1 Corinthians 11:7-9 - Woman is the glory of man

11:7

Now we start to get some explanation behind all this covered/uncovered stuff. Man is not to have his head covered because he is the image and glory of God. Now look at this, what an amazing statement! The Bible has an exceptionally high view of mankind. We are the image and glory of God, His highest creation. If we consider all atheistic/humanist views of mankind we find that they demean man. They say we are no different from animals, they say that free will is an illusion, they say we are no more than the product of random processes, without meaning and without purpose.

“But woman is the glory of man”. Now we need to consider this carefully as well. In reading this section our mind is immediately drawn to woman being subject to man, and we interpret this as woman being in some way inferior or belittled. This is not the point of Paul’s teaching at all. In the same way that man is the glory of God, so a wife is the glory of her husband. Paul is talking about the immense value that a woman has.

11:8,9

Time for feminists to get all upset! Paul is pointing back to Genesis 2. Woman was created from man, not the other way around. By the way, I do not think it necessary to take Gen 2:22 absolutely literally, rather God is describing the relationship between man and woman. And man was not made for woman, but woman for man (Gen 2:18). Now all this greatly offends the modern mind, but let’s look a little wider and a little more deeply. In fact we only need to look a verse or two away, namely Gen 2:23,24. First, the man found in woman a perfect companion, a complimentary companion. Then in 2:24 we see that the two become one. This is not just talking about sex, but sex is meant to be representative of the complete unity of the couple (this is why sex before marriage is so wrong). We need to be aware that our modern mindsets can blind us to what Paul is saying here. We get upset, even offended, by the notions of woman being created for man, thinking that it means she is in some way inferior to man. That is not what the Bible is talking about, rather it is talking about the God given relationship within which both man and woman, together, find true fulfilment.