A Complementarian Church (1 Corinthians 11:2-16)
This sermon was preached by Caleb Yap.
I want to tell you Kristy’s story. Growing up, her parents told her that girls can do anything that boys can. As an adult, she was surprised when she discovered feminism, that somewhere in the world there were marginalized women made to feel inferior. Eventually she felt the call of God to go into full-time ministry in seminary. But from deeper study of the Bible, her beliefs began to change.
Shockingly, she came to believe that women should not be given quote “positions of teaching with authority (elders, or bishops, or however the polity arranges things in the particular denomination).” At the very same time, she believed that if a church did not use the gifts of women, it “disenfranchise[s] half the church; it amputates the body of Christ.” She goes on, “an amputated body is a wounded body, and many women have been crushed by being told that their gifts, gifts given by the Holy Spirit, are not allowed, not wanted, even nonexistent or imaginary.”
Kristy had become a complementarian. After seminary, she asked to be taken off the track for “pastor” choosing to serve God as a “commissioned church worker”
I ask you - is Kristy’s case one of faithfulness or failure? Conviction or cowardice? And what would be the basis for your answer? Is it possible for twenty-first-century people to have a meaningful study of what the Bible actually says?
I pray that this third sermon on biblical manhood and womanhood will help you believe that God is good and wise in the design for His church.
Let me set the scene in 1 Corinthians. The apostle Paul is addressing orderly public worship in the church. What is his concern? Chiefly, the issue is how we regard our heads in worship.
There is a play on words as Paul talks about honouring our heads. Men honour their head by not covering their head in worship, while women do so by covering theirs. Paul will address the errors of both genders, but it seems some women in the church are the focus of his correction.
The entire passage is one long argument: principle (1 Cor 11:2-3), correction (1 Cor 11:4-5), reasoning (1 Cor 11:6-10), qualification (1 Cor 11:11-12), correction restated (1 Cor 11:13-16). The rest of the chapter sees Paul still thinking about proper worship in the Lord’s Supper — because the Corinthians were mishandling the elements. Ye, these were only signs of Christ’s body and blood, but they were consuming them without regard for Christ, their head, or the rest of His body.
So taking a step back, we see the thread going through this chapter, and actually in the whole book of 1 Corinthians: Paul, like a good pastor, is addressing the individualism and divisive arrogance deep within this community through various pastoral issues.
A sampling from chapters 1-10 shows us there were cliques and factions, in-groups and out-groups, lobbies for preferred preachers, a love of saving face, opposition to church discipline of various kinds. In chapter 11 we see this me-first attitude even in their worship.
Godly men and women should not compete with, but complement each other in God’s church.
So against this backdrop, two limbs make up our big idea: that godly men and women should not compete with, but complement each other in God’s church.
Men and women should not compete (1 Cor 11:2-6)
Men and women “compete” by seeking dominance. This idea first appears in Genesis 3:17: “Your desire shall be against your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Sin’s entry ushers in strife. The battle of the sexes is a contest for headship and authority.
The teaching of headship (1 Cor 11:2-3)
Look with me at 1 Corinthians 11:2-3.
What are these “traditions delivered to you” 1 Corinthians 11:2? They do not mean cultural and societal norms handed down through time, but the true doctrine about God and the orderly Christian life that the apostles taught. The kind of teaching of the apostles recorded in the New Testament letters that we still have with us today. For Corinthian Baptist Church, the First Baptist Church of Corinth it would have begun with Paul’s 18 month ministry in Corinth mentioned in Acts 18, but now carried on in his letters to them.
In particular, Paul wanted them to understand from 1 Corinthians 11:3 that headship is both necessary and good. We see this described in three pairs of two entities, with one as the head of the other. The first pair describes our collective humanity, and who is the head? Christ. Notice there the universality of every man under Christ.
Second, he goes to marriage, exclusively between a man and a woman. Who is the head of a wife? Her husband. The original text literally reads “the head of a woman is her man” , but the ESV editors render “wife” and“husband” to help us see the context of marriage more clearly.
It is helpful that Paul does not write that the head of every woman is every man, or that the head of all women is all man. But within the context of marriage, there is a headship feature as we were also reminded from Ephesians 5. Single women, as part of the human race, I believe, ultimately they have Him as head, and in the church by proxy, the proper leaders He has appointed.
But look at the third pair: the head of Christ is God. The unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a mystery we cannot fully understand, but we can understand it as our model for headship and submission. The second person of the Trinity has the Father as His head. This does not mean that the Son is somehow less God as He submits to His head. Christ Jesus was truly man, and also truly God and His was a willing submission, without ever ceasing to be God. And the Father’s headship is wise and perfect. He is neither abusive nor coercive. Thus our humanity and marriages have this pattern to follow.
Philippians 2 springs to mind: Christ Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Back in 1 Corinthians 11:7, Paul will say that Christ’s glory is a man made in His image, and a husband’s glory is his wife. In other words, we are the magnificence, joy and crown of our head when we freely choose to submit. I love how Paul is challenging the Greco-Roman thought and culture of the day, of writers likeCicero and Seneca. For them, headship and authority was linked to natural superiority, power and dominance, and submission was about weakness and inferiority.
Friends, does headship and submission make you squirm? I know this is the third week we are talking about this. But the truth is, we may be more aligned with Cicero and Seneca than Paul. I can relate to that. I will admit the Bible’s teaching on headship and submission used to make me very uncomfortable.
Can I tell you what changed my mind? It was grasping what submission meant to Jesus. This year we celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. A council in Nicea was convened to address those who were challenging the true divinity of Christ. After careful study, the council concluded in the Creed that though Son had the Father as head, though He submitted in death and was raised, He is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father”.
Jesus can be our Saviour and Lord, the only Lord we would feel safe enough to give ourselves to.
If you are not a Christian, knowing this Jesus changes everything. Consider Him who died not for His own sins, but for sinful rebels. We had a debt to God’s justice we could never pay. But He paid freely and fully, so that if you acknowledge your sins, not society’s generic sins, your sins, and put your faith in Him today, He can be your Saviour and Lord, the only Lord we would feel safe enough to give ourselves to. Everything we are talking about is built on this good news and I’d love to talk to you after the service if you would like to explore it further.
One Christian writer puts it beautifully: “Jesus in His servant authority dying in order to bring His bride to spotless purity, has redefined authority and has demanded that his followers do the same. Jesus in His submissive servanthood, taking on the role of a servant in order to secure our salvation, shows that his submission to the Father was a gift, not something compelled from Him.”
Problem of head coverings (1 Cor 11:4-6)
So what does Paul do with this teaching on headship? Look at 1 Corinthians 11:4-6.
So men in Corinth were to pray and prophesy with uncovered heads to honour their head, Christ Jesus. But a woman with an uncovered head, Paul says, is like having shaved hair or short hair. He says this is out of order with “the traditions even as I delivered them to you” (1 Cor 11:2), and should not be “contentious… [in] the churches of God” (1 Cor 11:16).
I hope you do not miss the point, that the women of Corinth were being corrected in how to pray and prophesy rightly. So there’s no question that they were authorised and included in public worship and ministry to begin with.
And that would have already been revolutionary and countercultural. We take it for granted how involved women were in the early church.
On Pentecost, Christian men and women prophesied in the Spirit so mightily that Peter recalled Joel 2:28–29: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” In Acts 21:9 we read about Philip the evangelist’s “four unmarried daughters who prophesied”.
Historians agree that in the ancient world it was both scandalous and discrediting for women to be this front and centre. So why did it happen? Simply this: that Jesus honoured, cherished and celebrated women. Consider the circle of women who ministered to Him and His disciples. Women were His patrons. Or those who were first to see and speak of His resurrection. Women were His witnesses.
So let us recognise the obvious. Brothers, our sisters are precious to the Lord. They are gifted and important assets for the work of the Gospel. Thus we should respect and honour older women as mothers and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. Sisters in the Lord, hear this: the Lord Jesus sees how you serve Him, and He delights in you. You are not second class in His name or in His church.
But let us not get carried too far from the text. It is clear that Paul was trying to correct something these women were doing. The key issue here is that they were praying and prophesying in the way the men were. That is why Paul urges them to honour their heads in distinct ways.
Plainly, Paul frowned upon the uncovering of a woman’s head, or having short or shaved hair. Why? Without advanced research, we can see that these women were rejecting the signs of womanhood – long hair and coverings in worship, which basically meant the women were trying to appear as men did.
Christian scholar Bruce Winter writes that in this era there was a growing Roman movement that promoted sexual freedoms and promiscuity for women. Unveiled, long unkempt hair signalled sexual liberation and openness and a new understanding of gender equality. A woman was free from her husband, free to her sexual desire, free to use her body as she pleased, even idolatry.
But even without knowing that, 1 Corinthians 11:10 already calls head coverings a “symbol of authority” . So it is not difficult to understand the problem. Signs of modesty, propriety and submission were being rejected in a statement to the community. It was as if the God they worshipped had no designs for order and authority.
Like the Roman centurion in Matthew 8 who told Jesus that he too was under authority, Christians cannot be anti-authority. This includes the men too as in 1 Corinthians 11:4 when Paul says: men should not pray or prophesy with heads covered, or take on the signs of womanhood.
To be clear, I do not believe 1 Corinthians 11 requires sisters to wear head coverings today. That sign of womanhood is not relevant in our context. A better application would be to present ourselves with culturally understood signs of manhood and womanhood, and more importantly, recognise God’s good design to honour our heads.
Imagine if the church put forth a controversial, cross-dressing speaker in the pulpit today to bring us God’s Word. Someone whose outward appearance says I reject God’s design for gender. What signal would that send to the world about the Gospel? Or about God?
We also need a word about prophesying and praying. We have discussed how the Christian should not be anti-authority or reject gender and its signs. But remember, they were supposedly ministering in the power of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:7 says that “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good”, not for self-edification.
The 1 Corinthians 11 case extends, I think into chapter 14 if we keep reading on especially in 1 Corinthians 14:26-40. Spiritual gifts were being abused and used in a disorderly manner and not for building up (1 Cor 14:26). In 1 Corinthians 14:34, Paul is especially sharp when he calls for the “silence” of these women in the churches. Not that women could make no noise. We just heard instructions for proper prayer and prophecy .This “silence” is a call to stop evaluating prophecy. I understand this to be the work of assessing true revelation and authoritative teaching. These sisters were a self-appointed theology committee, judging what was true doctrine in the church, which Paul regarded as unacceptable. This is so serious that Paul gives what some call a “global command” to forbid this in all the churches in 1 Corinthians 14:33.
A few verses down, Paul’s rebuke is stinging 1 Corinthians 14:36-37: “Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? if anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should recognise that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.”
Maybe Paul was thinking of Numbers 12 where Miriam and Aaron, but especially Miriam challenged Moses’ authority, saying “Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?”
Friends, perhaps you’ve gone from squirming to bristling. Maybe this feels like a glass ceiling. Or deep injustice and oppression. This is why we needed to understand Paul’s grounding argument in headship.
But let me humbly raise two questions for reflection: first, can secular standards of gender justice be met without asking women to become men? This is the question 1 Corinthians 11 poises. When women must be able to do what men can, do we reduce identity to ability, and dignity to our achievements?
Can secular ideals truly lead to human flourishing?
And second, can secular ideals truly lead to human flourishing? We know there are very real trade offs to identity, marriage and parenthood when we ask women to do everything men do. Let me point you to two sources for those interested in further reading: “The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us” by Carrie Gress and “Feminism Against Progress” by Mary Harrington. Both written recently, 2023 and 2024.
Friends, the world is not interested in helping men and women image God together. But it is very interested in remaking women in the image of man.
So 1 Corinthians 11 calls us out of egalitarianism that promotes disorderly worship to rightly honuor our heads. We should pray 1 Corinthians 14:40, that in the church “all things should be done decently and in order”according to God’s good design. Let us think together about what that looks like.
Men and women complement one another for God’s glory (1 Cor 11:7-16)
Men and women are not interchangeable (1 Cor 11:7-10)
In 1 Corinthians 11:7-10, Paul says that men and women are complementary because they are not interchangeable or replaceable. He grounds this in two observations from Genesis: the woman was made from the man as her source, not the reverse. Second, that the woman was made for man as his support, and not the reverse. Genesis 1:27 tells us men and women are both needed to image Almighty God.
And 1 Corinthians 11:10, the angels agree. How do we understand 1 Corinthians 11:10? Some note that as the angels were present in creation as invisible witnesses, women should cover their heads out of respect. Others think that as the angels are present in church worship according to Hebrews 12:22 there should be propriety in worship. Both are plausible, but either way, it appears that Paul expects us to pay attention to the spiritual, cosmic dimensions of observing human differences.
So notice that Paul’s three arguments from Creation and the angels, and the earlier point about the Trinity, are very different from pragmatic arguments about competence or circumstances.
We do not have time to go into it in detail, but we have a similar example of this in Matthew 19. When Jesus’ opponents ask Him tough questions about marriage, divorce and gender, the Son of God does the same thing as Paul. He goes to Genesis and God’s good design for men and women as His model to respond.
This should confront us in a few ways. Shouldn’t we aspire to the maturity of Paul and Jesus and not to the immaturity of pragmatism?
I hope no one thinks: okay, complementarianism comes from a specific country, political group, or seminary and ourleaders are pushing this now. Friends, no! This comes from the Bible!
GBC, we may one day be tempted to say, we have some sisters who are amazing teachers of the Bible — actually we already have now - and it is a pity to waste talent, so we should put them in preaching roles so they can pray and prophesy for us. Or if we cannot find any men to do the job, let us take the easy road.
If it ever came to that, I hope we would still believe in doing God’s work God’s way. We should fall on our face asking God to raise elder-qualified men. We should look for godly husbands who teach Scripture to their families, and to others with signs of fruitfulness.
But I want to be honest. There are some denominational leaders and scholars, even seminary professors who disagree with pretty much everything we’ve discussed. What we have discussed is not popular.
They will tell us that the word “head” in this passage does not mean authority. The Greek word, “kephale” they say means “origin” or “source” like the headwaters, or upstream source of a river. They will also say that Paul was writing 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy from the city of Ephesus, home to the great temple of Diana or Artemis and a large female-run fertility cult influencing the congregation. So Paul’s teaching is local, not global, and circumstance specific, not universal.
If you hear that, remember this: first, Paul knows exactly how to use kephale in discussing head coverings as a “symbol of authority” (1 Cor 11:10). Kephale as “source” or "origin” makes the discussion nonsensical. Second, Paul never brings up the temple of Diana but he does callon universal and timeless Christian arguments like the Triune Godhead, Creation, and the witness of angels. And third, he insists on upholding the traditions (1 Cor 11:2), and for no one to be contentious in the churches of God (1 Cor 11:16).
It takes a lot of Bible jujitsu to make the Book say what it does not. We can be confident that God’s good design is good for God’s men and women. How so?
Men and women are interdependent (1 Cor 11:11-12)
Read 1 Corinthians 11:11 -12 with me.
Paul never pits men against women. Instead, he insists that the two are not independent of each other, but interdependent.
Notice that Paul never pits men against women. Instead, he insists that the two are not independent of each other, but interdependent. As woman was made from man when Eve was taken from Adam’s rib, man is now born of woman — a cycle of mutual reliance.
We find a similar idea affirmed in Galatians 3:28 for in Christ, “there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”, equal in standing before Him.
One way we reflect this so well at GBC is in ensuring that we can hear male and female voices in worship. There is a beauty in singing, same notes but on different octaves as we praise God together.
Friends, you can trust God to be wise, and reject the errors of dehumanising feminism and toxic masculinity. We read just now from Isaiah 43, which says “bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
So how do we do this practically?
Last week we heard a strong word about our homes, not for sisters to step down, but for brothers to step up and lead. Marriages are the first step for how our church can grow in this area.
I would encourage fellow brothers to use “shall we” language to lead our spouses in godliness. Shall we join a CG, really grow with others in this church? Shall we stay on for EQUIP and get serious about the Scriptures? Brothers, if your wife is spiritually disinterested, you might want to start with yourself. Our children will notice how important God’s Word is to you.
But this is also where singles of the same gender in the church can help encourage marrieds. Reading Scripture with someone whose spouse is spiritually disinterested is a beautiful form of care.
In the church, we should not only discuss what is prohibited for women, but the many possibilities for gospel partnerships. Think of Lydia in the early church, the Thyatira businesswoman who used her home to host the Philippian church, or Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae and was a patron of Paul, or Prisca and Aquila, co-workers of Paul who worked together to correct and train Apollos.
At GBC women work with men for evangelism, missions, shepherding ministry to other women, counselling, prayer, encouragement, service, hospitality and administration. In CGs, women lead other women, alongside male leaders. I think of the godly women of Precepts, Golden Girls, Mum’s Connect and others who live out Titus 2:2 serving under the leadership of the elders. How can we do this better?
I think Proverbs 31 gives us a beautiful picture of how we go past coexisting together, to giving each other honour. We like to focus on the portrait of the model wife, but in Proverbs 31:1, it says King Lemuel learnt this from his mother. In other words, young men learn to respect and honour women from their mothers, and the whole church learns how to celebrate godly femininity. “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” I pray for more male-female gospel partnerships as we encourage and honour each other.
On Mothers’ Day, we honor the God-fearing ministry of mothers, and also spiritual mothers. This is really important: God uses many of you as some of His best evangelists. As Timothy first heard the Gospel from his mother Eunice and grandmother Lois, I am sure if I asked, all who first heard the good news from your mother please stand up, most of the room would be on their feet. But I will not embarrass you.
Still, how should we feel when we see distortions to God’s good design?
Men and women should not cross-dress (1 Cor 11:13-16)
In 1 Corinthians 11:13-14 Paul repeats his earlier teaching to close this section, now appealing to conscience and nature when he says “judge for yourselves: is it proper…” for a woman to pray with uncovered head. When he asks “does not nature itself teach you” a man with long hair is a disgrace, he means for our consciences to be provoked by this gender-bending.
A word of caution. In other parts of the Bible, men having long hair is a positive thing, and cutting it short is a bad thing. Think about Nazarites like Samuel or Samson, whose hair was never to be cut according to Number 6:5. Long hair there is a sign of devotion. So we need context to understand what is required and forbidden, and the meaning of the norms and signs in culture.
So again, I do not think Paul is calling for legalistic policing of hair length. This is the same Paul who fronted the defense of not requiring circumcision for the Gentiles. What is key is to uphold categories of difference between men and women. Our consciences should recognise when God’s design is being thwarted.
John Piper says it this way: “Paul is saying that nature — that is, natural, built-in, God-given, intrinsic maleness — inclines a man to feel repulsed and shameful by wearing the culturally defined symbols of womanhood.”
Very practically it means Christians should find cross-dressing shameful. Deuteronomy 22:5 says ““A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.”
But I would like us to think practically. Moving forward will we have fewer or more visitors or young Christians struggling with God’s design for gender? Our ministry test, GBC, is if we will be unyielding in our convictions and unkind in our words to them? Or regardless of what they wear and do, will we walk with them through gender confusion with wisdom and kindness?
We should conclude.
Friends, I hope you agree that this sermon series on manhood and womanhood is as urgent and important as it is challenging and deep. Technology in modern medicine and AI have raised big questions about what it means to be human, and what it means to be a man or a woman. Even if you are not confused, are you not tongue-tied whenyou try to explain it to your children or grandchildren?
Are we displaying a vision of complementary manhood and womanhood to the world and to our children?
What we believe and say must be based on Scripture. It must be lived and modelled in the home and church. So are we displaying a vision of complementary manhood and womanhood to the world and to our children?
So talk about this at lunch today: who has taught you to be a man or woman - your parents? And who are your Christian models?
At risk of generalisation, whether we come from non-Christian homes, or Christian homes, it is possible that we haven’t had many good models. It is all too common for fathers to be passive, emotionally distant, or even violent fathers, and then for mothers to be domineering or combative. We often hear this in premarital counseling.
Friends, we need the exposure of the church, to show us other models, godly alternatives displaying godly manhood and womanhood so we break out of family patterns we have received.
We need one another in the church. To this end, we give thanks for all GBC’s godly women, deacons and the female staff workers like Bibianna and Carrie who come alongside the pastors to enrich their ministry. We give thanks for brothers and sisters who serve in the nursery and at Sunday school, on stage in worship and in a thousand ways. We cannot do without one another.
I turn back to Kristy’s story. In seminary, she met her husband, a gentle, thoughtful man who was not nearly as strong or as brilliant as she. Their wedding vows included Psalm 34:1-3 “O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together”
Kathy Louise Kristy, is the surviving wife of the late Timothy Keller. In her excellent book, “Jesus, Justice and Gender Roles” , she writes: “Jesus is the reason you can trust that God’s justice is behind your assigned gender role, whether you are a man who would rather not take leadership or assume risk, or a woman who wishes she could. Both get to play the Jesus role. It takes both men and women, living out their gender roles in the safety of home and church, to reveal to the world the fullness of the person of Jesus.”