“It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels.”
We talk, and think, less about angels than did our ancestors in the faith. We are generally (in “the West”) less superstitious–a good thing! We are also generally more skeptical about the presence and influence of spiritual realities. Angels–for better or worse–factor little in our thinking, even as we are citizens of a spiritual kingdom. But it seems that for those (much) older brothers and sisters of ours in the faith, the realm of the spirit was integral in their thinking about the world.
Paul, in his letters to the church in Corinth, mentions angels (in addition to the passage we’ve been focused on) in several places: 1 Cor 4:9; 1 Cor 6:3; 1 Cor 10:10; 1 Cor 13:1; and 2 Cor 11:14. Angels are also mentioned in these other letters of the New Testament: Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 & 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation (that may not be an exhaustive list). Though they were of the same flesh as us who live in the 21st century, our elder brothers and sisters understood that spiritual forces influenced (and were even influenced by) man’s existence, man’s actions.
It seemed to Paul, for instance, (he writes in 1 Corinthians 4) that the apostles had been put by God “on the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings” (4:9). These Spirit-driven men had the attention not only of humans, but of angels. Yet this angelic audience is more than just an apostolic burden. Paul writes in his letter to our brothers and sisters in Ephesus, “[God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (3:10-11).
How incredible! The Church, expressing and manifesting the wisdom of God to the angels! The forces of the heavenly realms (which, let’s not forget, include the spiritual forces of evil against whom we must keep ourselves armed, as written about three chapters later in Ephesians!) are watching, “on the edge of their seats”, so to speak, to see–what will they learn from God, through the Church? What will God’s redeemed teach them? What will God make known to angels and demons through the life of his Son, embodied in the Church?
We’ll continue discussing the relationship of angels to the Church in our next post, and how that perhaps relates to our passage in question.
Before the Silver Cord is Severed 