26-27). Consider--This is pleasing to God (Eph_6:1), and hath a promised blessing (Eph_6:2-3; Exo_20:12).

(b) He committed no sin 1Pe_2:22; Isa_53:9; 1Jn_3:5). How are we not to sin? We are not to love it (Psa_119:1-176). We must imitate Christ in--

(c) Love.

(d) Submission.

(e) Meekness and holiness.

(f) Hearing.

(g) Finishing His work.

(h) Taking all opportunities of doing good.

3. Means.

(1) Watch always over thy heart (1Pe_5:8; Pro_4:23).

(2) Live as under the eye of God.

(3) Consider thou art a Christian. (Bp. Beveridge.)

A follower of Christ

It needs no argument to prove that all men do not follow Christ. Many profess to follow Him, and many boast that they do follow Him, but, oh, how few faithfully follow Christ! Indeed, the grand mistake of the world lies in this--that following Christ consists in mere attendance to a few forms and professions of religion, whereas it is wholly a spiritual service, and can never be taken up by any but spiritual men. Therefore the Scriptures assure us that a follower of Christ is--

I. One who has been quickened by Christ. A dead man cannot follow another. A man dead in trespasses and sins must be quickened by the Son of God before he will take one step in the way to heaven.

II. One who heartily loves Christ. We love Him, because He first loved us. The love of God constraineth us. All Christ asks in return for His love is Follow Me, and the grateful and redeemed spirit says, Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.

III. One who embraces the doctrine of Christ. When quickeing takes place, the soul receives the kingdom of heaven as a little child. Teach me, says such a spirit, Thy way, O Lord; I will walk in Thy truth; unite my heart to fear Thy name. It does not take the doctrines of the gospel and throw away the precepts; it does not reserve the precepts and cast away the doctrines, but it takes it as a whole, as the word of Christ, and the directory in the way to heaven.

IV. One who cheerfully walks in the ways of Christ. Religious labour is no drudgery to him. Never has a Christian any melancholy as long as he walks in Christs paths; it is when he turns out of them that occasions him sadness and pain.

V. One who copies the example of Christ. A follower of Christ is not one whose head is filled with well-digested schemes of theology. Christ hath left us an example that we should follow His steps. Following Christ is walking behind Him, putting our feet into the print of His footsteps, and so going on in the way to heaven. He has left His footprints--

1. In His meek and amiable spirit.

2. In heavenly behaviour and conversation.

3. In prayer.

4. In His abounding liberality.

5. In His diligent labours.

6. In His spirit of love.

VI. One who perseveringly continues with Christ. Some follow Christ from gain, some partially, as long as the truth does not touch their consciences; some in poverty and affliction; but when the sun of prosperity has arisen, when persecution or affliction cometh on account of the truth, then they desert Christ. But he that endureth to the end shall be saved. (J. Sherman.)

True following

Some men are destined to lead either in evil or in good. St. Paul, who had been a leader in persecution, was made a leader and commander of Christs people, and he removes every trace of human assumption when he qualifies the exhortation with even as I am also of Christ.

I. To follow Christ is the source of Christian influence. It is one thing to look at the life of Jesus with interest and admiration; it is another thing to regard it as our pattern and inspiration. To gain the higher influence of the Saviours life we must follow Him--

1. Wholly. The would-be followers of His day made loud professions of following Him, but when He said, If any man will come after Me, let him take up his cross, etc., the crowd dispersed, and only the twelve remained.

2. Constantly. When you sit for your likeness the photographer measures the time in which to take a deep and sharp impression. Half the time would only give half the result. If you only look at Jesus once in awhile, and if serious thought only possess you at times, the flood of worldly influence will sweep away the good impressions as the tide demolishes footsteps in the sand.

3. Openly. Conversion becomes more real, love to Christ more intense, and hatred of sin more forcible by the exhibition of the virtues of Him who has called us out of darkness into light. The light we shed on others is again reflected on ourselves. The voice of the echo is sweeter than your own; so is piety when it returns to us from its mission of mercy.

II. To exhibit Christ is the mission of the Christian life.

1. The power of example is great. The ancient Romans used to place the statues of distinguished men in their halls. When they left in the morning they were inspired by the remembrance of their noble deeds, and when they returned in the evening they were ennobled by the thought of the associations they enjoyed.

2. The power of Christian example is the greatest. Both in moulding and reforming characters it has not a rival. Its force is that of Divine love working through human actions. God in Christ Jesus made His life the noblest of all lives, because it has produced the greatest reforms in the race. The life of Jesus in His Church is its perpetuation. (Weekly Pulpit.)

Christs example

1. Once in the course of the worlds history there has been seen on earth a perfect life. It was a life not merely to admire, but to follow. It has been ever since the acknowledged human standard.

2. And we have not only the perfect example, but we have it declared why and how it is perfect. Lessons, teaching and enforcing, accompany each incident of our Lords ministry; they are drawn together into a solemn summary in the Sermon on the Mount. Here we have the highest moral guidance for the world.

3. That example and law of life were nothing less than universal. They were meant for all men. Differing so widely as men do, Christ calls them all alike to follow Him.

4. Christianity makes itself universal by making its moral standard, not verbal rules or laws, but a character. That character is one who is called in Scripture the Image of God. All that Christ did and said were the various expressions of the perfect goodness of the Father. And that is the Christian law. And this is what fits the Christian standard to be a universal one. For a character, if it is great enough, carries its force far beyond the conditions Under which it may have been first disclosed. If shown under one set of circumstances its lesson can be extended to another, perfectly different. It adapts itself with the freedom and elasticity of life. We can follow it on, from the known, to what it would be, in the new and strange. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day and for ever--the same in glory as in the form of a servant. Under conditions utterly changed, His goodness is that same very goodness which we saw. And so we can derive from that Character lessons for our state, which is so different from His. And not only so, but we can derive lessons from it for conditions of human life very far removed from those conditions under which His goodness was manifested to us here. Literal imitation may be impossible, but it is not impossible to catch its spirit and apply its lessons to altered circumstances. In that character, though shown to us in the form of servant, we know that everything is gathered which could make human nature what it ought to be. Consider Christ as a pattern for--

I. The life of faith.

1. All the while that He was on earth He was in heart and soul undivided for a moment from heaven. He does what is most human; but He lives absolutely in the Divine. However, we see Him: tempted, teaching, healing, etc., in the wilderness, in the temple, on the Cross--He is yet all the while even the Son of Man which is in heaven.

2. Men have compared the active and the contemplative life, and the life of practical beneficence with the life of devotion. We see great things done without the sense of religion, and we see the religious spirit failing to command the respect of those who have other ways of ministering to mens wants. But in Christ we have both lives combined. In Him we see man serving to the utmost his brethren; but we also see man one with the thought and will of God.

3. Here we see how character in itself, irrespective of circumstance, is adapted to be a guide; here is an example, shown under the most exceptional conditions, yet fit to be universal. But on what outward circumstances does such a life depend? Why is not equally to be realised in the calling of the ruler, the rich man, the student? How need their outward conditions affect their relationship to God?

II. The Life of Truth.

(1) To all, quite apart from the accidental conditions of their state, Christs life shows what alone is real and great in life; and surely there are ends and purposes in the life of each of us which are literally as real as the ends of His life. One is high and another low; one has much and another little, but to every one who believes in God and providence, the work of each is equally real: a call, a stewardship from God.

(2) What we see in Christs life is not only a purpose and work passing mans understanding, but that purpose followed, and that work done, in a way which man can understand. It is a life governed by its end and purpose, in which shows or illusions have no place; and further, a life in which its purpose is followed with absolute indifference to whatever sacrifice it may cost. He has put all this into words which mark for ever the change He made in our views of life--My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work; I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; and when all was over, I have finished the work that Thou gavest Me to do.

III. The Life of Love. It is the new commandment, new to the world, but as old as the eternal Word who brought it, which turns the Sermon on the Mount from a code of precepts into the expressions and instances of a character. Its words have their interpretation and their reason in that Divine temper which had come with Christ to restore the world. The purity, the humility, the forgiving mind, the unflagging goodness they speak of, were but some among the infinitely varied ways of acting out the meaning of His last charge, That ye love one another as I have loved you; and of His last prayer, That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me, may be in them, and I in them. A great deal may be said of love without ever really touching what is its vital essence. But here our sympathies are appealed to. We see how Jesus Christ showed what it is to lead a life of love. Conclusion:

1. The mutable shapes of society, unfolded by Gods providence, fix almost without our will our outward circumstances. But for the soul, wherever it is, Christ our Lord has one unchanging call, Be perfect; and He has one unchanging rule for its fulfilment, Be what I am, feel what I felt, do as I should do. How shall we? How but by looking steadfastly at Him and trying to see and know Him? In the same Living Person each age has seen its best idea embodied; but its idea was not adequate to the truth--there was something still beyond.

(1) An age of intellectual confusion saw in His portraiture in the Gospels the ideal of the great Teacher, the healer of human error. It judged rightly; but that was only part.

(2) The monastic spirit saw in it the warrant and suggestion of a life of self-devoted poverty as the condition of perfection: who can doubt that there was much to justify it: who can doubt that the reality was something far wider than the purest type of monastic life?

(3) The Reformation saw in Him the great improver, the quickener of the dead letter, the stern rebuker of a religion which had forgotten its spirit; and doubtless He was all this, only He was infinitely more.

(4) And now in modern times there is the disposition to dwell on Him as the ideal exemplar of perfect manhood. He is all this, and this is infinitely precious. We may glorify Him for it and exalt Him as much as we can, but even yet will He far exceed. And as generations go on they will still find that Character answering to their best thoughts and hopes.

2. What is the lesson? Surely this: to remember when we talk of the example of Christ, that the interpretations and readings of it are all short of the thing itself; and that we possess, to see and to learn from, the thing itself. (Dean Church.)

Christ, our example

The apostle--

I. Directs our attention to Christ as the great model of the Christian. It is a marked characteristic of Christianity that all the truths are presented in no vague, intangible form, but as embodied in one living model. Note--

1. The fitness of Christ to be our model pattern. We needed one Divine and yet human. One all Divine would have been inimitable; one all human must have fallen below the necessities of the case. So Christ came, God manifest in the flesh. His divinity fitted Him to reveal Gods will, and uniting His Deity with humanity, He lived, laboured, suffered, and died as a Man, to present a visible picture which shall be the model of study and imitation for all time.

2. The perfection of this model. Perfect God and perfect man, He forms a perfect study for the believer. His love to God was supreme; the exercise of His will was ever in perfect harmony with the Divine will. In the hour of His temptation, He emerges from the furnace unscathed; and in the profoundest depth of agony there is the deepest submission to God.

3. Its surpassing loveliness. Look at His unearthly life--living in the world, and yet above the world. Look at His humility--the incarnate God though He was, yet stooping to wash His disciples feet. Look at Him as a Man of prayer--walking in the closest communion with His Father.

II. Delineates the character of a true believer as moulded upon that of Jesus. A follower of Christ.

1. Is a partaker of its spiritual nature. An unsanctified heart, an unrenewed soul, cannot be said to be cast into this mould. It becomes, then, a question of the deepest moment, Am I born again of the Spirit?

2. Has his hope of acceptance, as a lost sinner, entirely in Christ. He has renounced his own righteousness, and has received as his only justification the righteousness of God which is by faith in Christ Jesus.

3. Sits as a humble learner at the feet of Christ.

4. Follows Christ only. We may follow ministers and not Christ, Churches, and not the Head of the Church.

5. Is crucified with Christ: If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. (O. Winslow, D.D.)

Imitation of Christ

1. We find in the Word of God that the imitation of Christ is frequently laid down as the leading principle of the gospel (Mat_16:24; Joh_12:26; Joh_13:13; 1Pe_2:21; Eph_5:1.; 1Th_1:16). In these passages we are taught the importance of the principle of example. The Word of God has many ways of teaching. But especially it teaches by example. Example embodies precept, places it before us in pictorial form, which we can easily see and understand. And not only so, but example recommends precept; because where it is a good example, it evidently carries with it the proof of sincerity on the part of the person who sets it.

2. But it may be asked why, if Christ is the real standard and example, does St. Paul set himself before us? I think the reason is simply this, that while Christ is undoubtedly the example, St. Paul regarded himself as an illustration of that example. Note some of the leading features of our Lords character in which this principle of imitation is to be carried out.

I. In His spirit of self-renunciation (Php_2:6; cf Php_2:5.) How closely St. Paul copied our Lord in this! He counted all things but loss that he might win Christ, and glorify Him. And that same spirit lies at the foundation of all true religion. If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself.

II. His spirit of obedience. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work. It was--

1. A willing obedience; one in which He delighted.

2. A constant, ceaseless obedience.

3. An obedience victorious, because it was through and after conflict. And so with St. Paul. Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? seems to have been the question which pervaded his whole career. Now, we love and value the privileges of the gospel; but do not let us lose sight of its responsibilities.

III. His spirit of zeal (Joh_2:1-25.). St. Paul followed Him in this. Men in the present day seem afraid of zeal. But it is good to be zealous in a good cause. Lukewarmness in religion is especially hateful in the sight of God.

IV. His spirit of meekness and gentleness--I beseech you, says St. Paul, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. He never quenched the smoking flax. And so St. Paul, with all his fire and energy, observed the evident spirit of tenderness and sympathy with which he watched over the infant Church. There are rough and rugged characters which are full of energy in Christs cause, but which need to look at His example in this respect.

V. His spirit of love as shown in giving Himself for us; as shown towards the impenitent, and to the multitude scattered as sheep having no shepherd. All this was imitated by St. Paul.

VI. The spirit of blessed anticipation as regards the future (Heb_12:3). In the same way St. Paul tells us that his one desire was to finish his course with joy. We should endeavour in our seasons of trial to remember that the time is short, and that if we be faithful there is laid up for us an exceeding weight of glory, a crown of righteousness. Conclusion: The subject may be used--

1. By way of self-examination. It is exceedingly difficult to bring home to the sinners conscience, by the mere statement of truth, the guilt which attaches to him. But let the sinner place his own life by the side of Christs life.

2. As a principle of guidance. There are perplexing questions which continually arise in the Christian life. Whenever you can find Christs example as a guide to you in your conduct, you may be perfectly certain that yon are safe in the course you adopt.

3. As an encouragement for Christians. It is according to the will of God that we should be conformed to the image of His Son. In attempting, therefore, to reach this conformity, you are attempting that which is the revealed will of God concerning you, and, therefore, which you may reasonably expect. He will give you grace, at least in some measure, to attain. In the future we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And the more we see Him now, the more we live with Him now, the more like Him we shall become. (E. Bayley, D.D.)

Imitation and commendation

In these words we have--

I. The principle on which the characters of most men are formed. Men are imitative beings, and from a law of their nature those whom they most admire, and with whom they most associate, they become like in spirit and in character. The request of Paul at first sight seems somewhat arrogant, Be ye followers of me. No man has a right to make such an unqualified claim. Hence Paul puts the limitation, Even as I also am of Christ. The apostle undoubtedly refers to the preceding verses, in which he speaks of himself as not seeking his own pleasure or profit, but that of others. This Christ did. He pleased not Himself. He means to say, Be like me as I in this respect resemble Christ. Here is the principle that should regulate our imitation of men; imitate them just so far as they resemble Christ. Children should not imitate their parents, pupils their teachers, congregations their ministers, save so far as they resemble Christ.

II. A commendation of merit which many are reluctant to render (verse 2). In some things, then, some of the Corinthians pleased Paul. There was much in them at which he found fault, but so far as they did the proper thing he praises them. To render generously credit where credit is due, is the characteristic of a great soul, but one which most men are reluctant to perform. A wife will go on lovingly attending to the wants and wishes of her husband, and perhaps not from one year to another does she receive from him one word of hearty commendation. So with servants and masters, and ministers and their congregations. (D. Thomas, D.D.)

A momentous example

In one of our western cities, high up on a very tall building, is a large clock. It registers what is called electric time, and is known to be very accurate because it is regulated by the calculations of scientific instruments. On a large sign is painted, Correct city time, and when one has any doubts about having the exact time, he sets his watch by this clock. Great mills, railroads, manufactories, run by its time. Should it lose or gain an hour the whole city would be thrown into confusion. Let us remember, one watch set right will do to set many by; while, on the other hand, the watch that goes wrong may be the means of misleading a whole multitude of others. So it is with life. A wholly consecrated person may become the example for many, and a wicked life of sin may, too, be the means of entangling a whole community of associates. Examine yourselves. (Sharpened Arrows.)

Imitation of the good

It is characteristic of St. Paul that in his Epistles, as in his ministry, he uses his own life, his own personality, almost as if they were not his own; they are as much at the service of his argument as of his work. Such was the nature of his self-surrender to Christ. There is much in the faculty of imitation, and in the facts connected with it, that is mysterious, much beyond our ken. Man is presented to us in Holy Scripture on the one hand in his first state before the fall, as a creature of imitation, made after the likeness of God. On the other hand, in his fallen state we find him wearying himself with all kinds of yearnings after the likeness of God manifested in every kind of idolatry. In the fulness of time Christ came on earth, in His human nature, both restoring the Divine image and making it possible for man to realise the long lost ideal. What wonder, then, that St. Paul, realising and profoundly impressed with this great feature of the Incarnation, should emphasise imitation of himself as leading to Christ, imitation of Christ, and imitation of God in Christ? What wonder if of all books (next to the Bible itself) the most dear to devout souls and spirits striving upwards after heavenly things should be the Imitatio Christi of Thomas A.Kempis? But before we go on to consider how this can become potent in our life and practice, we ought not to fail to observe one aspect of imitation which is of infinite importance to us in its effects for good or for ill. Imitation is not only a conscious activity, by which we can strive to follow and adapt ourselves to any example which we may select for ourselves. It is a part of nature; not only of human nature. It has its unconscious as well as its conscious side. It pervades animal life to an extent which we are apt to ignore or forget. It is the first didactic force. It is concerned with the simplest and most necessary problems of life. By it the young of many animals are first taught to take their food. For instance, in the case of chickens hatched by an incubator, if they are to be artificially reared, it is necessary that the example of picking up their food should be set them in some way. By imitation they learn to live. Imitation, as Darwin has pointed out, is one of the chief factors in the advancement and modification of such intellectual powers as animals possess. There are, indeed, subtle indications of its force in lower animal life, but it is most manifest in birds and in the apes, whose very name furnishes a verb of kindred meaning. And again, as we rise in the scale of animal life, it is very noticeable as a characteristic of savage races of men; of man, indeed, in what some are wont to call his primitive state. We need hardly dwell upon its development in civilised man. It is dominant in those arts which claim so large a portion in his education, his enjoyment of life, his material well-being. Again, as part of human nature, imitation has two functions, which it is important that we should observe, explanatory as they are in a measure of that which we have noticed in the history of man in relation to God. On the one hand he received the likeness, on the other hand he sought it outside himself. Even so, just as in the nervous and muscular system of the body we have the division into involuntary and voluntary, so the imitative faculty in man is unconscious and conscious, is passive as well as active. Much more of it perhaps is unconscious than conscious, and the mystery of its essential being and origin is more inexplicable in the former than in the latter. Why is it that such physical defects as squinting and tricks of movement are said to be infectious, capable of being communicated at sight to very young children? Why is it that, as so often happens, a boys handwriting becomes like his tutors? All these instances point to unconscious, involuntary imitation. The surroundings of a child, of a boy, of a young man, have more effect upon him than he himself can discern, or any one else can determine, and that because of this faculty of imitation, which is part and parcel of his nature. He assimilates them as he does his food, they become portions of his being, and affect his growth, his development, his ultimate destiny. Nay more, it seems as if these influences became hereditary in their effects. We cannot limit these effects to merely physical characteristics or physical results. If our intellectual and spiritual being is thus subject to the supreme influence of assimilation and unconscious imitation, can we doubt its power in the sphere of morality? Tell me who he lives with, and I will tell you who he is, is an old proverb. With the holy thou shalt be holy, and with the perfect man thou shalt be perfect. With the clean thou shalt be clean, and with the froward thou shalt learn frowardness. Youth is plastic. And without doubt the first and most important counsel is: Be not over hasty in making friends; take heed as to the associates whom you choose to live with. Remember you will probably become like them. All unconsciously your moral being will receive the impression of their moral being, their conversation, their tone, their virtues, or their vices. Unless the soul proposes to itself the imitation of good, it will prove unconsciously to be assimilating and imitating evil. The Apostle Paul had so devoted himself to the imitation of Christ, that as we have seen he regarded himself as living in Christ, and Christ living in him. This imitation cannot be without effort, and if, as in the mixed community of Corinth with all its blemishes, and weaknesses, and grievous sins, it was not easy to rise to the ideal of the unseen, yet still the nearer ideal of the good man is better than none, and the apostle did not hesitate to set his own example before them. There must be few of us who cannot find some such good example, some good and holy, some pure and honourable, some generous and manly life, to which we may look with satisfaction and hopefulness, and a desire so to follow it as to rise upon the stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things. But even so the imitation must ultimately be not even of good and holy men, but of Christ in them. Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ. The work of the Incarnation was not only to restore to humanity the image of the perfect man in Christ but also the power, to them that believe in Christ, of reflecting that image, and by conscious and unconscious imitation of becoming more and more like Him. I know not at what time of life this work of the imitation of Christ can be entered upon more freely, more reasonably, more joyfully, than that in which, when childish things are being put away, the young man reaching toward the maturity of his physical and mental powers, is still occupied with his own education and improvement, and is not yet immerged in the world-life with all its engrossing toil of business and pleasure, its triumphs, its disappointments, its sorrows, and soul-enthralling anxieties. (E. Warre, D.D.)

Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I delivered them to you--

Apostolic commendation

I. Its grounds.

1. Personal, that ye remember me.

(1) We all like to be remembered, especially by those who owe us much, or between us and whom there exist the tenderest relationships. These Corinthians owed all their spiritual life and blessings to the apostle, and it comforted him amidst the toils and perils of his Ephesian ministry to know that he was not forgotten. Nothing would more sadden a father than to be forgotten by his children, a wife by her husband, a pastor by his church.

(2) We like to be remembered in all things. They remembered Pauls preaching, his labours at his handicraft, his sympathy and helplessness. And when we come across an acquaintance that we have not seen for years, how pleasant it is to be remembered by ones features: tone, gait, or some other characteristic, and to gather in conversation that this and that incident or word has been treasured up.

2. Moral. The Corinthians not only remembered Paul and what he said; they remembered to do what he told them. Not the most tender personal recollections would have compensated for the absence of this. Pauls wish was not to be popular, but to be permanently useful. This is what Christ wants: If ye love Me, keep My commandments. This is what we all want: parents, teachers, ministers, etc., and exact obedience is what is required--as I delivered them, adding nothing to them, taking nothing from them, but keeping them both in the spirit and in the letter.

II. Its expression. This was--

1. Frank and open. Encouraging sentiment is sometimes entertained where it is not expressed. This does no good. If you feel that a man deserves your praise, why not tell him so?

2. Large-hearted and generous. There were a good many things which the apostle could not praise, but was forced to blame the Corinthians; but where he felt he could praise conscientiously he did so unstintedly.

3. Fraternal, Brethren. He did not indulge them as children simply to spur them on, nor flatter them as superiors to secure their patronage. He treated them as equally next himself concerned about the prosperity of the Church, and in their efforts to promote that prosperity he felt them worthy of a brothers praise. (J. W. Burn.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 11:1. Be ye followers of me — Carefully, therefore, follow my directions, and imitate my example, in condescension to the weaknesses and prejudices of others, for their good; even as I also — In this, and in every thing else, copy after the perfect pattern of our great Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. This verse evidently belongs to the preceding chapter, where the apostle had proposed himself as an example, and ought not to have been separated from it.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES

[1Co_11:1 belongs to chap. 10, where see. Evans (in Speaker), Stanley, and others divide this chapter at 1Co_11:16, not 1Co_11:17, making 1Co_11:16 introduce the new topic]

1Co_11:2. I praise you … all things.—Not qualified or limited by 1Co_11:17, which refers to a new point, which had arisen in practice, outside the “all things already delivered,” whether orally, when Paul was at Corinth, or by the (possible) lost letter. Courteous, and no doubt true of the Church as a whole, though there were factious and rebellious exceptions. Certainly they deferred to his authority, when they submitted for his decision the questions the answers to which occupy so much of this letter. See also how this loyal feeling asserted itself in consequence of this letter (2Co_7:11 sqq.). Ordinances.—“Traditions” (R.V. and all Commentaries). “The delivered instructions, … directions in matters of discipline as well as of doctrine” (Evans). Ellicott suggests such (esoteric) topics as 1Co_6:2; 2Th_2:5. Beet adds a new idea: “Probably the more or less definite instructions given by Christ to the apostles for the Church. Samples in 1Co_11:23; 1Co_15:3.” Important to note (as Stanley): “Always delivered, not ‘traditionally’ through many links, but direct from the teacher to the taught.” Hence entirely without analogy to the technical traditions of, e.g., the Romish ecclesiastical theology: “Not merely such acts and words as were supposed to have descended from Christ and His apostles, although orally transmitted instead of recorded in writing; but also the whole circle of dogmas and practices which had been instituted by Church councils and recognised by the Church” (Luthardt, Saving Truths, lect. viii.); which became an authority concurrent with Scripture. All verbal or written Apostolic directions which are needed in order to a statement of God’s will, complete for the purposes of Christian practice, have been put on permanent record in Scripture.

1Co_11:3.—As to husband and wife and the illustrative force of their relationship, cf. throughout Eph_5:22-33. There the stress lies upon their intimateness, their unity of relationship, and the obligation of mutual helpfulness and sympathy. In 1Co_11:33 her subordination to him is introduced, and is here the prominent point dealt with. Head.—Above the Body (Col_1:18), though, in a true sense, belonging to it; in close, living, life-giving union; directing it, and so every particular “man” in it. Man is woman’s “immediate head” (Beet), for Christ is her head too; in the Body there is “no male nor female.” Also distinguish between her equality and parallelism with man in her relation to Christ in regard to her personal spiritual life (1Co_11:11), and her social subordination to man (cf. 1Co_15:27, 1Co_3:23). “The meaning of ‘head’ must not be unduly limited or unduly extended. The general idea is that of supremacy or pre-eminence, but the particular character of that supremacy or pre-eminence must in each case be determined by the context and by the nature of the things specified. Thus, in the first member, [it] is in regard of nature and of headship of the whole human family; in the second, in regard of divinely appointed order and authority (Gen_2:22-23; Gen_3:16; see below, 1Co_11:8-9); in the third, in regard of priority and office,—the pre-eminence of the Father, as Bishop Pearson says, ‘undeniably consisting in this, that He is God not of any other but Himself, and that there is no other person who is God but is God of Him’ ” (Ellicott).

1Co_11:4.—The Romans and Jews prayed with covered heads, the Greeks with uncovered. Hence no suggestion that the men at Corinth did draw over their heads any sort of covering, e.g. the loose lap or fold of the outer “wrap,” like a Moorish haik. The Greek Christian would do by mere habit what profound Christian truth declared to be right for Jew or Gentile men. To cover his head was to assume openly the woman’s condition of subordination, and to disavow his manly right to stand with unveiled face before Christ. He thus dishonours his head (i.e. his manly self, culminating there), and dishonours also that other Head in Whom he has, and to Whose work he owes, his own honour as a man.

1Co_11:5. Prayeth or prophesieth.—Act_2:18; Act_21:9. In apparent contrast see 1Co_14:33. Sanctified good sense would draw a distinction between (say) a full, formal meeting of the whole Church for worship, where propriety dictated that she should ordinarily be silent, and smaller, half-social gatherings of Christian people in “prayer meetings”; or between her liberty at the family altar or in a gathering of women, and her seemly restriction in mixed or public gatherings. [Observe the antithesis, “the men … the women” in 1Ti_2:8-9.] In any case, whenever her praying is in any degree in public, let her not be “unveiled,” unsexing herself and making herself “masculine,” bearing herself like a short-haired man; she might as well go the whole length and be “cropped” [shorn] like a man. “Modesty is the conscience of the body.” A Corinthian woman’s veil would be the peplum, worn over the shoulders in the house, drawn over the face in public. [At Corinth a “shorn” woman would be a harlot.]

1Co_11:7.—Note, not merely “made in the image”; he “is the image and glory of God.” Note also, “woman is” [not “the image,” but only] “the glory of man.” She also—but the thought is outside of Paul’s view here—is “man made in the image of God.” “The male sex, as holding the highest power on earth and exercising undisputed sway over all else, is a visible pattern of God and a shining forth of His splendour” (Beet). Being what he is, man glorifies God Who made him thus; being what she is, woman glorifies man, to whom God has given her for a help-meet. The dependence found in both cases, of origin and relation, exalts and brings dignity to God and man respectively.

1Co_11:10.—Very difficult text; a crux interpretum.

(1) Pretty general agreement that “power” means her “veil,” the sign of man’s authority over woman. [Perhaps also: “It is a piece of natural fitness that nature herself should have put on the woman, in her long hair, a natural sign of subordination”; though this fits with still greater difficulty into the next clause.]

(2) Because of the angels.—Choose between (a) “Good angels,” present in the Christian assemblies, who will be grieved by anything disorderly or unseemly. In favour of this are: the far-fetched, obscure, precariously based, character of the argument involved in (b) below; the general use of Scripture, where “angels” means “good angels,” unless the contrary is made clear in some way; the wide concurrence of the Greek Fathers in this interpretation; the constant assertion in the New Testament of the vivid interest which these take in all that belongs to man and his redemption. Also, the worshipping heavenly company, of which good angels form a large part, and the companies of earthly worshippers, are really one great body of worshippers at the same throne of the same God, though locally divided or distributed—part here, part yonder; the human worshippers must do nothing unworthy of the angelic part of the great adoring company. (b) “Evil angels;” as many, from Tertullian to Farrar, who suppose Paul to refer to [and believe in!] the Rabbinic interpretation of Gen_6:2. In favour of this are many Rabbinic sayings, and some fantastic Mahometan stories; against it, the consideration that a veil could hide nothing from spiritual beings, even though evil ones, and would neither defend the woman from their gaze nor shield them from temptation to which they might again at least desire to yield. To suppose that the veil is to defend the good angels [or the “angels of the Churches (Revelation 2, 3)] from temptation (I) is to suppose them “weaker, in the matter of sensual desire, than average Englishmen now” (Beet). [The matter is of very little homiletic use in any detail.]

1Co_11:12.—God’s glory is His creature, man; man’s glory is his companion, woman; woman’s glory is her covering, her hair and its symbolised modesty of subordination.

1Co_11:16. Seemeth.—Not in the usual sense of the frequent translation of the Greek word, “thinketh that he is”; but, “is so pertinacious in disputing upon this point that, to put it kindly, he appears to others to contend, for the mere love of being in opposition. It would be true to observed facts of human nature to translate and expound “thinks that he is, and is rather proud of being.” We.—As distinguished from “the Churches of God” will mean “we apostles.” Custom.—Viz. “of women praying with unveiled heads.”

HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_11:2-16

The Women’s Veils.

I. “Solemn trifling,” cries somebody, “to think of putting these nugæ Paulinœ on permanent record as a piece of God’s revelation!” But in God’s works, and in God’s words, we are no competent judges of what are nugæ. This a sample case of how to deal with and decide the many small points of Church order and worship; e.g. such as, in mission-fields, or in communities for the first time becoming organised and civilised on Christian lines, often get an accidental significance and importance. As the same “laws” give shape to a globe and a rain-drop, so the same great principles apply to and regulate the gravest or the most trivial matters of Christian practice. There is no limit, upward, or downward, to the concern God takes in whatever bears upon His redeeming work for the race of mankind. Everything connected with His Church may be brought to some of the tests suggested here.

II.

1. Customary observance and Church rule. There is a power in the very idea of a Great, Whole Community feeling its oneness, and showing it, by some observance which is its universal badge and token. E.g. the eating of bread and the drinking of wine at a supper in connection with the death of Christ and the Christian covenant, and in faith and hope of His second coming, is everywhere—amidst all the varieties of ritual and interpretation—a differentiating custom, as between Christian and non-Christian; a uniting custom, as between Christian and Christian of all types, and creeds, and ages, and lands. The Church sees its oneness at the Table. This indeed is no custom of optional observance. But, to take another, not thus binding: For centuries, almost as far back as the very beginning of the Church, there has never been a day on which, somewhere, Christian voices have not uplifted Psalms 95 to God in public worship. The sections of the Christian Church are far enough removed from each other; in doctrine, in practice, very often in spirit also, they have been as widely sundered as they could well be, to belong to the same Body at all. Yet in the use of this psalm one common life thrills through from Church to Church. The diversities and divisions are real and deep, but they do not destroy the unity, deepest when all are at worship. Thus, then, when Churches which as separate communions are but of yesterday, sing this psalm, which has been interwoven for ages with the prayers and praises of the Churches of, at all events, all Western lands, hoary some of them with the associations of ages, the gulf of time is bridged over by the “custom”; the Church of the present avows its oneness with the Church of the past, and each Church claims its place in the great company of the Christian worshippers of the One God and Father. [The unity of worship even goes further. The Jew in his Friday evening synagogue service begins his Sabbath worship with this same psalm.] This is poetry, sentiment; but any thing which manifests, and makes real, the sense of unity is not lightly to be regarded. That woman, that Church, would be ill-advised who went in the face of the “custom” of all the Churches of Christ. If the uncovered head for the man, and the veiled head for the woman, be the universal Christian custom, that is worth something as a test by which to decide such a question as had been raised at Corinth. [So Burial—not necessarily Interment—v. Cremation.] Christian custom should prevail, as against personal “fad” or the freak of undisciplined individuality. If there be no good reason against, “fall into line” with the universal Church. And this the more when there is reason as well as custom in the practice.

2. Universal instinct of propriety as against any unnatural, perverted, temporary fashion, or the “crank” of some “contentious man,” fond of, glorying in, being “on the other side,” and in a minority—himself against the world. “Propriety,” indeed, may in regard to some points be read in the most opposite senses. To the Jew it means that a man cover his head with his hat, or turban, or tallith, when he prays. And that Jew would be censurable who in the synagogue, in mere freak or self-willed preference of his own course [= “heresy,” 1Co_11:19], should go against the received proprieties of the place and of his co-religionists by praying with bared head. [“In your prayers, in Churches and places of Religion, use reverent postures, great attention, grave ceremony, the lowest postures of humility; remembering that we speak to God, in our reverence to whom we cannot possibly exceed; but that the expression of this reverence be according to the law or custom, and the example of the most prudent and pious persons; that is, let it be the best of its kind to the best of essences” (Jeremy Taylor, “Holy Living,” ii., § 5).] But there are “proprieties” which are universal. The modesty which is the body’s conscience may, like the sense of sin which belongs to the soul’s conscience, be so violated and sinned against that it seems gone; but it is there, ineradicably deep in human nature, and can be awakened and appealed to in all. Nature has a voice, and can be heard speaking in her very physical differencing of the sexes. Long hair for the woman, shorter for the man; this is not fashion, it is of no one age or nation. “Fall then into line with” Nature in your rule for Church order. “Your Jew and your Roman covers his head when he worships. He does not understand, as you Christians do, the headship of man in and with Christ. But even he does not tolerate that his women should worship with uncovered head.” Paul’s principle appeals to the universal womanly instincts and fine perceptions. In extraordinary circumstances a woman, like Philip’s daughters, may “prophesy”; the gift brings with it its own call for exercise, and overrules many prudential or conventional considerations. In quasi-domestic life she may “pray” (1Co_11:5) openly and as the leader of the devotions of others. But the proprieties as well as the custom of the Churches will make this the exception (1Co_14:33), only to be departed from under the clearest necessity. Woman’s place and work and open participation in the conduct of worship are all to be decided and adjusted in conformity with this second test. A local impropriety at Corinth made a “shorn” head, or uncovered, “a shame” to a woman. Even this local conventionalism must not needlessly be offended against by a Christian woman anxious to assert her equality with the men as before Christ. Even the Gentiles must be “pleased,” if possible (1Co_10:32). And in many another small detail of Church order, an instinct which works for fitness and propriety is a criterion not to be left unused. The “angels,” too, have their sense of fitness which should have consideration. But this belongs rather to the next criterion.

3. Revealed truth is, however, the supreme standard of appeal. Where there are no express directions there may be exemplar facts. There may be “leading cases,” each of them carrying a principle. Yet example, even Apostolic example and practice, if certainly established, is not necessarily Church law, unless the apostles have made it so. [An argument often urged in the controversy re Episcopal v. Presbyterian system of government.] The Apostolic example may sometimes be more honoured in forsaking the literal and exact and mechanical copying of it, whilst seizing the essential principle and adapting its form and embodiment to the changed environment and necessities of a new time or a new world. The true law may lie deeper than the letter of their practice. But any practice of theirs put on permanent record in the Scripture is, with this proviso, legislation and Divine direction for the Churches (1Co_11:16, “we have no such custom”). The histories of the Bible are didactic; they may be legislatory also; they are parts of the revelation, one of the methods of the revelation, of the mind and will of God. Nature, with its long and short hair for the two sexes—how comes it thus? Who made “Nature”? Who made such a detail of “her” arrangements so significant? How has it happened that “a mere resultant of the processes which have evolved sex” is ethical, and finds something innate in man and woman responsive to its dictate? “All things of God” (1Co_11:12). Go back to Eden and the Creation story. See the finished work of the creative “week” (1Co_11:7-11):—

“Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,

Godlike erect, with native honour clad,

In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,

And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine

The image of their glorious Maker shone,

Truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severe and pure,

Whence true authority in men; though both

Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;

For contemplation he and valour formed;

For softness she and sweet attractive grace;

He for God only, she for God in him:

His fair large front and eye sublime declared

Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks

Round from his parted forelock manly hung

Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad;

She, as a veil, down to the slender waist

Her unadornèd golden tresses wore

Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,

As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied

Subjection, but required with gentle sway,

And by her yielded, by him best received,

Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,

And sweet, reluctant, amiable delay.”

—Paradise Lost, iv. 288–311.

Not in this particular case only, but in all, let men get back to God’s facts; let them dig down beneath the accretions of speculation, or fashion, or error, until in God’s own utterance of His will, above all in Revelation, they get to rock. In everything, not, “What thinkest thou?” but, “What seest, hearest, readest, thou of the works of God?” That only is final; the supreme arbiter of all, whether in actual use or only proposed, in connection with the order of the Church or the life of His people. [Revelation and propriety combine in the appeal made by Paul to the presence of angelic spectators, who are also, as is suggested in Critical Notes, co-worshippers in the great company of adoring ones to which believers “are come” already (Heb_12:22), and with which in a glorious reality they are already associated in the one joint homage of Heaven and Earth. But so obscure is the whole matter, so small a corner of the veil is drawn back, so momentary and partial is the glimpse we get of these angelic critics of the proprieties of Christian observance and worship, that very little practical use can be made of the motive Paul appeals to. We dare take in the obscurity no step, except the one we here take with our inspired guide, in the unfamiliar world within the veil, where we have, indeed, planted our foot, but we hardly know what it is we see. Yet more thought and honour might perhaps be paid to the “big brothers” told off, “sent forth,” to take charge of us (Heb_1:14), without our running into all the fanciful, Rabbinic, and apocryphal poetising about each man’s “guardian angel,” and the like.]

SEPARATE HOMILIES

1Co_11:11. Man and Woman.—How all the arguments, 1Co_11:2-15, assume the historic truth of the story of Genesis 1,

2. Paul, it is admitted, does so; to him the relation of the sexes, the order of the family life, originated in the history, and rest upon it. Possible to admit the truth of all the teaching here about the relative positions of man and woman, and to regard the history as myth. But in that case the truth stands without known basis, or without any unchallengeable basis. A mere “happy” use of an old myth will hardly afford an argument such as—not Paul only, but—the inspiring Spirit might employ. The creation facts, and the physical facts of everyday knowledge, say that, subordinate as she is, the man needs the woman; and that, though he has headship, the man is made for the woman, and not alone for himself or his God.

I.

1. Man and woman both are needed, to exhibit manhood in its perfection of idea; neither without the other. Fitted respectively for restless activity and quiet retirement; to fight in the battles of life, to heal the wounds of the combatants; the stronger mind, the better-disposed heart; men arriving at truth by slow reasoning, women by quick intuitions; men consequently gaining more by the way, but oftener missing their way altogether (Luthardt); hence men oftener sceptical, women “naturally” more religious; [“an irreligious woman is a man spoilt, and doubly corrupting to those men over whom she acquires influence” (Luthardt);] man’s the initiative, generative, originating mind, woman’s the receptive and reproductive mind. Broadly true, and correspondent to, and founded in, physical differences; but with many exceptions in detail.

2. The distinction and the unification mount higher.—God is both Father and Mother in His love. No woman ever misses anything in Him because He is “Father.” He is ideal Parenthood. So, too, the painters are guided by a right instinct when they give to the face of their ideals of Christ a somewhat feminine (not effeminate) manhood. He is Man and Woman; in Him neither is without the other. No girl ever feels that Christ does not understand her because He was “only a boy”; no woman ever feels that He is not for her because He is a man. His “sex” never occurs to the mind or heart. He is man and woman, strength and tenderness; the wisdom of both types of mind and heart are in Him; perfect Manhood.

3. The perfectly rounded Christian character combines and exhibits the best characteristics of both. If women are “more religious” than men, it is because it is easier for them to enter by “Little-children Gate” into the Kingdom. Dependence, docility, belief in what comes on authority,—all that makes the little child typical of the character which alone can enter, all these are nearer akin to the woman’s character and habit than to the man’s. The man enters the kingdom “not without the woman,” developed, or submitted to, in him. The perfect manhood of grace needs, however, to add to faith “virtue” (perhaps = “courage”). As between man and God there is no room in man for self-reliance, but, as between man and man, and in doing the work of God in the world, there is room and need for “the man.”

III. Christianity, the Church, the work of God, each needs, and has availed itself of, both “man” and “woman.”—It would never have succeeded, it will never succeed, so far as human conditions of success are concerned, unless by the employment of both. The presence and interaction of the sexes is a valuable element in the educational effect of the Church upon its members. Sanctified family life, with the reciprocal, incessant, little-adverted-to, training of husband and wife, brothers and sisters, is the seminal instance and example of the training given by, and gained from, the brotherhood and sisterhood in the Church of Christ. Each sex has its gifts and capabilities complementary to, lacking in, those of the other. Woman can reach where man is excluded; man can dare where woman may not go. Wisest Church organisers utilise both to the utmost of possibility. Romans 16 is a picture of an early Church, and is full of women who, like the men, are “in the Lord.” Nor are they simply receivers of blessing; they “labour,” and even “labour much in the Lord”; they can with their husbands lay down their own necks in running risks and daring death to save an apostle’s life. Indeed, Priscilla may precede Aquila; possibly just as in a Church to-day there are godly women who, without unwomanly obtrusiveness, have so much more of initiative than their equally godly and devoted, but quieter, husbands, that every one says, or thinks, “Mrs. and Mr. ——.” “In the Lord,” in the sphere and realm where He is supreme, and where everything bears the stamp of His lordship and ownership, “Woman” and “Man” are both required. Neither is without the other. In the new creation in the soul, in that other new creation, the “kingdom of God” on earth, the original, natural order of the Creator’s idea is being perfectly restored.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

II. THE CHURCH, THE BODY OF CHRIST: CHAPTERS 11-14

1. Headship, and the Position of Woman. The Lord’s Supper.

CHAPTER 11.

1. The Headship of Christ and of the Man; Position of Woman. (1Co 11:1-16.)

2. The Lord’s Supper. (1Co 11:17-31.)

The opening verse belongs to the preceding chapter. And now after the church in relation to the world had been treated by the Apostle in the first part of the epistle, he takes up next the affairs of the church itself. Here, too, much had to be corrected into which the Corinthian assembly had drifted. After the brief and excellent word of praise by which he expressed his confidence in them ((1Co 11:2), he calls their attention to an important truth, which in our times is not only overlooked, but often belittled and altogether set aside. It concerns the headship of Christ, of the man, and the position of woman. It is evident that Corinthian women had assumed in the church a position which was not according to God’s order in creation. They had not yet learned it. God’s order in creation has to be manifested in the church. This order is unaltered by redemption, though in Christ there is neither male nor female, yet has God assigned to man and to woman their respective places which must be maintained. This divine order the Apostle states. “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.” These are weighty and blessed statements. Christ is the Creator, the Lord of all, but He also became man and is the “First born of all Creation” (Col 1:15-16). He is therefore in possession of the headship in creation, and head of man as the Man, as He is also the head of the Church. God has given Him the preeminence in all things. And the head of the woman is the man; this is the place which God has given to woman on earth. In creation the head of the woman is man. Yet what would man be without the woman!--she is necessary to him.

“The woman is the glory of man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man.” To these statements about the headship of Christ, the headship of man, he being head of the woman, the Apostle adds “and the head of Christ is God.” Christ is the eternal Son of God, coequal in Godhead in every way. He is God. But the Only-Begotten humbled Himself; He took on the creature’s form and “was made of a woman.” And as Man He has taken the place under God, yielding perfect obedience in all things. In all His redemption work He is under God, not only on earth, but now in glory, as the glorified Man at the right hand of God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory.

The purpose of the declaration of this order of the ways of God in creation was to set them right on a matter which in our days is often sneered at. Man praying or prophesying is not to cover his head. Woman praying and prophesying is to have a covering on her head. The man who covereth his head in praying dishonoreth his head. Woman uncovered dishonoreth her head. A covering on the head is the outward sign of being in the place of subjection. An uncovered head signifies the opposite. The order which God has instituted as to the place of man and woman, His people are bound to respect. It may appear a little thing, yet if disobeyed, as it was in Corinth (where women seemed to be puffed up and refused to follow this order), it becomes a stepping stone towards more serious evil. Woman is to testify to her place of subjection by covering her head in praying and testifying. Man similarly engaged does not cover his head, for the authority is vested in man “for as much as he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man.” How all this is denied and woman aims to take leadership and rulership in place of man, we need not to enlarge upon.

If woman persists in leaving the place (in subjection) where her glory shines, if she will persist in pushing out into the glare of public life and thrust herself into the struggle and grinding competition that wears out men’s lives and tenderer instincts, let her not be astonished if she lose her distinctive grace--the delicate sheen that cannot bear the world’s rough, unhallowed ways (Prof. Moorehead).

Another reason is given why praying women should wear outwardly a sign of subjection--because of the angels. Angels are watchers and attendants of the heirs of salvation. As the church is known to them and by it they know the manifold wisdom of God (Eph 3:10), so are they observers of Christian worship and the order and behavior of God’s people in His house. And angels themselves are in subjection and yield perfect obedience.

Then the church itself is brought into view. The first thing is not the fact that Christians are the members of Christ, who constituted the body of Christ, the gifts of the body and the exercise of these gifts. The Lord’s supper, that blessed memorial of His love in His sacrificial death, the love which passeth knowledge, is the first thing mentioned. “Do this in remembrance of Me” was His request in the night in which He was betrayed. When the Holy Spirit came and the company gathered in fellowship we read at once of “the breaking of bread,” to remember Him (Act 2:46). The first thing in the assembly must be to remember Christ, His death, His presence in glory, His coming again. But before the Apostle tells them what he had received of the Lord, he had to reprove them for their disorder and their divisions. In these sects and parties they denied the very truth of the church as the one body, the body of Christ. They had a custom of eating a meal in connection with the Lord’s supper. And at this meal some drank to excess, while it seems this custom of a preliminary meal led to a complete neglect or unworthy observance of the supper itself. Then he writes of what he had received of the Lord. How simple it all is! “This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.” The Lord’s supper is to remember Him, to show the Lord’s death till He come. And all else that man has made of it is pure invention, if not wicked blasphemy, like the idolatrous mass of Romanism. And how often shall this feast, which delights His heart, where God’s children worship and adore, be kept? In Apostolic days it was evidently kept every Lord’s day (Act 20:7).

And all God’s children, whom the Lord has received, have a right to the Lord’s table and gather thus around His blessed Person. The only things which bar from the Lord’s table, are evil doctrines and an evil walk. And the Lord’s supper may be eaten unworthily. He, who comes to the Lord’s table without self-judgment, eats and drinks of it unworthily. We eat and drink unworthily when we partake without discerning the Lord’s body and blood represented by the bread and the wine, for we do not then show to God the death of Christ. Let a man examine (judge) himself before eating or else he eats for his own judgment. This is God’s way of producing and maintaining holiness in the church. And the Corinthians had experienced that the Lord dealt with a number of them in judgment. Upon many the Lord had laid His hand, many were weak and stricken with disease, while others had fallen asleep. It was mercy, “but when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”

“The world is condemned. Sin in the Christian is judged; it escapes neither the eye nor the judgment of God. He never permits it; He cleanses the believer from it by chastening him, although He does not condemn, because Christ has borne his sins, and been made sin for him. The death of Christ forms then the center of communion in the assembly, and the touchstone of conscience, and that, with respect to the assembly, in the Lord’s supper.” (Synopsis of the Bible).

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Division 2. (1Co 11:1-34; 1Co 12:1-31; 1Co 13:1-13; 1Co 14:1-40.)

The activities and fellowship of the assembly.

We have now reached the second division of the epistle, in which we are no longer dealing with outside questions, with the relations of the Church to the world, as one may say, but with that which was proper to the Church itself as a company of those gathered to the Lord’s name. We have before us the spiritual activities of the assembly and the fellowship found in it. The apostle has hitherto been contending for the keeping up the fence of separation. He is now turning to what is entirely different from this. It is the fellowship of the assembly, the common enjoyment of the common blessings, which belong to it.

1. In the first place, however, it is very striking that we have not the assembly as such exactly before us. The apostle begins, rather, with that which has to do with man’s place in creation, apart, plainly, from the effects of the fall, therefore. He must settle this point before he goes on, -a most important point, -to show that the Church, with all its higher privileges, was still to be submitted to God as the Creator, and according to that which He had instituted for man as such. In all this he finds, indeed, the types of spiritual things. Nature is this throughout. If we look at nature apart from the word of God, nothing in it will be properly intelligible to us. If we take Scripture as the key to it, we shall find every where that we are in contact with the same spiritual truths as we find in Scripture. But this is not simply a question of such a kind: it is the simple truth that we have, as those who are Christ’s, been restored (and more than restored) to the place which the fall had forfeited for man. We are to be filling, therefore, that place which God gave man first. We are to be observers of the order which creation has established for us. We must not use the thought of grace, or even of our place in Christ, (which is above and beyond all this,) to make void our obligation to carry out that which God has in this way appointed.

The apostle urges them to be imitators of him as he was of Christ. He could praise them that they kept him in mind in those things that he delivered to them, that they were keeping the things delivered; but he wants them to know that Christ is the Head of every man, come to be a Man Himself; taking His place as such, He takes it in necessary supremacy. He is not simply the Head of the Church here. He is the Head of man as a Man. He is indeed the Creator, but He is also, as elsewhere declared, the "First-born of all creation." As that First-born, he is not what Adam was; and yet, in another sense, we may speak of Adam also coming from the hand of God as the first-born of men. In that way Adam was the head of every man naturally. Christ is the spiritual Head, the One in whom manhood reaches its highest dignity, in whom the whole human race, so far as redeemed, rises again to the full thought of God for man, and beyond that which Adam himself, unfallen, could declare to us.

But Christ, then, is the Head of every man. The head of the woman is the man. Here is what we were saying; something which in the minds of many now would be contradicted or set aside by the place in Christ which we have got, in which there is neither man nor woman. That is quite true, and remains always true, that there is in Christ neither male nor female. There is a common equality, and one of the most perfect and highest kind, which can never be touched, never set aside, but to be acknowledged in the fullest possible way. That does not, on the other hand, set aside the fact that in God’s order for earth, and in the place which God has given to man and woman respectively on the earth, the head of the woman is the man. The higher fact is shown forth in the lower one. There are not two heads in creation, but one. Two heads would mean division. God’s thought is unity. The man, as he says afterward, is not without the woman in the Lord. The man and die woman form the man in the full sense of humanity, and the woman is necessary thus to make the man what he is; but that alters nothing, but rather confirms what he contends for here according to God’s thought, as we look back and see it in creation itself, -the head of the woman is the man. Let us go further, he says. The Head of Christ is God. Is that something derogatory to His true character? Is not He God? Is not He divine? Yet, after all, it can be said, "the Head of Christ is God." Christ has taken His place as man, and He is not ashamed of it, and He does not refuse the consequences of it. He has come to be in creation the example of most perfect obedience on the creature’s part, as well as on God’s part the example of the most perfect grace, the fullest revelation of God that can be found. Thus, then, we have these things established.

There are some practical consequences in the exhibition of this order of things upon the earth. If a man pray or prophesy having his head covered, he dishonors his head; in itself a very small thing surely, -in that which it signifies not small at all. Everything depends upon the truth which is in it, or the error. The head covered for him is, as we see directly, the place of subjection taken. The woman covering her head does not profess to be the head. The head is covered with her, if she takes her place praying or prophesying; that is, as we see clearly, where it is a question of the assembly, -not necessarily as gathered, however, where her place in connection with others, therefore, is in question. If she prays or prophesies, although this prophesying was by a higher power than that of nature, -by the Spirit of God, and thus asserting for her her full rights as one in Christ, equal rights with any other, -yet if she prayed or prophesied with her head uncovered, she dishonored her head. Everything that is out of its place before God, is dishonored. If we exalt ourselves, it is our own dishonor. It is one and the same thing, therefore, he says, as if she were shaven. Why not let the woman cut off the hair which nature has given her? Plainly she has it in a way that man has not. You say, perhaps, if she has the hair, let that be enough, it is what nature has given her, let her wear that. But the wearing of the hair is not of necessity at all the owning the truth which is in it. The covering of the head owns for her, on her part, the truth which is in that testimony of nature. She is giving heed to the testimony when she covers her head. Thus the man ought not to have his head covered, because he is, in a direct way, as one may say, the image and glory of God, His representative upon the earth. The woman is the glory of the man.

All this has reference, of course, to present display. It is not a question of what is final, what is heavenly, what is eternal. It is God’s order as He has instituted it, and which we are bound to respect. There is meaning in it also, and we shall suffer if we refuse it; but the point here is, the order of creation. Thus, if we look hack, the man is not of the woman. The man did not originally come from the woman. On the other hand, the woman came from the man, -not the order of things now, as one may say; but that is what God showed us at the beginning. Nor was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man. The man was created first, and it was not good for him that he should be alone. The woman was created in view of this need, -a woman for that very reason why not another man? Just because, as another man, there would, not be really the same help found. He needs that which, while a symbol of the dependence of the creature rather than the independence given in a sense to man, would appeal to him by that very fact, and to his heart as one dependent on him. In every way, however, the woman (not, the individual as such, but as woman) is for the man; and "for this cause," he says, "the woman ought to have authority upon her head," -the sign of authority, -"on account of the angels." The angels are the witnesses of creation. They have seen from the beginning what God did.; They are acquainted with His thoughts with regard to man, and we are a spectacle to the world and to angels and to men. Thus, then, the woman is to heed these angelic spectators.

However, he adds: "Neither is the man without the woman nor the woman without the man in the Lord; for as the woman is of the man, so also is the man by the woman, abut all things are of God." God has instituted these things. If we learn them aright, we shall admire the wisdom of them; but whether or not, we are to submit ourselves to His appointment. A lower place is not of necessity a really inferior place. Christ has come into the lowest place of all in order to serve us, yet it was the most wonderful, the most glorious place that He could have taken, and all. God’s glory has been manifested in, it. Thus we must dismiss altogether the thought of what things are, as we may say, in themselves, A servant’s place, how unsuited to the Lord of glory! but look again, how suited and wonderful that Servant’s place! Nay, is not God over all the One who serves all? And is He not by that very fact the Better who blesses the lesser? Has not Christ taken the place of service? and in that human body which He has, has He not pledged Himself to it in some sense forever? Let us, then, own that which God has done, and find the good of it. It is in our filling the place that we shall find the recompense from God -not just according to the place we fill, but in the way we fill it. God has appointed for us everywhere, -as we find when we come to the thought of the body itself, -God has appointed everywhere diversity, and in some sense therefore the inferiority of many, the parts that are weak and the parts that are not in honor as the other parts are; yet how perfectly are all fitted together, and how perfectly is every part necessary to the blessing of the whole.! How fully has God united us in this way! Creation is but the witness of that which we find in the Church of God itself, so that the apostle appeals directly here to the teaching of nature. If a man have but long hair, is it not a dishonor, to him.? Why? Nature has not provided for him that covering which it has provided for the woman. If a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for her covering; and how truly we feel that the more a, woman hides herself the more beautiful she is -that in this hiding one’s self is the very glory of the creature after all, and that she is but a lesson to us, one of the many lessons that God has given us as creatures, in this way. The apostle ends the matter, however, abruptly, by saying if this does not suffice, it must suffice then to say that we have no other custom than this, nor have the assemblies of God. He could speak for these, as, of course, being the one whom God had appointed to be the layer of the foundations for the whole Church at large.

2. We now come to the consideration of the assembly itself, and, first, in what gathers it The order here is very simple and beautiful. We have, first of all, Christ in the exhibition of His love for us in the sacrifice of His death as that which draws us together. This is what our eyes are first fixed upon. This is where communion is found with one another.

We next turn to look at those who are in this way gathered, They are members of Christ, the body of Christ Himself; and we learn what is implied in this not only that which makes them one but the diversity which exists in this unity as that which is implied in the body as an organism. Then we have, in the thirteenth chapter, the spirit which practically animates the body of Christ, the spirit of love, which is the spirit of ministry, -a ministry which the body in itself implies, for the members are members one of another, and exist not merely for themselves, but for the whole. We are then competent to look at the exercise of the gifts belonging to them in this character, as come together in actual assembly. This is in the fourteenth chapter, and we see how the spirit of love is that which in fact orders everything, produces that which is true spiritual order according to God. This closes this part of the epistle.

We have, then, now before us, in the first place, the centre of communion, Christ Himself, but Christ not looked at as a living Person, as many would expect. We do not start with the thought that Christ is in the midst, although He is in the midst where people are gathered together to His Name; but that is a different thing, and in fact we are not drawn to Him as personally thus present, We are gathered together to His Name. That implies His absence rather, than His presence, but it is time expression of what we know of Him as the absent One. It is this apprehension of Him that gathers us, and we, see at once that it is not a living Christ, but a dead Christ that is before us. That is the very point of it. We are brought to look back upon the hole of the pit from which we are digged, and to realize our indebtedness to this blessed One whom we remember. Important it is that we should realize this fact, that it is a dead Christ and not a living One we remember. It is, as already said, the destruction of ritualism, in this respect, to its very centre, -the body of Christ which people speak of as indeed receiving in the Lord’s supper. What body, do they think, of -a living or a dead body? Do they really think that they receive the dead body of Christ in any real sense in the Lord’s supper? The living body is out of the question. It is a dream which is not found in any text of Scripture whatever. A dead body no one thinks of, and yet if it be any participation that we have here, it is in the dead body and not in the living one.

The apostle begins here with a reference once more to their divisions. The first thing was that in coming together they came not for the better, but for the worse, to make apparent, -as coming near to God in fact does, -their true condition. When they came together, time first thing that was manifest was their divisions. In their very way of coming together they showed themselves apart. Their sects declared themselves in making separate parties of that which they owned to be the one body of Christ, even going so far as, in eating, each to take before others his own supper. It was manifest that he made it his own and not the supper of the Church as a whole, and one was hungry and another was even drinking to excess.

The license about it all is manifest; and there was an opportunity for this which now no longer exists. In fact, the Lord’s supper was instituted, as we know, in connection with the celebration of the passover, and the passover supper was that, therefore, that introduced it. The "agape," or love feast, which existed at any rate very early in the Church, was the continuation of this paschal supper, which, though it did not really belong to the supper of the Lord itself, yet was supposed to make it all more exactly according to the institution. Thus there was in connection with the supper the taking of a meal, which gave the opportunity that we see here the Corinthians availed themselves of for license. The preliminary feast was crowding out, in fact, the Lord’s supper altogether, and they were going on as if in entire forgetfulness of it. That is evidently what the apostle is saying here. He reproves them by asking, have they not houses for eating and drinking in, or were they putting to shame the poor who had not, and despising the assembly of God which embraces them all? Could he praise them in this? It was impossible that he could do so. Then he calls them back to the institution of the supper as the Lord had given it. It is striking that he had received this of the Lord Himself. As the distinct minister of the Church, it was not simply that he found existing that which he went on with, as in the case of baptism. As to baptism, Christ had not sent him specially to baptize, although he did baptize as others did; but the Lord’s supper has a different place altogether. As that in which the unity of the body of Christ was manifested, he must have a special revelation concerning it. Thus he speaks of the special way and circumstances, so touching as they were, in which the Lord had instituted this gathering feast; it was on the night on which He was delivered up, in which there was given opportunity for the treachery of one of His own, one of those specially gathered around Himself, and who had walked in company with Him, beholding the manifestation of divine love and power in Him, which had been given. It was upon such a night as this, and in the midst of the shadow which was thus coming upon His soul, that He had taken the bread, giving thanks, and broken it, and said: "This is my body, which is for you; ["broken" is not in the original] this do in remembrance of Me." Simplicity itself all this is; how completely opposite, again, to all that ritualism has connected with it! In like manner also, after supper He took the cup, saying: "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do ye, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me." The apostle adds, as his interpretation of it: "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye declare the Lord’s death until He come."

Here is the whole matter. No atmosphere of mystery surrounds it whatever. It is simply the memorial of a death to which we as Christians owe our all, -the death of the One whom it has made our Lord forever. In contrast with all this, think of what ritualism has made of it! It is striking, also, that the very point here, the thing for which he is reproving the Corinthians, is for not discerning the Lord’s body. It is plain, therefore, that it was the very opportunity to show what this discernment of the Lord’s body would be. He takes no trouble to define it. He does not in the least suppose that there is any mystery about it, in the sense in which men speak of it. That which he speaks of is bread and the cup. These are the memorials of the Lord in His death. The bread is His body, more strictly Himself, as one may say. The cup is His blood, the remembrance not so much of Himself as of His work. The body and the blood are separate. It is, again, a dead Christ that we remember. We surely remember, also, that He is risen from the dead, and we know by faith, even, that He is present with us; but all this, while it gives additional gladness to the celebration, in no wise forms part of the celebration itself. The Person of the Lord, as already said, appears more distinctly in the bread which we break. It is this One, the Man Christ Jesus, whom we remember. This implies no forgetfulness of what He was, of course; but it is in fact the One who was here in the world in that life and death of His which were for us, which give us all our knowledge of Him as He lives now before God. All our apprehension of Him belongs, we may say, to this manifestation of divine love and glory in Him who was upon earth among us. He is gone out of it, but He is the same Christ who was here, and He is coming again to receive us to Himself. We look back in the ordinance to His death. We look forward to His coming again.

The cup is here said to be the new covenant in His blood, -a hard text for ritualism, that! Is it literally the cup that is this? We may say that is a figure, -the cup is used for what is contained in it. Granted. Well, is what is contained in it, then, the new covenant in Christ’s blood? It is the blood itself if anything, -that blood which we are quite sure He did not carry into heaven, but which was shed upon earth. It is the memorial of a life given up for us, and which, as given up, in its sacrificial character is the foundation of the new covenant of grace in which we stand. The words are simple enough, and easy to be understood. It is only ritualism itself that makes them hard. The Lord adds again in this case: "Do this in remembrance of Me." That is its distinctive character, a remembrance. A remembrance is not of something existing at the present moment, but of something in the past. It is all our joy to know that this death that we celebrate is actually past, and that it can never take place again. To talk of an unbloody offering, as men do in their mass, is only to destroy the whole reality of what is expressed here. There is no such thing as an unbloody offering. "Without shedding of blood is no remission," and this the Lord did once when He offered up Himself. Thus the significance is as plain as can be. It is absolute simplicity, which we may darken by reading into it what is not there, and which it has even been confessed by many as not there. They tell us we shall not find the doctrine in this chapter. Where should we look for it so well as here? here where the apostle is insisting upon our discernment of the Lord’s body, and putting before us the very thing that gathers us? The previous chapter, to which we are sometimes referred as giving the real doctrine, has, as we have seen already, no such doctrine in it. The bread is the communion of the body of Christ. The cup is the communion of the blood of Christ. It is not the thing itself; but the expression of our fellowship in it, which is the very thing which the common remembrance implies. There is absolutely nothing else but this. We do not forget that we are one bread and one body, because we are all partakers of this one bread or loaf. It cannot be said that we are one loaf in any sense but as being identified with that of which we partake, -therefore, with all the thoughts that are implied in it. So if it be said we are one body, we have plainly, that which gives us unity merely as a body, brings us into one mind, one thought. It is not even said here, we are the body of Christ; and if it were, there would be an immense difference between the body of Christ which we are and that body of Christ which we celebrate in the supper. The body that we have before us is not the body the Church, and we could not possibly, in the nature of things, become the body the Church, by any reception of the body of Christ. They are different thoughts in different connections. Nor, as already said, is it really the body of Christ that is spoken of here at all, although it is quite true that the gathering is the gathering of the body of Christ; but that is not in the apostle’s mind, as is evident.

He is thinking simply of the unity which, in fact, makes us one body in any proper sense, this unity of apprehension of that blessed death which Christ has died for us, and which our hearts own as having power over us in this very coming together; but there is really no difficulty here. In the wisdom of God, things are so expressed that we can scarcely make mischief of them if we would. The doctrine of the tenth chapter is in absolute conformity with the doctrine of the eleventh. There is no difference between them. In both alike it is the thing expressed with which we are identified, identified in the apprehension that we have of it and the part which God’s grace has given us in the effect. We partake of the bread and the wine, and the bread and the wine would be nothing to us except we saw in them the body and the blood of the Lord. We partake in this way of the body and blood of the Lord, assuredly not in the gross, material sense, but in the joy of the apprehension of what these are to us. It is the same truth as the Lord has Himself given us in the sixth chapter of the gospel of John, and which is, in the minds of so many, itself to be referred to the Lord’s supper. The fact is that the Lord’s supper and what the Lord states there as to the bread from heaven refer to the same thing. That is all. It has been the triumph of Satan to materialize all this in such a way as to, make it the instrument of a designing priesthood to get glory to itself, and to lord it over the souls and consciences of men. In no way has this been done more cruelly than in the transformation of the Lord’s supper into a mass, or something approaching this. We cannot but remember, also, that at the Reformation the martyrdoms of the Lord’s saints had largely reference to their refusal of this unholy doctrine, -a doctrine which would make the Lord die innumerable times, make His original death to be proportionately of little effect, and put the whole into the hands of men to make merchandise out of, and to assume to themselves the glory which is due to God.

How thankful we may be for the simplicity that we find in all this scripture! The thing that bewilders many as they look at it is just this simplicity; but there is, none the less, in the celebration of the Lord’s supper a solemnity which the apostle warns us of. They could not eat this bread or drink the cup of the Lord in a light manner without being guilty in respect to the body and blood of the Lord. Here it is distinctly the "Lord" who is spoken of, that we may realize the character of the slight here given. We cannot bring sin into the presence of that which we celebrate as having put it away from us. If we come to celebrate the Lord’s death without self-judgment, we destroy the holy character of that which is the most impressive proof of the holiness of God that could be given. Where shall we find it manifested as in the sacrifice of the Son of God Himself for sin? And "he that sinneth," says the apostle, "hath not seen Him, neither known Him." It is impossible, as he puts it, that sin and the knowledge of the Lord in that way can go on together.

He would not frighten us away from the table of the Lord by any means. He does not say, "let a man judge himself and refrain from eating." He says: "Let a man examine (or judge) himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup." It is true that "he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself" if he discerneth not the body. That is the whole point, and must be so. It is evident that the Corinthians were making a mere common meal of that which was intended Ito be the constant reminder of a love which has nowhere else any equivalent. They were reaping the fruits of this laxity. There were those, he says, many, weak and sickly among them, and a good many had fallen asleep. Thus the judgment of the Lord was necessarily upon them; not because they were not His own; rather, in fact, because they were; for, as the apostle says, "When we are judged" in this way, "we are chastened of the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world." He distinguishes, therefore, in the sharpest way, between this present judgment and the judgment to come. But it is evident that this present judgment is a most serious and awful thing. It is the infliction of a love which, because it is holy and because it is love, must inflict what, as we may say, it is pain to inflict. We force the Lord to judge us in this way when we do not judge ourselves. God must of necessity exhibit His holiness with regard to the sins of His people. Whatever the work of Christ has done for us, (we cannot realize too much what it has done,) nevertheless it was never intended, it can never be allowed to be used for unholy purposes. Thus, they must not come together for judgment, as they were doing. These were the main points of what he had to say to them. "The rest," he says, "will I set in order when I come."

3. We come now, as already said, having seen the centre of communion, (that which forms in that way the one body,) to the body itself, to those who are gathered to the name of the Lord after this manner. We come now to see that it is in fact the body of Christ, and how far we are really to press the implications of this. "Body" is a figure, of course. We know perfectly well that it is the expression of a relationship to the Lord Jesus of the closest and most intimate nature, and which doubtless could not be expressed so well in any other way; but we do not fail to realize that it is, after all, a figure. The body is the expression of the mind. It is the link between the indwelling spirit and the external world in which we are placed. The body of Christ is thus that in which the mind of Christ is expressed, and that by which the One who is absent from the world nevertheless retains, in a certain sense, His place, and manifests Himself in it. We are the representatives here of the Lord Jesus, not simply individually, for as individuals we are not properly competent, but as a whole. We are not the epistles of Christ, but, as the second epistle declares, the epistle.

This is one rendering of what this body of Christ implies, but then we realize that there is not simply a relation to the. Lord which is involved, but a relation to one another. In this body, as in other bodies, each member has indeed its own individual Significance, and we must give full place for this individuality. Except the members of the body had their individual place, there would be no body at all. If there were no diversity, there would be no unity in this sense. The unity or organism depends upon the diversity which is in it. It is the unity of aim and purpose among parts that differ from one another. That is what we find then here, and it is, in fact, the relationship to one another which is dwelt upon in this chapter, rather than the higher character of it as in relation to the Lord. For that we must go to Ephesians and to Colossians; it is noticeable, by the way, that when we go to these epistles, we are outside all question of the supper of the Lord. We have nothing of the kind in them. We get beyond it, as one may say. We are on the heaven-side of it; whereas this remembrance is for the world below; but the body, as already said, is here, therefore, exhibited more in the relationship of its several members than in its relationship to the Head. Being the body of Christ is that which gives it all its real significance, of course.

(1) We have, first, then, by way of preface to it, the unity which is in the diversity. The apostle begins by speaking of spiritual manifestations. There were more manifestations of this kind than simply those among Christians. There were manifestations of evil spirits as in that idolatrous worship of the Gentiles in which the Corinthians had had their part in the old times of darkness. They knew that they had been led away to dumb idols in whatever way they had been led. Now, on the other hand, with the manifestations of the Spirit in the midst, they must learn to distinguish. They must be intelligent in order to profit by them -in fact, not to be deceived by the power of the enemy; for where God works there the enemy will work as far as possible, a work by imitation, as Jannes and Jambres, the apostle tells us, withstood Moses in Egypt. It is plain that in the very midst of the Christian assembly the power of Satan might manifest itself in this way, and Christians be deceived, except they were in the power of the Spirit Himself who was manifesting Himself in the assembly. Thus the apostle gives them to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God could say, "anathema Jesus;" and no one could say, "Lord Jesus," except by the Holy Spirit. It is plain he does not mean by this that even an unbeliever among Christians could not say Lord Jesus, and that he is not speaking of anything which would inferentially and consequentially affect His Lordship. He is giving us simply that which distinguishes an evil spirit from the Spirit of God. The evil spirits, the demons upon earth, as we read in the Gospels, could freely own that Christ was the Holy One of God, but we never hear them say "Lord Jesus." That would be taking the place of subjection to Him, which, except when finally they are forced to do so, they will never take. All this removes, perhaps, what the apostle says here from what we find in the present day. We are, at least, little accustomed to think of an actual evil spirit manifesting itself in the midst of Christians after this manner. It is as plain that to those whom the apostle was addressing there was nothing at all strange about this, and it may be a question for us whether we have not rather lost sight of the doctrine than have lost the thing itself.

There is, of course, and we should all know it, that which is of real account in the tone of what is uttered professedly by Christian teachers. We are right in looking sharply to see whether the spirit of their teaching owns the Lordship of Jesus or whether there is that which is really derogatory and a dishonor to Him. This in the highest manner is what Satan works, and he is no doubt manifest in all that is fundamentally false in doctrine. The apostle, however, has here before him something more defined and more imposing. We have lost so much the thought of what speaking by the Spirit in the assembly is, -men are so much before us, (the instrument rather than the One who works by the instrument,) that naturally we are not tempted in the same way so easily to receive what may be uttered. We may, alas, receive it too easily from other points of view; but we are not, at least, imposed upon by any pretensions to spiritual utterances. We should rather discredit these. With those who were accustomed to the manifestations of the Spirit in the midst, in palpable miracles and gifts that have passed from among us, there was necessarily a temptation simply to accredit that which was uttered to its full extent, and thus Satan might get his opportunity. With us he has, no question, equal opportunity, but perhaps not manifesting himself after the same manner.

Diversities of gifts, then, are, in the apostle’s thought, spiritual manifestations. They are the voice of the one Spirit in the members of Christ. There are gifts of God’s grace which are different as adapting themselves to different needs, and which are different, no doubt, because also it is safer to have these various ministries than a ministry all of the same kind, a ministry too copious and too full on the part of any. In the way in which God acts, it is plain that Christians are more bound together by their very needs, and that the instruments are designed to be kept more in humility by the sense of their imperfection, -of the necessary way in which one must supplement another. This is the manner in which, as we have seen many times, God has linked men together in creation. We are more debtors to our needs, to our very imperfections in this sense, (we are not speaking of moral imperfections,) we are more debtors to our deficiencies, than we have any idea of. God binds the whole body together, as the apostle says directly, in giving the more abundant honor to that part which lacks. But these are different gifts of grace, then. Withal there is the same Spirit. There are differences of administrations and the same Lord. In the ministrations of these gifts themselves, it is the Lord to whom the gifted ones are subject. The Spirit is the power by which the gifts are made known, but the Lord it is to whom the servants are always subject. Then there are diversities of workings, (this is more general), and the same God who worketh all things in all. Here is, then, the substantial unity amid all the diversity.

(2) Now we come to consider more distinctly the diversity in the unity. To every one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for profit. That is the thought of it. It is in a practical interest and in the interest of all that the Spirit manifests Himself. Thus the responsibility of every one who has gift at all is that by this he is made debtor to others for whose profit the gift is given. He is not his own in this sense. He belongs to those with whom God has given him his place.

But there are, then, these different manifestations. In one it is the word of wisdom. That is that which would put knowledge in its proper place and give it its proper application. To another might be given the word of knowledge, still by the same Spirit, but which nevertheless exhibited itself within the limits of the individual. For instance, the word of knowledge would be the doctrine in itself, rather than in its practical application. To a different one, again, might be given faith by the same spirit; not the ordinary faith of Christians, of course, but a special character and boldness of it which would lead the possessor into paths in which others not so gifted would break down. Then there were gifts of healing by the same Spirit; in others, the working of miracles; in others, prophecy; in others, the discerning of spirits, -not the discerning of what was working in men’s minds, but rather of spiritual beings themselves in their work amongst men. Then, again, there were tongues and the interpretation of tongues. He puts lowest what the Corinthians were evidently tending to put in the highest place. We shall find in a little while how he distinguishes between tongues and prophesying, for instance, and his comparative estimate of each; but in all these things there was the work of the one and the same Spirit, who gave as He pleased to every one.

It was not to be considered, therefore, a failure in any one of the different instruments that he did not suffice for every character of ministry. On the contrary, it was the very opposite which was implied in the idea of a body. "The body is one and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body." That we understand in the natural way, and just so it is as to the body in this case; "so also" he says, "is Christ." That is, for the moment, he looks at the body and Head in connection with one another, the "one new man" of which the apostle speaks in Ephesians. He does not touch this really, but merely uses language which is in accordance with it. The Church is Christ mystically in that way. For by one Spirit," he adds, "we have been all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and have all been given to drink of one Spirit." Here the propensity for materializing has been strongly manifested by interpreters, who, of course, have found the sacraments in words like these. They have perverted water baptism into a baptism into the body of Christ, a thing which is in the Lord’s hands entirely, as surely as the gift of the Spirit is that which forms the body. On the other hand, the baptism of the Spirit is here plainly something different from that mere influence of the Spirit which people think about when they talk of being again and again baptized of Him. The body cannot be formed again and again. It has been formed, in fact, once for all, although it is constantly receiving accessions, of course; but the baptism of the Spirit is merely in analogy with the baptism of water, while absolutely and entirely independent of it. Again, the drinking of one Spirit, while it does not refer to the formation of the body, is clearly as disconnected with any sacramental ministrations. The reference is to that stream from the rock in the wilderness of which the apostle has already spoken. We have the reality of that.

(3) We come now to consider more distinctly the body of Christ as thus that which unites together the many members. It is plain that the body is not one member, but many. The foot has a different function from the hand, but how foolish it would be for the foot to say, because it was not the hand, it was not of the body! It is plain that Christians are capable, nevertheless, of some similar foolishness. They have not the gifts of other people, and therefore they suppose they have none. They look at the manifestation of the Spirit in others, and they are only hindered and restrained instead of encouraged by it. As to What is implied in it, they practically make themselves to be not of the body; but, asks the apostle, if the doctrine already maintained be indeed the truth, is that any proper consequence at all? "If the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body?" On the contrary, it is just because there are these diversities of gifts that the body as a whole exists. "If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?" God has indeed acted according to His own good pleasure as to it all, and we must therefore bow to His will about it; but it is plain that if all were one member, the body would be gone. As a consequence of the members being many and the body one, the eye cannot be in independence of the hand, the head cannot be in independence of the feet. It is not Christ that is spoken of here as the head: that does not seem to be the connection. These are not, either, the words which one would expect in reference to the Head of the body, the Church; but the apostle is simply referring to a body as such -of course in relation to what is here before him, but still giving only, as it were, a natural illustration. All the way through it is nature, as it were, he uses to teach us; so the members of the body which seem to be the feebler are still necessary; whatever they may be in themselves, each has some part to perform; which, if it failed, the body would suffer by it; and the very parts of the body, he says, "which we think to be less honorable, these we clothe with more abundant honor, and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness." This is but the natural compensation which we find everywhere. The comely parts have no need. "God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that which lacked." The application of this may be very wide and that may hinder, in some measure, the proper realization of it; but it is the public place evidently, which seems to exalt one member of the body above another, which people constantly tend to think of as that which gives importance; whereas it is plain that the public place is what belongs rather to the few than to the many, and that God has ordained for the many rather, a service that is more hidden from public view. Yet how much do we owe as Christians to those who are never known, perhaps, in public! How much do we owe to those of whom, perhaps, we never think as of any account at all! On the other hand, what honor may we find that God has bestowed upon those very persons when the day of manifestation comes! How much may they have wrought that has never been realized by us, that we were too unspiritual to realize! How much honor does God put, even, upon the simple acceptance of a quiet place, a place that brings no dignity with it, but in which one can serve God just for the sake of that sweet service!

Thus may we realize, after all, that God may have given more abundant honor to the very part which lacked; and it is easy to understand that in this way He would unite us all together, making us profoundly conscious of our need of one another, and that there might be no division in the body, -such as these Corinthians were exhibiting, such as Christendom, alas, exhibits so much at the present day, but that the members might have the same care one for another. Sure it is that, "if one member suffer all the members suffer with it; and if one member be honored," it is really the honor and should be the joy of all. Thus he says here: "Ye are the body of Christ, and severally members." And God has been pleased to set some in the assembly in an order of His own, -first, apostles, who have laid the foundations; secondly, prophets, who have, with apostles as layers of the foundations, necessarily passed away, but whose work remains with us. Then teachers, doctrine being that which now and in all times lays the foundation still, the foundation for all practice and for all blessing. Then in this enumeration come miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues. He does not give these as if they were the whole, after all. This is only a specimen, evidently, of how God has wrought; but it is plain that all were not prophets, all were not even teachers; all, too, were not workers of miracles. We can see that this was not simple a question of faith, as we speak, and that it is not to be argued that, if we had faith enough for it, then we might expect miracles to be restored. Even in the apostle’s days all had not miracles. This is what the apostle recognizes as what is normal, not abnormal. All had not gifts of healing, nor spoke with tongues, nor interpreted. After all, the eyes of men were too apt to be upon that which was prominent, forgetting that which was spiritual and moral, and that which had greater value before God. The apostle, therefore, turns now to speak of this which is indeed the spirit of all ministry, the thing which underlies all these gifts if there is to be anything in them, and which exalts in God’s sight many an unknown worker, many a man ungifted, -as men might think, -into a blessed place such as may he far above the greatest of gifts. As the apostle says, greater than all gifts was that of which he was going to speak.

4. We have had thus before us the assembly and what is implied in the fact that it is the body of Christ. The analogy of the human body is preserved all through. The parts are organs. Each member in its place has its distinct capacity and therefore its function and its work. and the whole implies ministry and self-edification, which is to be the result of all this. "The body edifieth itself in love." We come now to this love, which is the practical test of all that is truly edification according to God. Love is the spirit of service, as is plain. It is that which prompts not simply to work, but to serve in working. It seeketh not its own, but the things of others; and thus it is that upon which the apostle sets a higher value than upon any gift. It is the divine nature in its manifestation in men.

(1) Now he first of all insists upon the unique value of love. If this one element be removed, we have really nothing. It is not exactly the whole spirit of a Christian, but it is that which is above all necessary to his being that. No tongues thus, he says, have any value apart from this, whether they be the tongues of men or even of angels. It is merely like sounding brass or a cymbal clanging. It is dead, not living. Even the gift of prophecy becomes, apart from this, what it might be in a Balaam, -something that God may put to use, but which has no value to the one who exercises it. So with all knowledge, however universal it might be; so with all faith, if it manifested itself in such work as removing mountains; still without love it was all nothing. If there were that which simulated love still more, the bestowing of all one’s goods to feed the poor; if there were that burning zeal in which one could deliver up his body to the flame, and yet love did not really prompt in all this, it would still be nothing. Nothing could possibly be more complete as to the full value of love and its necessity in everything.

(2) We have now the character of love itself; for we cannot be trusted to know what it is, as it were, instinctively, or by the signs of it even, which obtain amongst men. How often, in fact, do we mistake for it what may be social feeling, even the enjoyment which springs from a certain satisfaction of self in the object! How often do we fail to distinguish such things as these from the love that seeketh not her own! The apostle John, the apostle of love, in the same way has to give signs by which we shall know whether it is in fact divine, that is to say, true love according to God at all. Quite true that if a man say he loves God and loveth not his brother that will not avail, but on the other hand: "Hereby we know we love the children of God, because we love God and keep His commandments." The divine element must enter into it and characterize it everywhere, or it is not love as God would have it. The characteristics, therefore, are given here more particularly than elsewhere.

First of all, "Love suffereth long." It is in fact a sufferer in a world like this necessarily, as we see in Christ. What a field is this sorrow-stricken scene for its display, but how many calls upon it are there, therefore! Love suffereth long and still is kind. It does not wear out. It is not disappointed, not at least with such a disappointment as would check its outflow. Again, it envieth not. Plainly, it has not self before it, and therefore does not seek a place above others. It does not, therefore, envy others the possession of that which its possessor has not. For the same reason, "love vaunteth not itself." It does not think of itself more highly than it ought to think. It does not parade its deeds or its quality. It is not self-assertive. Still less does it go beyond what is due. It is not puffed up.

Its acts, therefore, are of a kind suitable to this. "It doth not behave itself unseemly." Love is the bond of perfectness, and puts every detail, even of common behavior, right. The world imitates it, as far as may be, because it sees its comeliness. It will give the highest manners to one who may be otherwise the lowest clown. Wherever it is, it reigns. It is the governing spirit. It brings other things into subjection to itself; but then, again, it seeketh not its own. This is its grand characteristic, although expressed in the negative, as so much of this is; for, as with regard to heaven itself; we learn it so much by its contradiction to what we find around, -what we find, alas, so much in ourselves too. Love "seeketh not its own." Its activities must of necessity go forth to others. It is not, therefore, quickly provoked. It is not sensitive of that which touches oneself; yet assuredly, it may be provoked into anger. It was love in Christ when He looked around upon them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts. It was the desire of His heart for them which made their condition so serious in His eyes; but this anger is not nursed into malice. It subsides under the check of pity, the realization of what evil of necessity produces in the soul. This evil it does not impute; it does not reckon it to be there when there is not positive evidence. It has no pleasure in finding it. What it finds there is no question about imputing, in the sense in which this is said. If it be found, then, as far as may be, love covereth sin. It does not bring it out except there be positive requirement of divine righteousness or holiness that it should be brought out. It does not, therefore, rejoice in unrighteousness. How much, alas, of that which seems to be but the display of righteousness (as in Satan’s accusation even of the saints) is a mere joy in unrighteousness, the very opposite, therefore, of righteousness itself! On the contrary, love "rejoiceth with the truth." Truth is the basis of all holiness, nay, of all good. There can be nothing apart from it. Love is not, therefore, blind. It has not the character which we may impute, perhaps, to human love. On the contrary, nothing is, quicker or more penetrating in its view of things; but then, again, it "beareth all things." That is, as we saw at the beginning, it can patiently endure, it can suffer long. It "believeth all things" too; that is, it gives ready and unsuspicious credence. It does not suspect. As a consequence of all this, it hopeth all things." It looks upon the good side rather than upon the evil, and, above all, God, in whom love is, who is always present to it, therefore always a cause of hope. After all, good reigns and not evil. Everything is in the hands of perfect goodness, little as at times this may appear outwardly, but thus there is no pessimism in love; it is optimistic in the highest way; but its ground of confidence is not in man, but in God. Hope, then, gives it energy or endurance. It "endureth all things." If we have not hope, there will soon be no strength to endure. Let discouragement be utter and complete, there is the end of all activity, there is the end of all service. There will be no power to serve where there is no hope in service.

(3) We now look at it in another way, not in the character which it displays, but in its permanence as compared with all other things. Prophecies will he done away. Whatever their value for the time being, there will come a time when they will be indeed no more, and when their actual fulfilment will bring them to an end, whatever the honor which may be put upon them. Tongues, too, shall cease. They have reference to the condition of man, to what sin has caused, and do not put away the effects of sin, although they manifest divine power and divine love meeting man in these conditions; but they shall cease necessarily, therefore. Knowledge too shall be done away; that is, the kind of knowledge, of course, that we have now. He goes on to describe it afterwards as such a knowledge of things as we have by seeing them in a mirror when we cannot be in close contact with them so as to examine them for ourselves. We have to argue, to infer about them. It is largely not so much that things, are, but that they must be so. This kind of knowing, -not the truth itself, concerning which the, knowledge is, not knowledge in the high, full sense therefore, but the knowing, this kind of spelling out and putting together and learning, as he says, in part, -all this will necessarily come to an end when that which is merely in part is done away. It will vanish as the light of the taper in the sun. The light will be at the full when the means of light are, nevertheless, largely changed.

The apostle illustrates the present as the childhood state, therefore. A child necessarily speaks as one, thinks as one, reasons as one, -in fact, it has to do plenty of reasoning, and no one would make light of its imperfect condition; but it is imperfect, as we know. "When I became a man I put away childish things, for now we see by a mirror, in an enigma." That is the force of the words. We see the reflection of things, in a sense, rather than the reality. We are conscious of them by the impression they make upon the senses, and we have to argue from these impressions as to the facts. This is, in fact, a child’s main business, which being done for those who are men, the process does not in the same way appear, although it still goes on. It is what is involved for us now, no doubt, in our being living souls, rather than spirits. We have often noticed that the living soul is what gives character to man’s actual condition, as the book of Genesis may teach us, while the spirit is nevertheless in man, but embarrassed by the conditions of its existence. The body is the instrument of the soul, as the soul, too, is the instrument of the spirit. External nature is thus that which teaches us so much, and the very language which we use as to the deepest realities is borrowed altogether from external things. The spiritual we know not except as encased in the natural. This involves the enigma of which the apostle speaks.

As soon as a man is out of the body be is not conceived of any longer as a living soul, but as a spirit. The soul-life now is, no doubt, a needed discipline for the spirit; and in view of all that God foresaw as to man’s condition and the outcome of his trial upon earth; the spiritual body, -as we shall see in what the apostle says beyond, -alters this relation between spirit and soul by putting the spirit completely in the governing place and making all conditions work in perfect subjection to it. That is the meaning of a spiritual body, -not a body which is formed of spirit, but a body which is characterized by the spirit that dwells in it. Such, it is plain, the body of Christ should be, for the Church has already entered by faith into the sphere of the invisible and eternal, while for it also there is, however, the necessary discipline from the state of things in the world in which it is. The apostle here, of course, is speaking of the individual: "Now we know in part, then shall we know even as also we are known." How wonderful a thing that! It is divine knowledge, as far as it goes, though, of course, having all the creature characteristics; it is not the omniscience of God, and never will be.

Thus, then, the apostle concludes from it all: "Faith, hope and love abide." He is not speaking here of eternity, but rather in contrast with such gifts as, in fact, will come to an end, having served their purpose. Love abides, for it is the divine nature. Faith, as the evidence of things unseen, necessarily passes away when all is seen with the perfect knowledge of which the apostle has spoken. Hope, too, implies the imperfection which counts upon God, but sees not. It too, therefore, must pass away in full fruition; but love abides. Therefore, the greatest of these three things which morally characterize the Christian, is love.

5. We now come to the conditions upon which alone the divine can co-operate with the human, as in the exercise of the gifts in the body of Christ. That is the main point which the apostle insists upon here. We see, indeed, the gifts in exercise, and in the assembly, but we are not to suppose that we have a full account of this. It is rather that we have urged upon us that which will put every gift in its right place, and are made to have a right comparative estimate of them, -a thing of the highest use of necessity in the assembly, in the practical service which the gifts render to the body as a whole.

(1) We are to follow after love, therefore, while emulous of spiritual things. How has this been lost sight of in the condition of things which has so long obtained in the professing Church! Who thinks of seeking spiritual gifts? If God has given them, they may be (with certain restrictions, alas,) sanctioned in their exercise; but who thinks of seeking from God gifts which he has not got? If we seek them to glorify ourselves with them, then of necessity we shall seek in vain; and thus the two things are put together, -the following after love and the desire for spiritual gifts. We see how love rules, moreover, in the broad distinctions that the apostle makes now between two representative things, prophesying, on the one hand and tongues on the other. Of course, this does not embrace all that is the exercise of spiritual gift in the assembly, by any means; but all the more are we distinctly shown the principle which is to govern all in the assembly, -what in fact the rule, "Let all things be done decently and in order," involves. What is decently and orderly in God’s sight? The speaking with a tongue and the interpretation of the tongue are given at the end of the twelfth chapter -last; and not without a meaning, last, in the enumeration there. In its miraculous character, the tongue was, on the other hand, a thing most notable, and which, -as we see at Pentecost, -struck men everywhere with amazement. It acted as an alarm-peal for their consciences, or as an invitation to nascent faith. But whatever its value, -and it is plain that the apostle does not mean to deny its value, -yet it is one of the things which has vanished away. As a fact, people can hardly understand at the present time what a "tongue" meant, and many are the disputes about it. The thing is gone, however men may urge that it is through the failure of faith that it is gone, which they can not show from Scripture; but it is gone, and there are things in relation to it which are even difficult, perhaps, for us to understand in the absence of it. It is for us an appeal to the past rather than the present. We must not conclude from this that we are to refer all this teaching of the chapter pretty much to a past condition, as is almost taken to be a matter of course by so many. On the contrary, the apostle is putting that which could not pass in contrast with the thing that has passed. Tongues, whatever their value, might pass. Prophesying, which he puts in contrast with it, could not pass, and this follows from the account which he gives of each. "He that speaketh with a tongue speaketh not," he says, "unto men, but unto God, for no one heareth," that is, with the understanding, although in spirit he may speak mysteries. Thus it is evident that this speaking with a tongue, -although it be, as we see clearly by what follows, the speaking of a real language, as the hearers at Pentecost heard each in his own tongue that which was being uttered, -implied speaking in a language which was not understood, at least by the mass of the hearers. It is upon this that the apostle insists as governing the use of it. A man could get no good by that which he did not understand. If there could be no understanding, if there were no one to interpret, then the tongue was out of place entirely. However much a man might have it, he was not to exercise it. In that character he spoke, as speaking in this unintelligible way, not to men who could not understand him, but to God only, who of course did. In spirit, too, he might speak mysteries. On the other hand, he that prophesied spake directly to men, and that for edification, and exhortation, and comfort. This does not, of course, define what prophesying is, but what it does. The effect of it is such that it could not possibly be lacking in the Church at any time. The Lord never ceases to care for the edification of His people, and thus we see, also, that prophesying here by no means has necessarily the character of predicting, though in those days there might be prediction, for the time of revelation was not passed. Revelation is now complete. If any man pretends to have what is fresh in this way, it is a false pretension, -the man is a false prophet and nothing else; but it could not be supposed that the people of God came together just to hear predictions of the future.

Prophesying means, rather, in itself the speaking in a direct manner from God and for God, and is in this way something which of necessity shows the spirit of Christianity, the heavenly places being opened to us, God capable of approach in that way, and which, if we know our privileges rightly, we shall easily understand. The man who is earnest to realize the place with God which this supposes, will be he who, in the power of that communion, will be possessed most of the mind of God. But this, therefore, will not be for himself alone. That which he has he has for others also. How important just to have this, -God’s word for the time, which does not of necessity imply any great gift in the speaker of it! It might be, as the apostle puts it hypothetically here, but five words. It might be but the recital of the apt scripture upon the subject, or which deals with the state of soul of the assembly. It is something which implies spirituality rather than gift, and a spirituality which should be found, therefore, in every Christian. Thus it is that he says directly that they might all prophesy one by one. He did not certainly mean by this that they might all teach one by one, that such a gift lay within the power of any one to exercise. That would only make the actual distribution of gifts ineffectual, make all gifts conditionally one and the same gift, or every person possessor of every gift; which is plainly not so, and was never intended to be so. The diversity of gift, as has already been said, is the very thing which necessitates this ministry of every one to all the rest, and thus it abides in itself, a distinction which is to be maintained and insisted upon.

On the other hand, the thing that they were all to covet was that they might prophesy. How simple and how much needed the exhortation when it implies simply that all are bound to be with God so as to learn each for himself from God, in a sense as if there were not another! But this does not lead to the disregard of others. Rather, it makes one capable of the truest service. It might, as we see in the Acts, -where, of course, we have it in the full character of those times, -be found in a woman as well as in a man. Spirituality knows no sex, and the presence and mind of God is not denied to any one that seeks it, be it man or woman. The restriction with regard to the use of it in the assembly is another matter, and is based upon that which we have seen already, that is, that the public place is not the place which God has designed for the woman; but it has nothing to do with the reality of blessing such as this, which, if we do not realize and appreciate aright, we shall forfeit immensely. In fact, the whole Church has forfeited, how much, by the misapprehension of such scriptures as these! It has had, therefore, to relegate them in their application to the past or to maintain that prophesying as it is represented nowadays is preaching! The result of this will be very evident. On the other hand, the exhortation as, to prophesying is the voice of God calling His people to enjoy their place of privilege with Himself, to learn in His presence, to have His mind, and thus to be fitted each one for the place given to him in connection with all others. How important, then, that we should realize this!

"He that speaketh with a tongue," the apostle goes on, "edifieth himself." He has not, as people strangely imagine, the thought that he might not himself understand the tongue that he was using. He edifieth himself, and we are told shortly after that the assembly cannot receive edifying except it be by the interpretation of the tongue. If there is not meaning in the tongue, it is like a mere lifeless thing, giving sound. This principle applies plainly to the possessor of the tongue, as it does to others. The apostle has no idea, as some have put it, that the mere consciousness, as it were, of speaking by a divine impulse (however ignorant one may be of what is contained in it) is that which edifies. The whole assembly might be edified on the same principle, if that were edification; but the apostle insists that there must be the intelligent apprehension of what is heard, or there is no use, no edification. Thus, he that speaketh with a tongue, but with no power to interpret (for the gift of interpretation might not necessarily accompany the gift of the tongue) edifieth himself simply, but he that prophesieth edifieth the assembly. He does not in the least desire to set aside the speaking with tongues. He would that they all spake with them, but much rather would he that they prophesied, because "greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues." It is evident that the Corinthians thought very differently as to that. The tongue, in their minds, put a man upon a much greater eminence than any prophesying could do, but how different where love rules! and that is the whole matter here. The edification of others is that which decides upon the greatness of the speaker. The one who speaks to most edification, whatever the manner of speech, is the one who is greatest. If, then, one came speaking with tongues, what would the profit be unless there was revelation or knowledge or prophesying, (which we see he makes, therefore, distinct from revelation: there might be a prophesying without that,) or doctrine, -the teaching of some truth?

He appeals to the lifeless thing even giving sound. If there were no distinctions in the sounds, if it were all unmeaning, how would anything be gathered from what was piped or harped? If the trumpet gave an uncertain sound, who would prepare himself to the war? So, also, ye with a tongue, he says, except ye give a distinct word, that is, a word appreciable, -a word that shall be known in its significance by those addressed, how shall it be known what is spoken? You are just speaking, he says, into the air. Not a voice that God has given in the world but has its significance! If, therefore, tongues are to be merely a sound, the one who speaks will be simply a Barbarian to others, as those who listen are for him Barbarians. The rule, therefore, was for those who were emulous of spiritual gifts, that they might abound indeed, but for the edifying of the Church. So if a man were speaking with a tongue, he might pray that he might interpret. It may seem a strange thing that the gift of interpretation did not necessarily accompany the gift of the tongue itself; but in this way one can at least see that a gift of this showy character would be kept in more complete dependence, as was needed so much at Corinth; for the abuses which the apostle would remedy were necessarily found more or less among the people to whom he was speaking. Thus the one who seemed in their eyes so exalted by the gift of the tongue, nevertheless had to be indebted to the service of another for the interpretation of it. No doubt, where it was love that dictated, where love was in earnest for the help of men, God might add the gift of interpretation to the tongue itself, but the two things, as is plain, were distinct.

(2) The apostle goes on: "For if I pray with a tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my mind is unfruitful." It has been thought, perhaps generally, that here his inability to understand what he was saying was necessarily supposed, but why? Is not the fruit which the apostle is teaching us everywhere to look for, the edification of the assembly? And thus if a man prayed simply with a tongue, apart from interpretation, there could be no fruitfulness; in that respect the mind was really unfruitful. "But," says the apostle, "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray also with the understanding. I will praise with the spirit and I will praise with the understanding." That is, surely, therefore, in connection with the context here, in such a way that there shall be understanding all round, for he goes on directly to argue that if you bless in the spirit only, the one who occupies the place of the unlearned cannot possibly say "amen" to the giving of thanks; for he does not know what is being said. You may give thanks ever so well, but there is no edification for the other. Thus even in prayer and praise the same principle obtains. In the assembly all is done for the assembly. The speaker must be either the voice of the assembly to God or the voice of God to the assembly, but the assembly as such is always in mind, and the gathering is not to be diverted into any mere field for the private exercises of the saints, whatever their character might be. Solemn it is to realize that even the giving thanks well in this way would not justify the thanksgiving. The fact that the gift is from God does not of necessity justify the use of it. The use at any particular time must be governed by the principle which runs through all this, the principle of edification, which is sought always. The apostle was not speaking to discredit tongues, the ability to use which he had more than all, yet he deliberately chooses rather to speak five words with his understanding, to instruct others, (there he defines really what he means by five words with the understanding, which is that he may instruct others by them,) he would rather speak five words this way than ten thousand in a tongue. To think otherwise would be to be children in their minds; but he does not want them to be children in mind, although he would be happy that they were children in malice; but in their minds they were to be full grown. What, in fact, had God shown with regard to this use of tongues, unintelligible tongues, as we see? That is really the point of it. It was written in the law, in the book of Isaiah (the whole of the Old Testament is characterized as law): "With other tongues and lips of others I will speak unto this people, and not even so will they bear me, saith the Lord." But to what did this refer? In fact, to their captivity among foreigners or the dominion of foreigners over them, a thing in itself which would necessarily and notably speak to a people who could only be in this condition through their own sin and failure, and yet their sin would not be remedied by it, nor would they listen, as the Lord says, to these tongues by which He was speaking so strangely to them; so that in this case tongues were for a sign not to believers, but to unbelievers. God was speaking to them indeed, but in a strange language through their unbelief, and this only, through the hardness of their heart, shut them up the more in that unbelief, did not deliver them. Prophesying, on the other hand, was directly for believers, not for unbelievers. Now if the whole assembly come together in one place and all speak with tongues, he urges, and there come in unlearned persons or unbelievers, what will they say? What effect will it have upon them? "Will they not say that ye are mad?" It is supposed, of course, that there is no making plain the thing so as to edify; just used as strange tongues because of the wonder of such speech. They are tongues, he supposes, that are not understood. On the other hand, if all prophesied, and there came in one who was an unbeliever or unlearned, this bringing in of the mind of God, unbaring as it does the secrets of the heart, would bring conviction to the man who came. He might not indeed be converted by it, but be would find, in fact, his inmost heart searched out, and would recognize that it was God who was searching; so, falling upon his face, he would worship God, and declare that God was with them of a truth. How plainly is the character of prophesying thus seen as the bringing in of God in such a way as would speak for itself; the voice of God made audible in the speaker, with its direct power over the conscience of those who heard.

(3) The apostle now gives general instructions as to the assembly itself, instructions which have singular inapplicability to the Christian meeting as understood most largely in the present day. It is a gathering of the assembly as such, with room for every one to find his place and to contribute his share to the general edification and under the guidance and rule of the Spirit of God alone. "When ye come together," says the apostle, as if it were the normal thing when coming together, "every one hath a psalm, hath a teaching, hath a revelation, hath a tongue, hath an interpretation." He neither commends nor condemns this in any wholesale way. The Corinthians, no doubt, were ready enough, and their meetings would not lack in variety. The apostle’s simple rule is that all things are to be done to edifying. That is the one practical direction, so simple that it is easily understood by any Christian. Any one is competent to say what ministers to himself and helps him.

It is important to see that while the Spirit is the power and energy always for this, yet at the same time he does not in any wise direct them to analyze their own convictions as to it. They are not to be before themselves in any wise. The object is to edify others, and the assembly, if right at all, will always be able to bear witness if it is edified. This governs also in what follows, that if any one speak in a tongue there are to be not more, at any rate, than two or three speakers, each in his turn, (does not that seem as if there were disorder enough in the Corinthian assembly?) and with one to interpret in each case. If there were no interpreter, then it is enjoined that there shall be silence kept in the assembly. Let such an one speak, if he be full, to himself and to God, but there can be no edification except a man can understand the language in which he is addressed. Even as to the prophets the same rule obtains. that there are to be but two or three speakers. There is not to be enough to distract or to weary, but to edify, and the rest are to judge. They are not to receive -because the ideal is a ministry of the Spirit -all that comes with the assumption of this. They are to judge. Scripture is in their hands as the means of judgment, and thus they are to discern, by that which the Spirit has already communicated, the character of present communications. If anything is revealed to another who sitteth by, the first speaker is to be silent -not, as is supposed by some, to give way to the new revelation. The apostle’s words directly afterwards surely contradict that. All might prophesy, one by one. There would be time for each one, and no interference on the part of one with the liberty of another.

There is no question here of the reality of the prophesying, as there can be no question of the reality of a tongue; but the reality of the gift does not hinder the regulation of the gift, or show, therefore, that the exercise of it is always according to God. The rule is still and ever the edification of the assembly. The contributions of all are thrown, as it were, into a common fund, that all may be enriched by them, and in this general enrichment no one need strive for his own things and no one is given room to take exception to that which perhaps may not minister specifically to his own need, and yet may be meeting, in the abundant grace of God, the need of others. All have need to learn and all to be exhorted, and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. There is in each case the responsible man whom his gift is not to control, but who, by the Spirit, is to control the gift. Human responsibility is everywhere prominent, and the practical result is that which manifests the character of what is given. God is never a God of confusion, but of peace, and this is His manner of working in all the assemblies of the saints.

(4) There was to he one exception as to this general liberty. In the assemblies, when the saints were all actually come together, the women were to keep silence. It is a question, not of a woman’s capability of exhorting others or of edifying, but just that question of order with which the apostle started, and which creation establishes. The woman’s sphere of liberty, and, one may say, sovereignty, is at home; that is to say, it is private and not public. It must not be thought that this does not give ample scope for the exercise of gift of whatever kind. If there were only more of the cultivation on the woman’s part of that which belongs really to her sphere, how fruitful would be the exercise of gift with which God has endowed her and how many places would be open to her which men, by reason of their being men could not in the same way fill! Thus in relation to children, it is at once evident; with the younger children, the woman is still the best and the nature-ordained teacher. God has placed the babe in its mother’s arms and not its father’s; and this does not mean that the woman’s sphere is only in her own family. There are countless families to which her sex will introduce her, and where she may find herself fully at home and abundant profit and recompense of her work. So, through the wives, women have access in this way to an indefinite sphere of occupation for varied blessing. The wife is the heart-centre of the household, and the ability thus to reach the wife in a way that woman certainly can do far beyond others is an immense privilege and responsibility entrusted to her. Would that there were more realization of this! It would not be thought that the apostle’s rule here, which is evident, was intended to reduce the woman to a nonentity or to deprive her of the use of whatever gift God may have endowed her with. As already said, if you take men themselves, how many have their proper sphere in any public ministrations? Women are no more disqualified in this sense than the large number of men are. God has ordained to each his place, and the spirit of love is only needed to find the wisdom which will enable any one to realize the doors which God will ever open to those who seek to serve Hint among men.

Among the sick, again, how evidently is there a special place accorded to the woman! Here, the gentleness, the patience natural to her, the tender ministration of love, assert themselves with a power which God’s grace uses continually for blessing to souls. Just when the strength is prostrated and the ear only perhaps left open, the heart is in the readiest condition to receive, the truth. How blessed the privilege to be able here to sow the seed of life in souls plowed up and rendered receptive by God’s dealings with them!

Thus, while the apostle’s words are prohibitive in one way, they only open to us in another what is the true sphere in which the woman may he and ever has been blessed. But he allows no dispute about it. "Came the word of God," he says, "out from you, or did it come to you only? If any one thinketh himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write to you are the commandments of the Lord." How important is this here, where, most of all in the present day, as is evident, men tend to ignore or to resist what he here gives us! Indeed, as we easily may see, the whole chapter is largely set aside as pertaining to extraordinary gifts which have ceased, and which find their substitute as a whole, perhaps, in a preacher, who is supposed to have the remnant of all that exists in his own person, and to whom the congregation is for the most part confined. Thus a narrowness, in fact, attains which was never found in the Jewish synagogue, as one may easily see by the occurrences in the Acts. There was a ready invitation and scope for various speakers, even amid the iron rule and stiffness of rabbinism. Things are working at the present time, no doubt, to a larger liberty; alas, they are at the same time tending in an equal degree to laxity and to the disregard on another side of the apostle’s word here. He is short and decisive. "If any one be ignorant," he says, "let him be ignorant." If what I have said already is not enough for his enlightenment, let him go without such enlightenment. On the other hand, there is need of exhortation surely today after his manner here: "So, brethren, be emulous to prophesy." Alas, it is hardly known what such words mean; and yet the responsibility remains as great as ever, and the thing to which we are all responsible to minister. He concludes with the simple words, so simple and so practical: "Let all things be done fittingly and in order."

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11:1 imitate me: Cp. 4:16; Phil 3:17.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1Co 11:1. Μιμηταί μου, imitators [followers] of me) He adds this verse to the former to show, that we must look to Christ, not to him [the apostle], as our highest example.—Χριστοῦ, of Christ) who did not please Himself, Rom 15:3, but gave Himself at all costs for our salvation, Eph 5:2.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_11:1 belongs still to the preceding section.

Become imitators of me. Become so, Paul writes, for there was as yet a sad lack of practical evidence of this imitation; see also 1Co_10:32 (comp Kühner, a[1747] Xen. Anab. i. 7. 4).

κἀγώ] as I also have become an imitator, namely, of Christ. Comp on Mat_15:3. Christ as the highest pattern of the spirit described in 1Co_10:33. Comp Php_2:4 ff.; Rom_15:3; Eph_5:2; Mat_20:28.

[1747] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 10:23 to 1Co 11:1 . § 34. LIBERTY AND ITS LIMITS. The maxim “All things are lawful” was pleaded in defence of the use of the idolothyta, as of other Cor [1541] laxities; so the Ap. has to discuss it a second time ( cf. 1Co 6:12 ). In ch. 6. he bade his readers guard the application of this principle for their own sake, now for the sake of others; there in the interests of purity, here of charity (1Co 10:23 f.). When buying meat in the market, or when dining at an unbeliever’s table, the Christian need not enquire whether the flesh offered him is sacrificial or not; but if the fact is pointedly brought to his notice, he should abstain, to avoid giving scandal (1Co 10:25-30 ). Above all such regulations stands the supreme and comprehensive rule of doing everything to God’s glory (1Co 10:31 ). Let the Cor [1542] follow Paul as he himself follows Christ, in living for the highest good of others (1Co 10:32 to 1Co 11:1 )

[1541] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[1542] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

1Co 10:33 ; 1Co 11:1 . Paul’s personal example played a large part in his argument (1Co 10:9 ); it is fitting he should refer to it in summing up. The negative ἀπρόσκοποι γίνεσθε , in 2nd person, now becomes the positive ἐγὼ πάντα πᾶσιν ἀρέσκω in the 1st: “As I also in all things please all.” ἀρέσκω is to comply with, accommodate oneself to , not give enjoyment to ( cf. Rom 15:1 ; Rom 15:3 ) no need to speak of a “conative present,” resembling ζητῶ ἀρέσκειν , Paul’s universal compliance is qualified by its purpose , ἵνα σωθῶσιν , in the light of which the verbal contradiction with Gal 1:10 , 1Th 2:4 , is removed; there is nothing in his power that P. will not do for any man, to help his salvation ( cf. 1Co 9:22 b ). Between the ἀρέσκω and its purpose lies the μὴ ζητῶν clause, in which the Ap. professes for himself the rule commended to the Cor [1589] in 1Co 10:27 . The “self-advantage” which P. sets aside, touches his highest welfare ( cf. Rom 9:3 ); P. sacrificed what seemed to be his spiritual as well as material gain spending, e.g ., weary hours in tent-making that might have been given to pious study to secure spiritual gain for others; thus “losing himself,” he “found himself unto life eternal.” “The many,” in contrast with the single self; cf. 1Co 10:17 , Rom 5:15 ff. Through his own pattern P. points the readers to that of his Master and theirs: “Show yourselves ( γίνεσθε , see 32, 1Co 7:23 ) imitators of me, as I also (am) of Christ”. P. does not point his readers backward to the historical model (“of Jesus,” or “Jesus Christ,” as in Eph 4:21 ), but upward to the actual “Christ,” whose existence is evermore devoted to God (Rom 6:10 f.) and to men His brethren (Rom 8:34 f., 1Co 1:30 ), “in” whom the Cor [1590] believers “are” (1Co 1:2 ; 1Co 1:30 ). Paul’s imitatio Christi turns on the great acts of Christ’s redeeming work (Eph 5:2 , Phi 2:5-11 ), rather than on the incidents of His earthly course.

[1589] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[1590] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 11:1. This verse belongs to the former chapter, and concludes the argument, as in ch. 1Co 4:16.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11:1.] κἀγώ, scil. μιμητὴς γέγονα. Compare on the sense, Php 2:4, Php 2:5.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11:1. The division of the chapters is unfortunate. This verse clearly belongs to what precedes. He has just stated his own principle of action, and he begs them to follow it, because it is Christ’s: Hinc apparet, quam ineptae sint capitum sectiones (Calv.). There is no connexion with what follows.

μιμηταί μου γίνεσθε. ‘Become imitators of me.’ Excepting Heb 6:12, μιμητής is in N.T. peculiar to Paul (4:16; Eph 5:1; 1Th 1:6, 1Th 2:14): not found in LXX. Everywhere it is joined with γίνεσθαι, which indicates moral effort; ‘Strive to behave as I do.’ Everywhere the more definite ‘imitator’ (RV.) is to be preferred to ‘follower’ (AV.): ‘Be ye followers of me’ is doubly defective. Cf. ὥσπερ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἒργων οἱ διδάσκαλοι τούς μαθητὰς μιμητὰς ἐαυτῶν ἀποδεικνύουσιν (Xen. Mem. I. vi. 3).

καθὼς κἀγὼ Χριστοῦ. This addition dispels the idea that it is in any spirit of arrogance that he asks them to imitate him; once more he is only asking them to do what he does himself, to follow the example of one whom they recognized as their teacher: nihil praescribit aliis quod non prior observaverit; deinde se et alios ad Christum, tanquam unicum recte agendi exemplar revocat (Calv.). It is as an example of self-sacrifice that he takes Christ as his model; the whole context shows this. And it is commonly this aspect of Christ’s life that is regarded, when He is put before us in N.T. as an example: Rom 15:2, Rom 15:3; 2Co 8:9; Eph 5:2; Php 2:4, Php 2:5. “The details of His life are not generally imitable, our calling and circumstances being so different from His. Indeed, the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ may be actually misleading” (Goudge). The wiser question is, ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?’ It is seldom that St Paul mentions any of the details of our Lord’s life on earth, and it is therefore unlikely that he is thinking of anything but the subject in hand—sacrificing one’s own rights and pleasures for the good of others. Nevertheless, the knowledge which St Paul displays of details is sufficient to show that he knew a great deal more than he mentions, and exaggerated statements have been made respecting his supposed ignorance. See Knowling, The Testimony of St Paul to Christ, Lect. x.; Jacquier, Histoire des Livres du NT., II. 22-24; The Fifth Gospel, pp. 75, 195 f. On the supposed difference between the teaching of Christ and that of St Paul see Kaftan, Jesus und Paulus, Tübingen 1906, esp. pp. 24, 32, 58; Walther, Paulf Christentum Jesu Evangelium, Leipzig, 1908, esp. pp. 25-30; Jälicher, Paulus and Jesus, Tübingen, 1907, esp. pp. 35 f.

11:2-14:40. DISORDERS IN CONNEXION WITH PUBLIC WORSHIP AND THE MANIFESTATION OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS

This constitutes the third* main division of the Epistle, and it contains three clearly marked sections; respecting (1) the Veiling of Women, 9:2-16; (2) Disorders connected with the Lord’s Supper, 11:17-34; (3) Spiritual Gifts, especially Prophesying and Tongues, 12:1-14:40. At the outset there is a possible reference to the Corinthians’ letter to the Apostle; but the sections deal with evils which had come to his knowledge in other ways.

11:2-16. The Veiling of Women in Public Worship

Although in respect of religion men and women are on an equality, yet the Gospel does not overthrow the natural ordinance, which is really of Divine appointment, that woman is subject to man. To disavow this subjection before the congregation must cause grave scandal; and such shamelessness is condemned by nature, by authority, and by general custom.

2 Now, as to another question, I do commend you for remembering me, as you assure me you do, in all things, and for loyally holding to the traditions just as I transmitted them to you. 3 But I should like you to grasp, what has not previously been mentioned, that of every man, whether married or unmarried, Christ is the head, while a woman’s head is her husband, and Christ’s head is God. 4 Every man, whether married or unmarried, who has any covering on his head when he publicly prays to God or expounds the will of God, thereby dishonours his head: 5 whereas every woman, whether married or unmarried, who has her head uncovered when she publicly prays to God or expounds the will of God, thereby dishonours her head; for she is then not one whit the better than the wanton whose head is shaven. 6 A woman who persists in being unveiled like a man should go the whole length of cutting her hair short like a man. But seeing that it is a mark of infamy for a woman to have her hair cut off or shorn, let her wear a veil. 7 And man has no right to cover his head; he is by constitution the image of God and reflects God’s glory: whereas the woman reflects man’s glory.

8 Man was created first; he does not owe his origin to woman, but woman owes hers to him; 9 and, what is more, she was made for his sake, and not he for Heb_10 For this reason she ought, by covering her head, publicly to acknowledge her subjection. Even if she does not shrink from scandalizing men, she might surely fear to be an offence to angels.

11 Nevertheless, this dependence of the woman has its limits: in the Lord neither sex has any exclusive privileges, but each has an equal share. 12 For as, at the first, the woman came into being from the man, so, ever since then, the man has come into being by means of the woman; and, like everything else, both are from God.

13 Use your own powers of discernment. Is it decent that a woman should have her head uncovered when she publicly offers prayer to God? 14 Surely even nature itself teaches you that for a man to wear his hair long is degrading to him; 15 whereas this is a glory to a woman, because her long hair is God’s gift to her, to serve her as a covering. 10 Yet, if any one is so contentious as to dispute this conclusion, it will suffice to say that both Christian authority and Christian usage are against him.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_11:1

Be ye followers of me, even as I also (am) of Christ.

This verse should belong to the tenth chapter, as it is the conclusion of the preceding discussion, and as a new subject is introduced with the following verse. Paul had referred to his own conciliatory conduct as an example to the Corinthians, and he exhorts them to imitate him, as he did Christ, who is the ultimate standard.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER XI.

The apostle reprehends the Corinthians for several

irregularities in their manner of conducting public worship;

the men praying or prophesying with their heads covered, and

the women with their heads uncovered, contrary to custom,

propriety, and decency, 1-6.

Reasons why they should act differently, 7-16.

They are also reproved for their divisions and heresies, 17-19.

And for the irregular manner in which they celebrated the Lord's

Supper, 20-22.

The proper manner of celebrating this holy rite laid down by

the apostle, 23-26.

Directions for a profitable receiving of the Lord's Supper,

and avoiding the dangerous consequences of communicating

unworthily, 27-34.

NOTES ON CHAP. XI.

Verse 1. Be ye followers of me] This verse certainly belongs to the preceding chapter, and is here out of all proper place and connection.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. Imitators of me. From this it appears, how absurdly chapters are divided, inasmuch as this sentence is disjoined from what goes before, with which it ought to have been connected, and is joined to what follows, with which it has no connection. Let us view this, then, as the close of the preceding chapter. Paul had there brought forward his own example in confirmation of his doctrine. Now, in order that the Corinthians may understand that this would be becoming in them, he exhorts them to imitate what he had done, even as he had imitated Christ

Here there are two things to be observed — first, that he prescribes nothing to others that he had not first practiced himself; and, secondly, that he directs himself and others to Christ as the only pattern of right acting. For while it is the part of a good teacher to enjoin nothing in words but what he is prepared to practice in action, he must not, at the same time, be so austere, as straightway to require from others everything that he does himself, as is the manner of the superstitious. For everything that they contract a liking for they impose also upon others, and would have their own example to be held absolutely as a rule. The world is also, of its own accord, inclined to a misdirected imitation, (κακοζηλίαν) and, after the manner of apes, strive to copy whatever they see done by persons of great influence. We see, however how many evils have been introduced into the Church by this absurd desire of imitating all the actions of the saints, without exception. Let us, therefore, maintain so much the more carefully this doctrine of Paul — that we are to follow men, provided they take Christ as their grand model, (πρωτότυπον,) that the examples of the saints may not tend to lead us away from Christ, but rather to direct us to him.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

XI.

(1) Be ye followers of me.—See concluding Note on 1 Corinthians 10.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. &c. These words more properly close the preceding chapter, than begin a new one, and refer to the rules therein laid down, and which the apostle would have the Corinthians follow him in, as he did Christ: that as he sought, both in private and public, and more especially in his ministerial service, to do all things to the glory of God, and not for his own popular applause, in which he imitated Christ, who sought not his own glory, but the glory of him that sent him; so he would have them do all they did in the name of Christ, and to the glory of God by him: and that as he studied to exercise a conscience void of offence to God and man, in doing which he was a follower of Christ, who was holy in his nature, and harmless and inoffensive in his conversation; so he was desirous that they should likewise be blameless, harmless, and without offence until the day of Christ: and that whereas he endeavoured to please men in all things lawful and indifferent, wherein he copied after Christ, who by his affable and courteous behaviour, and humble deportment, sought to please and gratify all with whom he conversed; so he would have them not to mind high things, but condescend to men of low estates, and become all things to all, that they might gain some as he did: and once more, that as he sought not his own pleasure and advantage, but the salvation of others, in imitation of Christ, who pleased not himself, but took upon him, and bore cheerfully, the reproaches of men, that he might procure good for them; so the apostle suggests, that it would be right in them not to seek to have their own wills in every thing, but rather to please their neighbour for good to edification.

Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. &c. These words more properly close the preceding chapter, than begin a new one, and refer to the rules therein laid down, and which the apostle would have the Corinthians follow him in, as he did Christ: that as he sought, both in private and public, and more especially in his ministerial service, to do all things to the glory of God, and not for his own popular applause, in which he imitated Christ, who sought not his own glory, but the glory of him that sent him; so he would have them do all they did in the name of Christ, and to the glory of God by him: and that as he studied to exercise a conscience void of offence to God and man, in doing which he was a follower of Christ, who was holy in his nature, and harmless and inoffensive in his conversation; so he was desirous that they should likewise be blameless, harmless, and without offence until the day of Christ: and that whereas he endeavoured to please men in all things lawful and indifferent, wherein he copied after Christ, who by his affable and courteous behaviour, and humble deportment, sought to please and gratify all with whom he conversed; so he would have them not to mind high things, but condescend to men of low estates, and become all things to all, that they might gain some as he did: and once more, that as he sought not his own pleasure and advantage, but the salvation of others, in imitation of Christ, who pleased not himself, but took upon him, and bore cheerfully, the reproaches of men, that he might procure good for them; so the apostle suggests, that it would be right in them not to seek to have their own wills in every thing, but rather to please their neighbour for good to edification.

1 Corinthians 11:2

co1 11:2

co1 11:2

co1 11:2Now I praise you, brethren,.... The apostle prefaces what he had to say by way of commendation of them; though some think that this is said in an ironical way, because there are many things both in this chapter, and in the following part of this epistle, delivered in a way of reproof; but whoever considers the change of style in Co1 11:17 will easily see, that this must be spoken seriously here, and is designed to raise the attention to what he was about to say, and to prepare their minds to receive, and take in good part, what he should say by way of rebuke; who could not well be angry when he praised them for what was praiseworthy in them, and reproved them for that which was blamable. The things he commends them for are as follow,

that ye remember me in all things; that is, either that they were mindful of him, though at a distance from them, and had such a veneration for him, and paid such respect to him, and to his judgment, as to write to him to have his sense about any point of doctrine, or case of conscience which had any difficulty in them; or that they bore in memory the doctrines of the Gospel which he had delivered among them; see Co1 15:2 The Arabic version reads, "that ye remember my sayings and deeds"; the doctrines he preached among them, and the examples he set them:

and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you; meaning, among the rest, if not principally, baptism and the Lord's supper, which he received from Christ, and delivered unto them; see Co1 11:23 and which they, at least many of them, kept and observed in the faith of Christ, from a principle of love to him, and with a view to his glory, and that as to the form and manner in which they were delivered to them by the apostle, agreeably to the mind of Christ; but was the apostle alive now, would, or could he praise the generality of those that are called Christians on this account? no; neither of these ordinances in common are kept as they were delivered: as to baptism, it is not attended to either as to subject or mode, both are altered, and are different from the original institution; and the Lord's supper is prostituted to the vilest of men; and, what is "monstrum horrendum", is made a test and qualification for employment in civil and military offices under the government.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

Ver. 1. Be ye followers of me] This verse properly belongs to the former chapter. The distinguishing of the books of Scripture into chapters is not very ancient. But that of verses was devised and done by Robert Stephens, Pio quidem at tumultuario studio, as Scultetus saith well, with a good intent, but with no great skill, as appears here and in various other places. The apostles, 1Co 10:33, had showed his own practice: here he calls upon them to do accordingly. As the ox follows the herd, so will I follow good men. Etiamsi errant, saith Cicero, although they do amiss. Sicut bos armenta, sic ego bones vires. (Cic. ad Attic.) This was more than St Paul desires. Be ye followers of me, saith he; but only so far as I am of Christ, not an inch further. Christians are not bound, as Latimer saith, to be the saints’ apes; labouring to be like them in everything. It is Christ’s peculiar honour to be imitated in all morals absolutely.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Be ye followers of me - Imitate my example in the matter now under discussion. As I deny myself; as I seek to give no offence to anyone; as I endeavor not to alarm the prejudices of others, but in all things to seek their salvation, so do you. This verse belongs to the previous chapter, and should not have been separated from it. It is the close of the discussion there.

Even as I also am of Christ - I make Christ my example. He is my model in all things; and if you follow him, and follow me as far as I follow him, you will not err. This is the only safe example; and if we follow this, we can never go astray.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Interpreters judge, that these words do properly belong to the foregoing chapter, in the last verse of which he had propounded his own example to them; but whether they be applied to that chapter or this, is not much material. They teach us, that the examples of the apostles are part of our rule; yet the modesty of the apostle is remarkable, who requires of his people no further to follow him than as he followed Christ: nor indeed ought any man to require more of those that are under his charge, than to follow him so far forth as he imitates the Lord Jesus Christ.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Disorders In Worship

2-16. (c) The Veiling of Women in Church

2. Now I praise you] This v. introduces the two following sections. The Apostle begins by praising them, perhaps echoing words from their own letter, for keeping the rules and teaching he had given; but goes on to rebuke faults that have come to his knowledge. Keep the ordinances] RV 'hold fast the traditions': cp. 2Th_2:15. I delivered them to you] 1Co_11:23; 1Co_15:3. Probably here rules for worship are specially meant.

3-16. Dress of women in public worship. In Greek, as well as in Eastern cities, it was customary for women, except those of bad character, to cover their heads in public. Some of the female Corinthian converts had discontinued this practice in Christian worship, thus practically claiming equality with men. Now St. Paul himself taught that 'there can be no male and female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus' (Gal_3:28, written either shortly before or shortly after 1 Cor). By this he meant that salvation is offered to all alike, all are alike in spiritual position; but these women had taken such teaching to mean that all social subordination to men was also done away. But just as in the case of slavery (see on 1Co_7:21), Christianity did not come to abolish existing social conditions. It has done much to improve the condition of women, but has done so gradually. And when all is said, there remains a natural subordination of women to men; and the conduct of these women in the prevailing circumstances of the age was likely to bring reproach on Christianity.

St. Paul first lays down the principle of subordination. He then speaks of the unseemliness of the practice in question, and of its converse, namely, men covering their heads; and shows how this matter comes under the above principle, while women are not degraded by this subordination. He next uses corroboratory arguments from nature, and finally appeals to the practice of all other Churches.

Paraphrase. '(3) Every man is subordinate to Christ; woman, on the other hand, is subordinate to man, just as Christ is subordinate to God. (4) Now, on this principle, if necessary, if any man were to worship with covered head he would disgrace himself, because the covered head is the symbol of inferior position. (5) In the same way every woman who worships without her veil, thus violating the custom among women of good character, acts discreditably and brings shame upon herself. (6) Indeed, she might as well have her hair cut short; and she knows the shame attaching to that. (7-9) The man, therefore, as receiving his authority directly from God, ought to keep his head uncovered in worship; whereas the woman should veil her head as the sign that her authority is derived from man. (10) And this is the more necessary when we remember that the angels are witnesses of Christian worship. (11, 12) But, after all, in the Christian life man and woman are dependent upon each other, just as they are in natural life, and in all things they are dependent upon God. (13-15) Now, just say yourselves if it is seemly for a woman to worship unveiled. Why, even nature, by giving her long hair for a natural veil, asserts the contrary. (16) But if any one is still unconvinced, let me say, once for all, that this practice of the unveiling of women is unknown to us and to the Churches of God.'

3. The head of every man is Christ] as the Son of man, the second Adam; and so the head of all men: cp. Eph_4:15. The head of the woman] cp. Eph_5:22, Eph_5:23. Woman was socially subordinate to man, and this was to be recognised in her behaviour at public worship. The head of Christ is God] He is subordinate to the Father (a) in His humanity, His mediatorial work, (b) as deriving His nature from the Father: see on 1Co_3:23.

4. Prophesying] i.e. uttering a revelation of God's will. Dishonoureth his head] because he is wearing the mark of dependence.

5. Dishonoureth her head] through not wearing the symbol of dependence. As if she were shaven] i.e. it is as shameful as if her hair were cut off.

6. Be shorn] be like men in this also. A shame] it was the punishment of an adulteress.

7. Image and glory of God] displaying most fully the divine perfections (Gen_1:26). The woman is the glory of the man] The meaning is that while man's authority is derived directly from God, woman's authority is derived from man. She thus receives not immediate. but reflected light, so to speak.

8, 9. Of the man.. for the man] cp. Gen_2:18-23.

10. Power] RV 'a sign of authority,' i.e. that she is under authority.

Because of the angels] The angels were conceived to be present as witnesses of and sharers in Christian worship. The recollection of this should make the worshippers more reverential: cp. 'With angels and archangels.. we laud and magnify thy glorious name.'

11, 12. See outline.

14. Nature] i.e. the natural order of things, and man's sense of its fitness. For such guidance, cp. Rom_2:14.

15. The argument is that God, by providing woman with a natural veil, has taught that she ought to cover her head before Him.

16. Contentious] argumentative; not open to conviction. No such custom] i.e. that women should be unveiled. For similar appeal to the example of other Churches, see on 1Co_4:17; 1Co_7:17; 1Co_14:33-36 : Cp. with the whole passage 1Co_11:3-16, Eph_5:22-24; 1Ti_2:8-15.

17-34. (d) The Proper Observance of the Lord's Supper

Like other societies and guilds in Greek cities, the early Christians used to have a common meal, to which all contributed according to their power, the rich helping their poorer brethren. Being thus a token of brotherly love and Christian fellowship, it was called a 'Love Feast' (Gk. agapê, see Jdg_1:12 RV). In the earliest times the Eucharist was connected with it, as at the institution of the Lord's Supper, from which perhaps this feast was copied. But later on, perhaps in consequence of such disorders as those here mentioned, the two were separated, the Eucharist being held in the morning, the Love Feast in the evening; and the latter gradually died out. Here the two are clearly united, and it is not clear whether 'the Lord's Supper' means the whole feast or the memorial service preceding or following the 'Love Feast.' This feast had been greatly abused by the selfishness and individualism so prevalent at Corinth. Each individual or small clique began at once to consume the food and wine brought by themselves without waiting for the whole community to assemble, and without letting the poorer brethren share with them. What ought to have been an evidence of brotherly love had become an exhibition of selfish greed; and under these circumstances it was impossible to have an orderly and reverent administration of Holy Communion. See also art. 'The Church in the Apostolic Age.' St. Paul in this passage denounces this conduct (1Co_11:17-19). He blames them for the divisions and abuses which desecrated their religious meetings, and shows (1Co_11:20-22) how this spirit is fatal to the proper observance of the Lord's Supper. He reminds them of the institution and meaning of the Eucharist (1Co_11:23-26), of the need of partaking in a right spirit, and the sin and penalty of doing otherwise (1Co_11:27-32). He concludes (1Co_11:33-34) with practical recommendations, which he will supplement when he comes.

17-34. Paraphrase. 'I wrote of praising you for keeping my ordinances, but I cannot praise you with regard to your Church meetings, which, as now conducted, do you more harm than good. (18) First I hear of there being factions among you there, and I think there must be some truth in the report. (19) The existence of such parties serves, at all events, to make known true Christians. (20) But the result of this factious spirit is that in your meetings there is no proper observance of the Lord's Supper; (21) each cares only for himself; some get too little, some too much. (22) Cannot you satisfy your hunger at home? Do you dare to treat with contempt the Church of God and your poorer brethren? (23-25) Call to mind what I taught you, as I myself received it from the Lord, about the most solemn institution of this Sacrament. (26) The observance of it is a constant proclamation of the Lord's death for man till His return; (27) to partake of it unworthily is to be guilty of insult to the Lord's Body and Blood offered for us. (28) Let every one, then, first examine his motives for coming. (29) Any one not realising the presence of the Lord's Body in this Sacrament brings a judgment on himself, (30) hence the prevalence of sickness and death among you. (31, 32) If we would but judge ourselves, we should not be so judged; but this judgment is the Lord's chastening, to save us from final condemnation with the world. (33) Therefore avoid this greedy selfishness, (34) and satisfy your appetite at home, that your meetings may not bring down a judgment upon you. Other matters I will settle when I come.'

17. The Apostle had praised them (1Co_11:2) for keeping his instructions; and had gone on to instruct them further regarding the veiling of women, a subject he had probably not needed to mention before. He now tells them that his praise is qualified. In this] RV 'in giving you this charge.' Ye come together] for Church meetings. Not for the better] which ought to be the result of all religious meetings.

18. In the church] i.e. as always in the NT., not the building, but the assembly; RM 'in congregation.' Divisions] or, 'schisms,' lit. 'splits.' They split up at their meeting into different sets.

19. There must be also heresies] cp. Mat_18:7, 'It must needs be that offences come,' i.e. owing to human weakness and sinfulness.

Heresies] RM 'factions': cp. Gal_5:20. The word (lit. 'choice,' then 'chosen opinions,' or a party holding opinions of their own') is repeatedly used of the sects of the Jews. That they which are approved, etc.] i.e. these parties 'are a magnet attracting unsound and unsettled minds, and leaving genuine believers to stand out approved by their constancy' (Findlay).

20. This is not to eat] RV 'it is not possible to eat.' Their selfishness (1Co_11:21) was fatal to the proper spirit of devotion and brotherly love; it became no more than an ordinary meal. The Lord's supper] This name occurs only here in the NT.; it is uncertain whether it refers here to the Eucharist alone, or to the whole supper, or Love Feast.

21. Every one taketh, etc.] corrected, 1Co_11:33. See introductory remarks on 1Co_11:17-34.

22. Have ye not houses] cp. 1Co_11:34. Despise ye the church of God] i.e. by thinking only of yourselves, and not of the welfare of the whole household of God. Them that have not (RV 'nothing')] i.e. the poor, who have no food to bring. I praise you not] cp. 1Co_11:2. They had not kept this 'tradition he had delivered them.'

23. I have received of the Lord] It is doubtful whether this must mean 'by direct relation,' or whether it may be 'through instruction from others': cp. 1Co_15:3. Probably the facts were learnt from older Christians, but their full significance was directly revealed to him by the Lord. St. Paul contrasts here the solemn circumstances of the institution of the Sacrament with the disorderly scenes accompanying its frequent celebration at Corinth.

Which also I delivered unto you] Instruction about this Sacrament formed part of St. Paul's earliest teaching to his converts. The same night in which he was betrayed] The mention of this calls to mind all the circumstances of the Passion, which we see St. Paul and his readers must have fully known, and so gives force to His last command. The account here of the Institution of the Eucharist agrees closely with that given by St. Luke, who may have been familiar with the words St. Paul used when consecrating; and differs slightly from the accounts of St. Matthew and St. Mark. The one phrase found only here is, 'This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.'

24. Take, eat] RV omits. In the MSS which have this reading the copyists probably supplied it from St. Matthew's Gospel, for the sake of securing uniformity in the accounts of the institution.

Is broken for you] RV 'is for you.' St. Luke says, 'which is given for you.' This do in remembrance of me] So Lk, not Mt, Mk.

This do] i.e. all that was done then—' Take, bless, break, distribute,' eat. In remembrance of me] or, 'as a memorial of Me' and of My atoning death (1Co_11:26)—one great aspect of the Eucharist.

25. When he had supped] RV 'after supper.' The bread was taken and distributed by our Lord during the Passover feast: cp. Mat_26:26 the cup was given at the close of the feast, and may have been the ordinary cup of thanksgiving taken at the conclusion of the Passover feast, set apart by Christ to this special purpose henceforth. This cup is the new testament (RV 'covenant') in my blood] So Lk, Mt, Mk, 'this is my blood of the covenant.' Christ's Blood establishes a new covenant between God and man, one of forgiveness and grace: cp. Heb_8:6-13; Heb_9:15. The cup is a seal or assurance of our being included within this covenant.

26. Ye do show the Lord's death] The celebration is 'a living sermon.'

27. Eat.. and drink] RV 'eat.. or drink.' This suggests a possible interval between the two: see on 1Co_11:25. Unworthily] i.e. carelessly, irreverently, as if an ordinary meal, regardless of its sacred meaning. Guilty of the body and blood] i.e. he sins against them; by insulting the Sign, he insults the thing signified.

28. Let a man examine (RV 'prove') himself] i.e. see that he understands the sacrament, and is in a fit moral condition to receive it.

29. Unworthily] RV omits here, and for not discerning reads, 'if he discern not the body,' i.e. if he does not realise that it is not mere bread, but the Lord's Body that is given under the symbol, and if while he partakes of the bread he does not also receive inwardly of Christ's spirit and increase in consciousness of union with Him. Damnation] RY 'judgment,' not final condemnation, but God's chastening punishment intended to bring to repentance, and so save from the final condemnation of the ungodly world (1Co_11:32). So 1Co_11:31, 1Co_11:34, where RY reads 'judgment' for 'condemnation.'

30. For this cause] Their irreverence had led God to punish them by disease and death (sleep, i.e. 'in death'). They had been visited with sickness, and St. Paul was enlightened by God to see in this the punishment of this irreverence. It is possible, however, that the words may be used in the spiritual sense, and may refer to the moral condition of the Corinthians.

31. Judge ourselves] realise our true condition.

33, 34. These vv. correct abuses described 1Co_11:21, 1Co_11:22.

St. Paul regards the Eucharist as, (1) a means of communion with Christ (1Co_10:16-17); (2) a sign of brotherhood by which all Christians are united together (1Co_10:17); (3) a memorial of Christ and of His death for man (1Co_11:24-26); and he records Christ's words which describe it as (4) the Seal of the New Covenant. From these chapters we get the phrases 'Holy Communion,' 'Lord's Table,' 'Lord's Supper.'

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1. Followers—This verse belongs to the close of the last chapter, and should be read in continuation.

Of Christ—He would have followers, not as being original and independent, but as he was imitator and follower of the divine model.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Followers of me; rather, imitators of me; follow herein my example, as I follow Christ"s. What Christ"s example was, in that he too "pleased not himself," he sets forth in Rom_15:1-3; and the general principle of self abnegation for the sake of others in Php_2:4-8. This verse ought to be included in ch. 10. It sums up the whole argument, and explains the long digression of ch. 9. As I also am of Christ. This limits the reference to his own example. I only ask you to imitate me in points in which I imitate Christ.

Vers. 1, 2.

Imitation and commendation.

ye followers of me, even as I also am or Christ. Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you." In these words we have

I THE PRINCIPLE ON WHICH THE CHARACTERS OF MOST MEN ARE FORMED. "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ." Men are imitative beings, and, from a law of their nature, those whom they most admire and with whom they most associate, they become like in spirit and in character. The request of Paul here, at first sight, seems somewhat arrogant: "Be ye followers of me." No man has a right to make such an unqualified claim on another. Hence Paul puts the limitation. "Even as I also am of Christ." The apostle undoubtedly refers to the preceding verses, m which he speaks of himself as not seeking his own pleasure or profit, but that of others. This Christ did. We are told that he "pleased not himself." He means to say, "Be like me in this respect, as I in this respect resemble Christ." Here is the principle that should regulate our imitation of men; imitate them just so far as they resemble Christ. Children should not imitate their parents, pupils should not imitate their teachers, congregations should not imitate their ministers, only so far as they resemble Christ.

II A COMMENDATION OF MERIT WHICH MANY ARE RELUCTANT TO RENDER. "Now I raise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as delivered them to you." In some things, if not in all, some of the Corinthian Christians pleased Paul, did what he considered right they remembered him, and practically attended to his directions. There was much in them with which he could find fault, and did find fault, but so far as they did the proper thing he praises them. To render generously credit where credit is due is the characteristic of a great soul, but one which others have not. I take it to be a duty to render credit where credit is due; but how seldom is this attended to I In domestic matters how it is neglected! A wife will go on loyally and lovingly attending to the wants and wishes of her husband, and perhaps not from one year to another does she receive from him one word of hearty commendation. So with servants and masters: the employer, when he has paid the stipulated stipend to the most useful of his employes, feels he has done his duty, and gives not a word of commendation. So with ministers and their congregations. How many ministers are there in every Church, who give the best fruits of their cultivated minds, and, by their sweating brain and agonizing prayers, produce discourses every week admirably suited to serve the highest interests of their congregations; and yet seldom receive one generous word of hearty commendation for all their toils] Miserable criticisms they will get in abundance, but nothing else. Verily, I believe that no social service is more important, and at the same time more neglected, than the yielding of a generous commendation to the truly commendable.

HOMILIES BY C. LIMPSCOMB. Vers. 1-16.

Apostolic injunctions with regard to Church services.

Though the Corinthians deserved blame in some things, they were entitled to praise in that they had generally observed St. Paul"s directions. Despite their departure from certain of his instructions, he could say, "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ;" by which he recognized that they had discernment enough to see the Lord Jesus in his personal and official character, and a sufficient brotherly sympathy to imitate his example. His commendation is hearty: "Ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you." With this preface, short but conciliatory, he takes up his first topic, viz. the headship of man in the natural and spiritual order, established by Providence and maintained by the Spirit in the Church. In his writings, natural facts are ever reappearing in new and diviner connections, as if they had undergone a silent and wonderful transfiguration, and had been glorified in light and beauty. Instinct had always acknowledged the subordination of woman to man, nor, indeed, is the instinct of sex conceivable in the absence of this element in its nature. But St. Paul is careful to lay his doctrinal foundation on the fact "that the head of every man is Christ," assured that the ultimate strength of all truth is in its spirituality. Be it a law, a principle, a motive, an end, "other foundation can no man lay." Critics may entertain widely different estimates of the man, may be as broadly separated as M. Renan and Dr. Farrar, and yet none can deny that St. Paul had this incomparable advantage, namely, a great centre, from which he saw all objects that engaged his attention. His method is fully brought out in the third verse: the head of the man is Christ; the head of the woman is the man; the head of Christ is God a statement clear, compact, exhaustive. One moment he is dealing with the relationship between man and woman: Eden rises to his view, the sleeping Adam wakening to find Eve at his side, "the woman of the man," and "the glory of the man;" and the next moment he is contemplating the Trinity in its economic and immanent relations. Yet from this sublime height of Christ"s exaltation at the right hand of the Father there is no break when he descends to discuss woman"s behaviour in Church assemblies. The principle involved keeps him on ground far above dress and decorum as such, and, indeed, he will not touch the matter at all until he has set forth the dignity of its associations. Let us be careful, then, lest we err by supposing that St. Paul looked upon dress and decorum, in this instance, as simply conventionalities based on whims of taste and caprices of opinion. Conventionalities they were in a certain sense, but conventionalities to be respected and observed. In brief, they were customs that had a moral meaning. If a woman appeared in public unveiled, she was deemed immodest. To wear a veil was a sign of womanly delicacy, and hence, if she went to a public assembly without her veil, she acted shamelessly. To be consistent, argues St. Paul, "let her also be shorn," and so assume the mark of a disreputable woman. A woman acting in this way sets public opinion at defiance; and as public opinion in many things is public conscience, and as such the aggregated moral feeling of a community, no woman could do this thing and not shock all right sensibility. Besides, the veil is a sign of subordination and dependence. Refusing to use this covering of the head was a mark of insubordination and independence. A symbol it was, but to cast off the symbol was to repudiate the thing signified. This was not all. If uncomely, it was also unnatural; "for her hair is given her for a covering." The argument has one passage (ver. 10) which is confessedly difficult to understand, but this does not detract an iota from the general directness and force. St. Paul"s purpose is unmistakable to set forth the order of God"s economy in the relative positions of man and woman to each other, and the entire unity of their relation to God in Christ. Man"s authority is guarded against all excess, and woman"s dependence is beautified by delicacy, retiringness, and trustful love. So high an estimate is put on her character and attitude, that even her personal appearance, as to attire and demeanour, is a matter of moment, involving the honour and happiness of her husband, and intimately blended with the conservatism of society and the influence of the Church. Nor is the apostle"s manner of appeal to be overlooked. A great truth may be conveyed to the mind, while nevertheless the mode of its communication, left to haphazard impulse, or, forsooth, in downright contempt of the mind"s laws, may work an amount of harm for which the truth itself is no compensation. Rest assured that so discerning a man as St. Paul, whose eye took its seeing from sensibility no less than from reason, would not violate manner when he was discussing the worth of manners. Rest assured, too, that he would seek a very firm basis for the logic of his judgment. That such was the fact, "Judge in yourselves" demonstrates. At the very moment that he distinctly recognizes public opinion as public conscience, and counsels deference to its dicta as divinely authoritative, he yet addresses human intuitions. "There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." No other truth save this could have availed Elihu when he came to the perplexed Job and his well meaning but very mistaken friends, and, as a mediator, prepared the way to close the controversy. No other truth than the "spirit in man" and its "inspiration of the Almighty" can qualify any man to mediate where intellectual conflicts interblend with the moral and spiritual instincts. Inspiration in its highest form makes no war on inspiration in its lower form, since the inspiration that gives original truth, and that openness and sympathy which receive it, are both from God. St. Paul preached a gospel that commended itself to every man"s conscience in the sight of God, and he acted in the same frame of mind when he treated of decorum and showed wherein manliness and womanliness consisted. Customs and habits vary; he goes back to the sense of custom and habit rermanent in the soul. He is not afraid of human instincts. Although he knows how they miss their way and sadly blunder in working out themselves through the mists and clouds of the intellect, yet trust them he will, nor can he suffer others to disparage their office. This inward consciousness the Holy Spirit acknowledges, and to it he brings light and warmth, in order that the intuitive judgment may be supplied with the conditions of its best activity.

It is, indeed, a part of our fallen nature, but, notwithstanding that, it is a Divine remnant, and only awaits God"s voice to utter its response. The dark lumps of coal when dug from the earth give no sign of the sunbeams hidden in them, but, on being ignited, they attest their origin. Therefore, argues the apostle, "judge in yourselves," since there is no knowledge of God unaccompanied by a knowledge of ourselves. Only let your judgment be in the Lord; for only in him can man and woman be seen in the perfection of their mutuality. After all, then, may we not say, in view of this argument no less than of all his methods of thinking, that St. Paul is peculiar among the apostles by his insight into the natural economy of the universe, the apostle of nature as well as of grace, because each was a portion of the same vast scheme of Providence? According to his view, the human race was in Christ from the beginning, and Adam"s federal headship took its whole meaning from the pre-existence of Christ, as the Creator of man. L.

HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON Ver. 1.

Imitation.

The personal feelings of the apostle come out in these Epistles to the Corinthians perhaps more than in any other of his writings. This may well have been because at Corinth his authority was questioned, and other teachers were by some exalted as his rivals or superiors. That he should resent such treatment from those who were under peculiar obligations to him we can well understand; and it is very natural that he should be led all the more boldly to vindicate his apostolic character and to assert his apostolic authority. There is self confidence of a just and warrantable kind in the admonition and challenge of this language: "Be ye imitators of me.

I THE PRINCIPLE TO WHICH THE APOSTLE HERE APPEALS IMITATION.

1. It is a principle natural to all mankind. Most conspicuous is it in the case of children and young people, and in the case of the uncivilized and

2. untutored, who cannot easily acquire knowledge through symbols, but who learn arts with great facility through imitation.

3. Its range of operation is as extensive as the nature of man. We trace it in exercise in the bodily life, for multitudes of acts and of arts are acquired by those who carefully copy the proceedings of others. We trace it in the mental life: ways of thinking, of regarding life generally and one"s fellow men in particular, moral judgments and habits, all are owing largely to imitation.

1. It is of set purpose employed in all education; for the discipline and culture of the young is almost dependent upon the operation of this interesting and most powerful principle of human nature.

II THE GREAT AND GENERAL USE WHICH CHRISTIANITY MAKES OF THIS PRINCIPLE.

1. In the Holy Scriptures, especially of the New Testament, men are summoned to be followers, imitators of God, in all his moral perfections. It is represented that the excellences which are supreme and glorious in him may inspire us with the desire and resolve to copy and to acquire them in our measure for ourselves.

2. Jesus Christ is set before us as the especial Object of our reverence, as the highest Model for us to study and to imitate. It is possible that, through our reverence for him as our Divine Saviour, we may lose sight of the fact that he is also our human Exemplar. We are summoned to grow up in all things unto him.

3. Yet this grace of imitation is to be ours, through our response to the love of Jesus and our participation in the Spirit of Jesus. It is not a mechanical, but a spiritual, intelligent, living process. We must love with the love of admiration, sympathy, congeniality, in order that we may be changed into the same image.

III THE SPECIAL APPLICATION PAUL MAKES OF THIS PRINCIPLE.

1. Religion permits us to study human models of excellence and to aim at conformity with such. Thus the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews sets before his readers illustrious examples of faith, as a practical and powerful principle governing and inspiring human nature and life. And here Paul requires of the Corinthians that they should be imitators of him. How many

2. Christians in all ages have been fired with this noble ambition! And how wonderfully has it proved for the advantage of the Church and of the world that it has been so!

3. The limitation set to this principle: "Even as I also am of Christ." This was an acknowledgment of the Lord"s supremacy; in copying Paul, the Corinthians were only to be copying Christ, as it were, at one remove.

1. The extent to which this imitation was designed to go. Surely they might, and we may, be imitators of the apostle, in his love to Christ, in his devotion to Christ"s cause, in his affliction for Christ"s people, in his obedience to Christ"s laws, in his willingness to suffer for Christ"s sake, in his wise forbearance with the infirmities of the brethren, and in his overflowing and very practical brotherly kindness and charity. In these respects it is not possible to follow Paul without at the same time following Christ. T.

HOMILIES BY E. HURNDALL Vers. 1-16.

Decency in public worship.

When we appear before God we should observe the greatest propriety. Externals should not be lost sight of, for they are significant. Often they are indicative of inward condition. The apostle had occasion to blame the women of Corinth for laying aside the veil the mark of modesty and subjection in public assemblies. On the ground of the abolition of distinction of sex in Christ, they claimed equality in every respect with men, and the right to appear and act as men did. Whilst women, they would be as men. Equality as believers they had a right to claim, but they forgot their "subjection in point of order, modesty, and seemliness. When women leave their proper sphere, it is never to rise, but to fall. Men women are failures. In the apostle"s argument valuable truths are enunciated.

I HE DEFINES MAN"S POSITION.

1. Man is the head of the woman. (Ver. 3.) Woman is subordinate to man, is largely dependent upon him. He is her natural guide, defender, supporter. Authority lies with him, not with her. "I suffer not a woman to usurp authority over the man for Adam was first formed, then Eve". (1Ti_2:12, 1Ti_2:13) Woman is the "weaker vessel". (1Pe_3:7) She is to be "in subjection". (1Co_14:34) This is after the Divine order, and any subversal of it is sure to lead to injurious results.

1. The head of man is Christ. (Ver. 3.) Man is not a monarch; he is subordinate to the God Man as his Head. Man can only act aright as head of the woman when he recognizes Christ as his Head. The apostle does not mean to intimate that Christ is not the Head of the woman as of the man. He is pointing out the order in the Divine economy, and "by the term

2. "head" he expresses the next immediate relation sustained." Man is subordinate to Christ; woman is subordinate, though not in the same sense, to man as well as to Christ. To further illustrate the Divine order, the apostle states that:

3. The head of Christ is God. That is, of Christ the God Man. There is nothing here which conflicts with the doctrine of the divinity of Christ or of the equality of the Son with the Father. Rather is there here additional evidence of the former, since the distinction between the position of man and woman obtains where there is identity of nature. Christ is here spoken of as he assumed "the form of a servant." Christ in his mediatorial capacity is lower than the Father. (Joh_14:28)

1. Man is the Image and Glory of God. (Ver. 7.) Man was made in the likeness of God. (Gen_1:26) How great is the dignity of human nature! But how that dignity is lost when God is blotted out of a man! How eagerly should fallen creatures seek recovery, that the blurred image may be restored to its original beauty, and the impaired glory made once more lustrous! Through the Son of man, the ideal Man declared to be "the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person this may be effected. The apostle does not intend to convey that woman is not in many respects the image and glory of God, but that man is this first and directly, woman subsequently and indirectly. Man represents the authority of God; he is the ruler, the head.

II HE DEFINES WOMAN"S POSITION.

1. She is subject to man as her head. She sprang from him (ver. 8). She was created for him (ver. 9). Still, there is mutual dependence: "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man" (ver. 11). "In the Lord this is of Divine appointment. And man and woman constitute complete humanity one supplying what the other lacks; and thus forming in Christ "the Bride," the Church redeemed by his blood. And further, although at first woman sprang from man, now the man is of the woman (ver. 12). But "all things are of God man and woman. Man has a real but qualified supremacy; so qualified as to save woman from any humiliation, and to allow her a position of peculiar dignity and beauty.

2. She is the glory of the man. (Ver. 7.) Woman is not directly the glory of God; she does not directly represent God as the head of creation she rather is man"s representative, as man is God"s. She is the glory of man directly, of God indirectly. Man is the sun, woman the moon. (Gen_37:9)

III HIS CONCLUSIONS AS TO PROPRIETY OF DRESS IN PUBLIC WORSHIP.

1. That man should not have his head covered. The covering would indicate subjection, which, in relation to those joining with man in public worship, was not man"s true condition. There he appeared as "the image and glory of God," representing the Divine headship, and to assume the badge of subjection would be to "dishonour his head." This may mean to dishonour his Own head by placing upon it something unsuitable, or to dishonour Christ, the Head of man, who has placed man in his position of honour. We should not usurp a higher position than God has appointed for we should not take a lower. Our best place is where God places us.

2. That woman should have her head covered. The veil was a recognition of subordination and an indication of modesty. To discard it was to claim man"s position and thus to dishonour man, her head or to dishonour her own head by depriving it of a mark of propriety and even of chastity. For by discarding the head covering a woman put herself in the class of the disreputable. It was but a carrying out of the principle involved for a woman to have her head shaved (vers. 5, 6), which was sometimes done in the case of those who had forfeited their honour, and became thus a brand of infamy. Thus a woman snatching at the position of man would descend far below her own. An apparent rise is sometimes a very real fail. The apostle enforces his argument by:

(1) An appeal to nature (vers. 14, 15). Paul evidently thinks that there is accord between the kingdom of nature and of grace. Both are from one hand and one mind, and conflicts between the two may be very apparent, but can never be real. Nature gives the man short hair and the woman long; here is a natural distinction which should be observed, and which indicates that woman specially needs the head covering. Or by nature the apostle may mean what obtains among men who are not instructed by revelation. Among many of the heathen the wearing of the hair long by men was ridiculed, but long hair for women was generally recognized as appropriate.

(2) The presence of angels in Christian assemblies (ver. 16). Earth looks on, but heaven also. Woman should have the symbol of power, of subjection to man, upon her head, because any usurpation of improper position or flaunting boldness would be offensive to these heavenly visitors.

(3) Apostolic authority (ver. 10). Where reasoning fails, authority must utter her voice. Paul always preferred to convince rather than to compel. But he possessed the right to determine when the contentious persevered in contention. The regulation was according to the mind of an inspired apostle, and was observed by Churches founded by himself or other like minded leaders. In estimating the teaching of the passage, we must discriminate between the necessary and the accidental. The principle is that women should be so attired as to indicate, or at all events so as not to conflict with, their rightful position. Amongst those to whom the apostle wrote, the veil was the symbol of modesty and subordination. Because women in Western Churches are not so attired, it does not follow that they are acting antagonistically to the apostle"s precept, though it will be admitted by most that the preposterous headgear of many female worshippers, in our own land calls loudly for reform, and is frequently an outrage upon all propriety and a sarcasm upon womanly modesty. I do not understand that the apostle has here specially in view the praying and preaching of women in public assemblies this he deals with further on in the Epistle; (1Co_14:34, etc.) but he is now insisting upon what is appropriate in the attire of woman (and incidentally of man) on public occasions. His primary reference is to public worship, and surely when we come to "appear before God," we ought to be most specially anxious that everything about us shall be decent and in order. Whilst nothing that is outward can compensate for absence of the inward, that which is external is often an index of the internal, and has its influence upon the internal. H.

HOMILIES BY R. TUCK

Ver. 1.

The limitation set on the following of good men.

me, even as I also am of Christ." The apostle calls to the same personal following, without the qualification, in 1Co_4:16. This first verse of ch. 11. should be the closing verse of ch. 10., as it really completes the exhortation which is there given. "The apostle refers to his own example, but only to, lead his readers up to Christ as the great example of One who "pleased not himself", (Rom_15:8) His own example is valuable inasmuch as it is the example of one who is striving to conform to the image of his Lord." Recall David"s very striking expression in; Psa_16:2, Psa_16:8, "My goodness extendeth not to thee (O God) only to the saints that are in the earth," We consider

I THE IMPULSE OF SAINTLY EXAMPLES; or, expressed in simple terms, of recognized goodness in our fellow men. Distinguish between the life missions of talented men and of good men. The "talented" may seem to be out of our range, the "good" never are. The weakest, poorest, humblest among us may be "good." God has taken care to provide the saintly ones in every age. He sets somme such in every sphere of life. We all know of men and women better than ourselves who act on and inspire us. They exert these influences; they persuade us that

(1) goodness is beautiful;

(2) that goodness is attainable.

Then it is the bounden duty of all men and women who fear God and love the Lord Jesus Christ to culture personal character, become saintly, and gain the power to witness for Christ by a holy example.

II THE IMPERFECTION OF ALL SAINTLY EXAMPLES. None of them are perfect and complete. It is human to err. All the saintly ones fall short of the full standard of humanity as shown to us in Christ. This point is suggestive of abundant illustration taken:

1. From Scripture. There is only one man mentioned in Scripture who even seems to have been perfect. It is Enoch; and we cannot be sure concerning him, seeing that the records of his life are gathered up into only one or two brief sentences. Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Elijah, David, etc., are all frail,

2. fallible men, whose very sides of goodness and strength are at times exaggerated so as to become evil.

3. From experience and observation. We know that those who seem to us most heroic and saintly are deeply sensible of their own failings and shortcomings, and we cannot have to do with them long before finding occasion for the exercise of our charity in relation to their conduct. Even the Apostle Paul could not permit us to make himself our standard. He knew too well what hastiness of temper sometimes overcame him, and how greatly he had to struggle with the body of sin. We can be followers of no man, if he stands alone. We can only follow a fellow man as he may be in some point a reflection of and suggestion of Christ, the manifested God. Consequently only Christ can be our absolute Exempler. We can be followers of him; we may put the whole force of our natures into following him; we may let no fellow man stand before him. Show that the enemies of Christ could have easily gained their end if they could have found a stain upon his moral character, a word spoken or a thing done which the conscience of mankind could distinctly recognize as unworthy of ideal manhood. None such have ever been found during the nearly nineteen centuries of Christianity. The things usually made into moral charges are abundantly capable of explanations that redound to Christ"s honour, or belong to the mystery of his Divine birth and mission. But, while we admit that no man can be to us a full exempler, we may recognize that good men do catch measures of the goodness of the Christ whom they serve, and are examples for us so far as they are Christ like. It is possible for us to go a little further even than this, and admit a certain special and peculiar power upon us exerted by purely human examples, which, by reason of their very frailty, tone and temper and shadow for us, and in adaptation to our weakness, the over splendour of the Christly and Divine. It is most practically helpful to us that we may be followers of such a brother man as St. Paul, so far as he follows Christ and reflects the full Christliness with a human tempering suited to our feeble sight. Then it follows that what St. Paul thus is to us we may be to others. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

saved

(See Scofield "Rom 1:16").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Conduct in Public Worship.

A preliminary admonition:

v. 1. Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

v. 2. Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things and keep the ordinances as I delivered them to you.

The opening verse really belongs to the previous chapter, since it refers to the example given by Paul in making use of the proper Christian tact under all circumstances. Through his own pattern he points his readers to that of his Master and theirs: Imitators of me become, even as I of Christ. He wants them to follow the example which he has set before them by his conduct, in which he renounced all selfish interests for the sake of gaining souls for Christ. But incidentally he does not want them to become attached to his person, but they should recognize in his conduct the influence of the exalted Christ; they should imitate him in so far as he set forth the image of Christ before them. This would involve time and constant application, since a Christian is ever in the making, but their model was such as to incite them to emulation, to stimulate their Christian ambition at all times. And in order to inspire them to their most persistent efforts, the apostle does not hesitate to give the Corinthian Christians all credit for their attitude in certain matters: But I praise you that you remember all things which were given by me, that you have been keeping the remembrance of me in all things, and that you have been observing the instructions just as I have delivered them to you. The Corinthians, though in general far behind the apostle in self-denial, were nevertheless in general mindful of the divine ordinances which he had delivered to them. These instructions, 2Th 2:15; 2Th 3:6, which were transmitted both orally and by letter, concerned doctrine and life, and included also customs of worship and ceremonies. Although the latter are by no means equivalent to the former, they nevertheless serve for the edification of the Church, and their adoption may be advisable even at this time. Mark: The Pope has no hold in this passage for his insistence upon the value of oral tradition, for the word is used in the Bible only for the immediate instructions of inspired men and never for a conglomeration of tenets concerning which the Pope claims the right of sole arbiter.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 11:26

I. It is a very wonderful fact, very startling at first sight to those who have not steadily considered it, that the chief ordinance of Christianity is the commemoration and proclamation of a death. Festivals of the nativity, of the resurrection, of the ascension, however beautiful may be their meaning and benign their influence, are at any rate not of Divine institution. The feast which Christ instituted is the proclamation to all ages of His death. Most surely our Lord must have intended to indicate thereby that feature of His work which He conceived to be in most vital relation to the accomplishment of His great hope for man. The death rather than the life, the life as looking on to the death and to all that was to spring from it, and the death as the most fruitful act and the most powerful instrument of His love, must be the chief fountain of peace, joy, and hope for mankind.

II. If this be true, if the Lord’s death be the most luminous, the most blessed, the most quickening act of His life, truly and most deeply a birth into the eternal sphere, it casts most beautiful light upon our life and our death. The man who knew most deeply God’s counsel about life, whose human life grew richer, grander, more pregnant with a glorious hope as the earthly element dropped piece-meal into the tomb, made this his aspiration and his prayer—"That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death." No lives are so drearily cheerless as those which have been successful in the sole pursuit of gold; no future so blank as theirs, no eternity so dread. Look round on your supremely successful men. Estimate the number of rays of pure joy that shine upon their hearts and break the dreary gloom of their lives, and compare them with the man whose life is one deep-voiced hymn of triumph—"I thank my God, through Jesus Christ my Lord," because I have learnt from Him, through His death, to call that life, and that only, which is eternal.

J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon, p. 219.

References: 1Co 11:26.—G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, p. 207; W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 356; S. Minton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 42; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 283; vol. iv., p. 224; vol. vi., p. 83; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 228; F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 111; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual, p. 151; Sermons on the Catechism, p. 242.

1Co 11:27

The absence of teaching on the subject of the Holy Communion in the Epistles is no argument that the Holy Communion was an unimportant part of Divine worship in apostolic days. It only bears witness to the fact, which we know very well from other sources, that the Holy Communion was that part of a Christian’s duty and privilege in early days which he was least likely to neglect. So far as I have observed, there are only two places in which direct reference is made to the subject; they are both in the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians.

I. In the first the circumstances were these. Some of the Corinthians had been induced to take part in idol worship: at least, they had done so indirectly. They were not easy in their consciences about the matter; they fancied that after all it might possibly be wrong, and they applied to St. Paul for a determination of the difficulty. St. Paul solved the difficulty by explaining to them that, as in joining in Holy Communion they really became partakers of Christ, so in joining in an idol feast they really became partakers of idolatry. St. Paul was led to speak of the Holy Communion because the Corinthians had done something which they ought not to have done, because they had brought disgrace on their Christian name, and because the privilege which they enjoyed as partakers of Christ in the Holy Communion was the best proof possible of the manner in which their Christian name had been disgraced.

II. How came it that the Apostle wrote the latter part of chap. xi.? The reason is obvious enough. The most horrible abuses had crept into the Corinthian Church: men did not discern the Lord’s body; they treated His table as a common table, made it a table of revelry; they ate and drank unworthily, and so received condemnation to themselves. It is this horrible profanity to which we are indebted for St. Paul’s views on the subject of the Lord’s Supper.

III. When he did take the subject in hand how did he treat it? He went back at once to the first institution of the Holy Sacrament by the Lord Himself. He deals in no harsh and severe language; he simply recounts the history of what our blessed Lord did on the eve of His passion. He put more faith in the recital of this simple tale than in any strong language he could use. You can add nothing which will give the argument more strength, and you can find no better commentary upon the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.

Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, 5th series, p. 335.

References: 1Co 11:27.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 96. 1Co 11:28.—R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, 4th series, p. 40; Sermons on the Catechism, p. 285. 1Co 11:29.—G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons to English Congregations in India, p. 207; Church of England Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 183; R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 350. 1Co 11:30.—G. Salmon, Gnosticism and Agnosticism, p. 100. 1Co 11:31.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 18. 1Co 11:31, 1Co 11:32.—E. L. Hull, Sermons, 1st series, p. 216. 1Co 11:32.—E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 50.

1Co 11:33

I. Tarry for the young. Do not consider that religion consists all in correct thinking, defined belief, mature experience, manly and womanly strength. It has its beginnings in youthful struggles, in wonder, in simplicity, in teachableness, in sorrowing, in longing, in following. And you cannot look for the steady tread of those who have been long in the way in the case of those who are just coming into it; you cannot expect them to keep up with the manly and the strong. "Tarry one for another."

II. Tarry for the weak. We ought to be as the weak themselves, and carry them along with us as we go. We ought to be willing to be carried if we are the weak, and thus we ought to tarry one for another. Some are fainting, but when they have rested awhile they will come. Some are hungry; when they are fed they will be stronger. Some have been sick; nothing can recruit them but time and gracious weather and kindly nourishment.

III. Tarry for the doubting. Not for the captious and the insincere, but for those who are honestly and earnestly seeking for light, A man may doubt while he loves the truth, but in this case he is sure to be led into it in the end. Tarry for him.

IV. Tarry for the stricken, for the afflicted, and the sorrowful, and those that are wounded in spirit. As the great Sufferer, now the great Conqueror, waits for all, let us wait for one another.

V. There is a sublimer waiting yet—of the whole Church for the whole world. The Church can never submit herself to the world, but the world shall ground its weapons and hold out the hand of friendship to the Church, and the conciliation shall be perfect, followed by no severance or estrangement.

A. Raleigh, The Way to the City, p. 34.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The apostle had in the foregoing chapters, by many cogent arguments, exhorted the Corinthians to deny themselves the lawful use of their Christian liberty, for the benefit of their brethren; to enforce which argument he propounds to them his own example in this verse, Be ye followers of me even as I follow Christ.

Where note, 1. The duty recommended to their practice; namely, to follow their spiritual guide: Be ye followers of me. It is the standing duty of a people whom God honours with the enjoyment of faithful spiritual guides, to follow their faith, and to imitate their exemplary conversation; the graces of all Christians in general, but of the ministers of the gospel in particular, whether living or dead, are patterns set forth to the world for their careful imitation: and for omission herein they must certainly become accountable to God.

Note, 2. With what great modesty and caution, with what restriction and limitation, St. Paul propounds his own example to the Corinthian’s view: Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ.

As if he had said, "If at any time you find me, your spiritual guide, stepping aside, and walking unanswerably to that uniform pattern of holy and humble obedience, which the Lord Jesus set both before you and me, in his own examplary life, be sure you decline my example, and follow not my footsteps."

Learn hence, That the best of ministers, and the best of men, being but men, our imitation of them must be an universal, but a limited imitation; we must follow pastors, teachers, nay, apostles themselves, no farther than they follow Christ, their infallible Lord and master: Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1. “Be ye imitators of me as I am of Christ.” Not even an apostle enjoyed a right to human leadership, only so far as he was in harmony with Christ. Hence the utter futility and glaring preposterosity of all human leadership. All we can do is to walk in the footprints of Jesus, and shout aloud:

“Follow me as I follow the Lord.” The clergy men in the fallen churches have in all ages sought to lead the people, and demanded their obedience. Entire sanctification saves us all from human leadership. Hence it has been antagonized by the ruling clergy, who have usurped the prerogative of the Holy Ghost and constituted themselves leaders in all ages.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ . [In all matters that were indifferent Paul pleased others, rather than himself ( 1Co_9:19; 1 Cor 9:22 ; Rom_15:2 ). He did not needlessly trample upon the prejudices of any, whether in the church or out, and he counseled the Corinthians to follow his example in this, as he himself followed the example of Christ in thus showing mercy and consideration-- Rom_15:1-3 ]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1 Corinthians Chapter 11

Observe here the way in which the apostle grounded his replies with regard to details on the highest and fundamental principles. This is the manner of Christianity (compare Tit 2:10-14). He introduces God and charity, putting man in connection with God Himself. In that which follows we have also a striking example of this. The subject is a direction for women.

They were not to pray without having their heads covered. To decide this question, simply of what was decent and becoming, the apostle lays open the relationship and the order of the relationship subsisting between the depositories of God’s glory and Himself, [10] and brings in the angels, to whom Christians, as a spectacle set before them, should present that of order according to the mind of God. The head of the woman is the man; that of man is Christ; of Christ, God. This is the order of power, ascending to Him who is supreme. And then, with respect to their relationship to each other, he adds, the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man. And as to their relations with other creatures, intelligent and conscious of the order of the ways of God, they were to be covered because of the angels, who are spectators of the ways of God in the dispensation of redemption, and of the effect which this marvellous intervention was to produce. Elsewhere (see note below) it is added, in reference to the history of that which took place, the man was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, transgressed first. Let us add-from the passage we are considering-that, as to creation, the man was not taken from the woman, but the woman from the man. Nevertheless the man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord; but all things are of God;-and all this to regulate a question of modesty as to women, when in praying they were before the eyes of others.[11] The result-in that which concerns the details-is that the man was to have his head uncovered, because he represented authority, and in this respect was invested (as to his position) with the glory of God, of whom he was the image. The woman was to have her head covered, as a token that she was subject to the man (her covering being a token of the power to which she was subject). Man however could not do without woman, nor woman without man. Finally the apostle appeals to the order of creation, according to which a woman’s hair, her glory and ornament, shewed, in contrast with the hair of man, that she was not made to present herself with the boldness of man before all. Given as a veil, her hair shewed that modesty, submission-a covered head that hid itself, as it were, in that submission and in that modesty-was her true position, her distinctive glory. Moreover, if any one contested the point, it was a custom which neither the apostle nor the assemblies allowed.

Observe also here that, however man may have fallen, divine order in creation never loses its value as the expression of the mind of God. Thus also in James, man is said to be created in the image of God. As to his moral condition, he needs (now that he has knowledge of good and of evil) to be born again, created in righteousness and in true holiness, that he may be the image of God as now revealed through Christ; but his position in the world, as the head and centre of all things-which no angel has been-is the idea of God Himself, as well as the position of the woman, the companion of his glory but subject to him; an idea which will be gloriously accomplished in Christ, and with respect to the woman in the assembly; but which is true in itself, being the constituted order of God, and always right as such: for the ordinance of God creates order, although, no doubt, His wisdom and His perfection are displayed in it.

The reader will remark, that this order in creation, as well as that which is established in the counsels of God in respect of the woman, of the man, of Christ, and of God Himself, and the fact that men-at least Christians under redemption-are a spectacle to angels (compare 1Co 4:9), subjects which here I can only indicate, have the highest interest. [12] The apostle afterwards touches upon the subject of their assemblies. In 1Co 11:2 he had praised them; but on this point he could not do so (1Co 11:17). Their assemblies manifested a spirit of division. This division concerned the distinction between the rich and the poor, but, as it seems, gave rise to others: at least others were necessary to make manifest those who were really approved of God. Now these divisions had the character of sects; that is to say, particular opinions divided Christians of the same assembly, of the assembly of God, into schools; they were hostile to each other, although they took the Lord’s supper together-if indeed it could be said that they took it together. Jealousies that had arisen between the rich and the poor tended to foster the sectarian division. If, I observed, it could be said that they broke bread together; for each one took care to eat his own supper before the others did so, and some were hungry while others took their fill. This was not really eating the Lord’s supper.

The apostle, guided by the Holy Ghost, seizes the opportunity to declare to them the nature and the import of this ordinance. We may notice here, that the Lord had taught it him by an especial revelation-proof of the interest that belongs to it, [13] and that it is a part of the Lord’s mind in the entire Christian walk, to which He attaches importance in view of our moral condition, and of the state of our spiritual affections individually, as well as those of the assembly. In the joy of Christian liberty, amid the powerful effects of the presence of the Holy Ghost-of the gifts by which He manifested Himself in the assembly, the Lord’s death, His broken body, was brought to mind, and, as it were, made present to faith as the basis and foundation of everything. This act of love, this simple and solemn deed, weak and empty in appearance, preserved all its importance. The Lord’s body had been offered for us! to which the Holy Ghost Himself was to bear witness, and which was to maintain all its importance in the Christian’s heart, and to be the foundation and centre of the edifice of the assembly. Whatever might be the power that shone forth in the assembly, the heart was brought back to this. The body of the Lord Himself had been offered,[14] the lips of Jesus had claimed our remembrance. This moral equilibrium is very important to saints. Power, and the exercise of gifts do not necessarily act upon the conscience and the heart of those to whom they are committed, nor of those always who enjoy their display. And, although God is present (and when we are in a good state, that is felt), still it is a man who speaks and who acts upon others; he is prominent. In the Lord’s supper the heart is brought back to a point in which it is entirely dependent, in which man is nothing, in which Christ and His love are everything, in which the heart is exercised, and the conscience remembers that it has needed cleansing, and that it has been cleansed by the work of Christ-that we depend absolutely on this grace. The affections also are in the fullest exercise. It is important to remember this. The consequences that followed forgetfulness of the import of this ordinance confirmed its importance and the Lord’s earnest desire that they should take heed to it. The apostle is going to speak of the power of the Holy Ghost manifested in His gifts, and of the regulations necessary to maintain order and provide for edification where they were exercised in the assembly; but, before doing so, he places the Lord’s supper as the moral centre, the object of the assembly. Let us remark some of the thoughts of the Spirit in connection with this ordinance.

First, He links the affections with it in the strongest way. It was the same night on which Jesus was betrayed that He left this memorial of His sufferings and of His love. As the paschal lamb brought to mind the deliverance which the sacrifice offered in Egypt had procured for Israel, thus the Lord’s supper called to mind the sacrifice of Christ. He is in the glory, the Spirit is given; but they were to remember Him. His offered body was the object before their hearts in this memorial. Take notice of this word “Remember.” It is not a Christ as He now exists, it is not the realisation of what He is: that is not a remembrance-His body is now glorified. It is a remembrance of what He was on the cross. It is a body slain, and blood shed, not a glorified body. It is remembered, though, by those who are now united to Him in the glory into which He is entered. As risen and associated with Him in glory, they look back to that blessed work of love, and His love in it which gave them a place there. They drink also of the cup in remembrance of Him. In a word, it is Christ looked at as dead: there is not such a Christ now.

It is the remembrance of Christ Himself. It is that which attaches to Himself, it is not only the value of His sacrifice, but attachment to Himself, the remembrance of Himself. The apostle then shews us, if it is a dead Christ, who it is that died. Impossible to find two words, the bringing together of which has so important a meaning, The death of the Lord. How many things are comprised in that He who is called the Lord had died! What love! what purposes! what efficacy! what results! The Lord Himself gave Himself up for us. We celebrate His death. At the same time, it is the end of God’s relations with the world on the ground of man’s responsibility, except the judgment. This death has broken every link-has proved the impossibility of any. We shew forth this death until the rejected Lord shall return, to establish new bonds of association by receiving us to Himself to have part in them. It is this which we proclaim in the ordinance when we keep it. Besides this, it is in itself a declaration that the blood on which the new covenant is founded has been already shed; it was established in this blood. I do not go beyond that which the passage presents; the object of the Spirit of God here, is to set before us, not the efficacy of the death of Christ, but that which attaches the heart to Him in remembering His death, and the meaning of the ordinance itself. It is a dead, betrayed Christ whom we remember. The offered body was, as it were, before their eyes at this supper. The shed blood of the Saviour claimed the affections of their heart for Him. They were guilty of despising these precious things, if they took part in the supper unworthily. The Lord Himself fixed our thoughts there in this ordinance, and in the most affecting way, at the very moment of His betrayal.

But if Christ attracted the heart thus to fix its attention there, discipline was also solemnly exercised in connection with this ordinance. If they despised the broken body and the blood of the Lord by taking part in it lightly, chastisement was inflicted. Many had become sick and weak, and many had fallen asleep, that is, had died. It is not the being worthy to partake that is spoken of, but the partaking in an unworthy manner. Every Christian, unless some sin had excluded him, was worthy to partake because he was a Christian. But a Christian might come to it without judging himself, or appreciating as he ought that which the supper brought to his mind, and which Christ had connected with it. He did not discern the Lord’s body; and he did not discern, did not judge, the evil in himself. God cannot leave us thus careless. If the believer judges himself, the Lord will not judge him; if we do not judge ourselves, the Lord judges; but when the Christian is judged, he is chastened of the Lord that he may not be condemned with the world. It is the government of God in the hands of the Lord who judges His own house: an important and too much forgotten truth. No doubt the result of all is according to the counsels of God, who displays in it all His wisdom, His patience, and the righteousness of His ways; but this government is real. He desires the good of His people in the end; but He will have holiness, a heart whose condition answers to that which He has revealed (and He has revealed Himself), a walk which is its expression. The normal state of a Christian is communion, according to the power of that which has been revealed. Is there failure in this-communion is lost, and with it the power to glorify God, a power found nowhere else. But if one judges oneself, there is restoration: the heart being cleansed from the evil by judging it, communion is restored. If one does not judge oneself, God must interpose and correct and cleanse us by discipline-discipline which may even be unto death (see Job 33:1-33, Job 36:1-33; 1Jn 5:16;Jas 5:14-15).

There are yet one or two remarks to be made. To “judge” oneself, is not the same word as to be “judged” of the Lord. It is the same that is used in chapter 11:29, “discerning the Lord’s body.” Thus, what we have to do is not only to judge an evil committed, it is to discern one’s condition, as it is manifested in the light-even as God Himself is in the light-by walking in it. This prevents our falling into evil either in act or thought. But if we have fallen, it is not enough to judge the action; it is ourselves we must judge, and the state of heart, the tendency, the neglect, which occasioned our falling into the evil-in a word, that which is not communion with God or that which hinders it. It was thus theLord dealt with Peter. He did not reproach him for his fault, He judged its root.

Moreover the assembly ought to have power to discern these things. God acts in this way, as we have seen in Job; but the saints have the mind of Christ by the Spirit of Christ, and ought to discern their own condition.

The foundation and centre of all this, is the position in which we stand towards Christ in the Lord’s supper, as the visible centre of communion and the expression of His death; in which sin, all sin, is judged. Now we are in connection with this holy judgment of sin as our portion. We cannot mingle the death of Christ with sin. It is, as to its nature and efficacy, of which the full result will in the end be manifested, the total putting away of sin. It is the divine negation of sin. He died to sin, and that in love to us. It is the absolute holiness of God made sensible and expressed to us in that which took place with regard to sin. It is absolute devotedness to God for His glory in this respect. To bring sin or carelessness into it, is to profane the death of Christ, who died rather than allow sin to subsist before God. We cannot be condemned with the world, because He has died and has put away sin for us; but to bring sin to that which represents this very death in which He suffered for sin is a thing which cannot be borne. God vindicates that which is due to the holiness and the love of a Christ who gave up His life to put away sin. One cannot say, I will not go to the table; that is, I will accept the sin and give up the confession of the value of that death. We examine ourselves, and we go; we re-establish the rights of His death in our conscience-for all is pardoned and expiated as to guilt, and we go to acknowledge these rights as the proof of infinite grace.

The world is condemned. Sin in the Christian is judged, it escapes neither the eye nor the judgment of God. He never permits it; He cleanses the believer from it by chastening him, although He does not condemn, because Christ has borne his sins, and been made sin for him. The death of Christ forms then the centre of communion in the assembly, and the touchstone of conscience, and that, with respect to the assembly, in the Lord’s supper.

Footnotes for 1 Corinthians Chapter 11

10: In 1Ti 2:11-15 the moral effect of the circumstances of the fall is introduced, as giving the woman her true place in the assembly with regard to man.

11: We are not as yet come to the order in the assembly. That commences with1 Corinthians 11:17.

12: The first chapter of Genesis gives us man in his place in creation as from God the Creator; the second, his own relationship with Jehovah God, where he was placed in connection with Him, and the woman’s with himself.

13: This connects itself too with the fact that it is the expression of the unity of the body-truth specially committed to the apostle. On the other hand, he was not sent to baptise. That was mere admission to the house already formed, and to which the apostle had been admitted like others.

14: I do not say “broken”, the best MSS. omitting it; but it is the memorial of Christ slain, and His precious blood poured out.

John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1, 2. Be ye followers of me, etc. This refers to verse 33 of the 10th chapter. Like him, they should not seek to “please themselves,” but to so act as to save others.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

After reminding them to follow him the way he follows Christ, Paul gives some specific instructs in how women and men are to live as believers.

you remember me in everything

"you think of me at all times" or "you always try act as I would want you to act" The Corinthians had not forgotten who Paul was or what he had taught them.

Now I want

Possible meanings are 1) "Because of this, I want" or 2) "However, I want."

is the head of

has authority over

a man is the head of a woman

Possible meanings are 1) "men are to have authority over women" or 2) "the husband is to have authority over the wife"

with his head covered

"and does so after placing a cloth or veil over his head"

dishonors his head

Possible meanings are 1) "brings disgrace on himself" or 2) "brings disgrace on Christ, who is his head."

translationWords

imitate

praise

tradition

head

pray

prophet

dishonor

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Followers [μιμηται] . Lit., imitators, as Rev. This verse belongs to the closing section of ch. 10.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.