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Transcript 203C — The Issue of Hair Length in 1 Corinthians 11
CALLER: In I Corinthians 11:16 it talks about hair. Let's see. In verse 14 it says, "But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her. For her hair is given her for a covering. But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God." It says "It is a shame unto a man to have long hair." So if you could give me a little bit of information on that, I'll take it over the air.
HC: All right. Fine. Good night.
The question is raised concerning this passage in I Corinthians 11, where it talks about a woman's long hair, and the fact that it's degrading, or it's a shame for a man to have long hair.
Now the focal point of this passage, I believe, is not hair. The focal point is authority. It starts right out in verse 3, "But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ. The head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God."
God has established authority. There's authority in the Godhead, with Christ being submissive to God. There's authority below, with man being submissive to Christ and the woman submissive to man. Now the evidence of that authority is the fact that a woman is given long hair by nature. This is an evidence that she is under the authority of man, God says.
And we read in verse 15, "Her hair is given to her for a covering." Now one way to read this passage, to really be helped in it, I think, is to substitute the word authority wherever you find the word veil. "She wears a veil [or she wears her long hair] to indicate she is under the authority of man." As a matter of fact, in verse 10 it says, "That is why a woman ought to have authority . . ." [some versions read "veil"] . . . "That is why a woman ought to have authority on her head, because of the angels." The angels are under authority, and if we're born again we're on display to the angelic world, as we read in Ephesians 1 or 3, some place in there. And if they're under authority, then we as born again believers also ought to be under authority.
And so now a man is not under the authority of a woman. God, using the symbol of hair as authority, therefore gives man shorter hair. He's the first one to go bald. His hair by nature does not grow as long as a woman's. And so the big issue here is authority, not hair. It's authority. We want to make sure that man is subordinate to Christ, but that the woman is subordinate to man, particularly in the two areas that God speaks of it, in the home and in the church.