There is a Cloud of Witnesses to Watch Out For
Verse 10 is a strong argument; this argument depends on what comes before. Verse 10: “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.” What is meant by ‘for this cause’? ‘For this cause’ points back to verses 7-9 particularly, and back to the passage generally. The argument is that out of respect for the angels who look on expecting to see the saints worshipping according to God’s command and created order, the token of authority, or symbol of subjection, should be in place. Angels know that God should be glorified, especially since a third of the angels fell on account of God being contemned instead. They know that woman is the glory of man, and that she was created from man and for man. They therefore can deduce that she is not the glory that should be exposed to view and that her glory (her hair) should be covered as well. As angels veil themselves when appearing before God, they expect women to veil themselves before the power that is immediately above them. Many churchgoing women claim to not understand 1 Corinthians 11.2-16. They grasp more than they let on, however. They realize that wearing a covering on the head is an act of submission. And this is why they recoil when it is suggested that they wear a veil or a bonnet during service in church. Stubborn women do not wear a covering because they perceive that wearing one has something to do with submission, which virtue they abhor. They do not understand the passage any better than the scribes and the judicially blind understood Jesus’ parables (Matthew 13.13.) But, like scribes upon hearing Jesus’ parabolic language, they understand the Corinthian passage enough to hate it. About the passage, they feel like the elders, the scribes, and the chief priests did about Jesus’ parables: that the truth is spoken ‘against them’ (Mark 12.12.) These are the same women who have angels on their necklaces, on their walls, and on the covers of the superstitious books they read. They are obsessed with angels. But when it comes to showing actual respect for these ministering spirits: by covering their heads—their fascination comes to a sudden stop. Wearing a veil is a visible mark of reverence for God’s word. Refusing to wear one is a visible mark of rebellion. On the one hand, we hope that uncovered women are not true Christians, for they make a shameful representation of Christianity. On the other hand, we hope that they are, for how few women must be saved if being uncovered means that they are lost. On a third hand, supposing we had a third, we try to believe that many uncovered women would don the veil if the reasons for doing so were competently and earnestly communicated to them—that they would not dwell on how the covering offends them, but on the offence that they are guilty of by not wearing one. After a person’s eyes are open to see the importance of this passage from 1 Corinthians, the uncovered woman will bear the appearance of a saucy woman, though her insubordination might merely be due to naïve ignorance or perhaps to lack of courage to resist the peer pressure to conform to the present condition of disobedience.
In chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians we read, “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God” (verse 32.) We read that a person should not seek his own profit, nor advantage over others (verse 33.) Now, in verse 10 of chapter 11, the message is to give none offence to the angels and to seek the angels’ profit. Since angels are ministering spirits for saints, should saints not be grateful enough to avoid offending them? Professing Christians of the sassy sort love to speak of supernatural things. Sometimes they stretch the truth of what they have experienced of the unearthly. Some of them are guilty of inventing uncanny stories to tell. But take them to this passage on the symbol of power, and it is as if they don’t believe in the supernatural at all.
Angels are interested in creatures of glory. They were created before man and have likely witnessed man being created in God’s image. They probably saw God make man from dust, breathe life into his nostrils, and fashion his rib into a woman. It is probable that they saw the image of God as it was marred by sin. And we now know that they desire to look into the matter of salvation (1 Peter 1.9, 12.) Irredeemable as they are, their sinless minds are stimulated to contemplate God’s work of grace in all of its incremental steps. They not only contemplate, they minister. They are ‘fellowservants’ with Christians (Revelation 22.9.) This is why, as described in the book of Revelation, they are so intimately connected with effectuating the consummation of Christianity. An angel announced to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus; an angel appeared to Joseph to warn him to flee to Egypt with Jesus and Mary to prevent the Holy Child from being murdered; angels were with the Lord in the wilderness when he was tempted; they were with him again in the garden when he agonized; they were at the ready when he hung upon the cross; and they were with him yet again at his resurrection and ascension. They are gospel-centered creatures because their Lord is central to the gospel. They are orderly creatures too; as such, they expect to witness order as they peer into the sanctuary where the Lord’s redeemed souls gather for worship. Speaking as large as we can, what did the Son of God die for if it wasn’t to restore order to a world of sin, death, and woe? What do angels think when authority is spurned and glory is shadowed in the house of God? Is the blood of Jesus not powerful enough to redeem unto obedience? Conversely, what profit to the angels when they observe an apostle being persecuted for his obedience so much as to be rendered a ‘spectacle’ and a ‘fool’ for Christ (1 Corinthians 4.) If they saw this concerning the apostle, it is not a stretch to believe that they saw Abel offer ‘a more excellent sacrifice’; Enoch translated because ‘he pleased God’; Noah prepare an ark where no water was; Abraham going out of Ur in obedience to God, ‘not knowing wither he went’; Moses ‘choosing to suffer affliction’ over a delicate life; faithful warriors ‘quench the violence of fire’ and ‘wax valiant in fight’; and God-fearing women ‘tortured, not accepting deliverance’ that they might ‘obtain a better resurrection.’ What knowledge all of this is to the profit of angels! But what a bar to knowledge have our churches become! When angels look down on us, what do they see? Do they see obedience and courage? Or do they see women who are supposed to be the daughters of Abraham acting arrogant and disrespectful? Is God asking too much, after giving his Son over to be crucified, when he, through his apostle, asks for a little token of obedience in return? Is it too much for women to wear a signet or a badge on their heads in order to announce that God’s authority and glory matter? What a shame to have to ask women to do something for the angels when they won’t even do it for God. Yet God condescends to use that inferior argument. “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12.1.) Hebrews 12.1 is a remark on the roster of faith in the previous chapter. The sense is that as Abel, Abraham, Moses, and company were surrounded by witnesses, so are we—‘we also are compassed about.’
Angels are spirits, and many of them are near, looking into our affairs. We are not aware of their presence and visits, for our spirits are enclosed in a body fit for the earth, and thus restricted by our bodily senses that are made for the material world. If God, though, were to unhinge our spirits from the limitations of bodily sense for an instant, we would see these ministers round about us in our churches, even as Elisha and his servant saw them on the mountains many centuries ago (2 Kings 6.) Maybe a little boy or girl looking aimlessly about, as children do, would exclaim, “There they are, up in the rafters!” The doctrine of angels is not negated just because of our incapacity to see heavenly beings. Therefore “ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.” We see heads covered or uncovered in the sanctuary; the angels see honor or dishonor. We see the matter of it; they see what the matter of it signifies. We see with eyes obscured by sin; they see with a sinless vision. Do angels, when observing the glory of God (man) beside the glory of man (woman), not see a distinction comparable to what we see between the male peacock and its female counterpart, or at least between the gold finch and its dull colored mate? Women may look shinier to us; not so to the angels of God. Man—peacock that he is—must be highlighted in church by a symbol of power upon his subordinate. “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.”
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