Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:6–7
“For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.” (1 Corinthians 11:6–7, NIV)
A hard verse, and a harder morning
I will be honest. When I sat down with verse 6, the paraphrases stirred something hard in me. One of them says such a woman should “advertise the fact that she is selfish and not on God’s team.” My first pages that morning came out the same way: selfish, shameful, a disgrace. I was judging “that woman” as harshly as anyone could.
Then it dawned on me. I was that woman.
I came into my adult life carrying a great deal of hurt. So many times I shamed myself and realized I had acted like a fool. A young woman just starting out, confused, with every possible outcome in front of her: at any point I could have started choosing very badly and wrecked my whole life. The harsh words on my page were not God’s words. They were the old voice of shame I had once used on myself.
What God does with “that woman”
Look at what Paul does not say. He does not say cast her out, or even discipline her. The consequences of refusing God’s design are self-evident; they play out on their own, because that is how a natural law works. You cannot step around it, because you do it to yourself. And yet this is not a lukewarm soul the Lord gives up on. This is someone He allows to remain in full standing among His people while she plays out her choices, and while He keeps working.
He does not leave you, but He does allow you your consequences. That is how we learn and grow. I know, because that is what He did with me.
The nails
The Lord kept me with a man who could walk this walk with me. And what held me there was not that I understood headship or submission. I didn’t. What kept my feet nailed to the floor was the compassion in my heart for another human being. He loved me so freely that I could not bear to hurt him by leaving when he didn’t want me to go. So I stayed.
I think of the other nails. It was not the nails that held Christ on the cross. He already knew what love was, and love kept Him there. The little I knew of love at that time was the man beside me, who had never done anything to deserve to be dumped. That was all I had to give. But the Lord was able to work with that much, and He kept me in place long enough for me to learn what love truly was.
The glory of God is His character
Verse 7 says man is “the image and glory of God,” and woman “the glory of man.” Some read that as a rule about hats. That is concrete thinking, and it misses the whole point.
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God hid him in the rock and let His goodness pass by, describing Himself: merciful, gracious, longsuffering, abundant in goodness and truth (Exodus 33:18–19; 34:6–7). God’s glory is His character. He is Love. And He came and showed us how Love acts: He kept stepping down, down from heaven, down to this sin-infected earth, down to the death on a cross, until He had saturated this world with His Love and there was no way He could give more of Himself.
Man was made to stand uncovered before God, open to that flow of truth and love, and to reflect it. We are either reflectors of His glory or we are repulsed by it. There is no middle ground.
I was still stumbling
Then came “woman is the glory of man,” and I got tangled. Was Eve only a moon, with no light of her own, reflecting what Adam received? That didn’t fit the God I know. I wrote at the bottom of my page, “I’m still stumbling around with this.” I share that because this is how Bible study really goes. When you’re confused, read on, and keep following the truth wherever it goes.
The answer was already in my own life.
In our early marriage, Michael showed me what love truly was. I had never been loved; I didn’t even know what it would feel like. At first it felt strange and uncomfortable. I wanted it, but I wasn’t used to it. It was probably ten years before I was sitting comfortably in his love, able to accept it freely without feeling strange about it. When I finally could, and was able to give back more, it was a very freeing experience, to be able to accept love and to give love.
That is what it means for a woman to be the glory of man. A husband’s character shows up in his wife. How he loves her becomes visible in who she becomes. And I was never cut off from God, receiving my light secondhand. The Lord was working directly in my heart the whole time; Michael was the one He loved me through.
Love has to be done to you before you can know it or give it. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). That is why Christ did not just announce that God is love. He came and did it, and it killed Him, because the people could not tolerate that much love. Some of us take a long time to receive it. I did.
By beholding
I read all of this to my husband at morning worship, and as we talked, the last piece settled. The head is the personality of the one who is your head. Christ shares His glory with man; man shares his character with his wife. There is a natural law that makes this happen, and Paul names it with the same two words, glory and mirror: “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
By beholding we become changed. We become like the one we look up to. And it goes both ways, as Paul says a few verses later: neither is independent of the other, and all things come from God (1 Corinthians 11:11–12).
A woman’s true beauty is her character. It shows in her eyes, her expression, where her attention is focused. What we hold close to our heart will show in every move we make. I pray that what shows in me now is the love I was finally able to receive: first from God, and through a patient man who let me learn it.
So now I finally understand what my head is. It is not being dominated, or some rule about wearing a hat. It is the transfer of personality: character shared with the one in this world who means the most to you.
