1 Corinthians 11:4-7

Every man praying or prophesying with his head covered dishonoureth his head.

Decorum in the house of God

1. It is possible to dishonour Christ in our holiest services.

2. It is not enough to pray and preach in the spirit--some regard is due to propriety of manner and demeanour.

3. This is especially necessary in public worship, lest we dishonour Christ whom we represent before others.

4. Every true and enlightened Christian will therefore study what is decorous, as well as what is religious. (J. Lyth, D.D.)

The proprieties of public worship

I. Explain the improprieties referred to in the text. These were determined by natural and spiritual relations. Required apostolic prescription, which was fixed in harmony with prevailing custom and opinion.

II. Apply.

1. The proprieties of public worship must to some extent be governed by the customs of the times.

2. Because Christianity inculcates whatsoever is of good report.

3. Yet the outward form must be pervaded with spiritual life. (J. Lyth, D.D.)

For a man … is the image and glory of God.--

Man is

I. The image of God. Imago is an abbreviation of imitago, something more than imitatio--not as one orange is the likeness of another; it means the copy of an archetype, as, e.g., the sovereign’s head on a coin (Matthew 20:20), or the sun’s reflection in water. A cathedral in photograph is a copy of a copy; for it is an image of a cathedral in stone, and this again is the image of the original pre-existing in the mind of the architect. God is both the architect and, within due limits, the archetype of man. But the relation between the two consists in something more than similitude, even in affinity of essence. For man is the image of God by virtue of his spiritual nature, which, because of the primal inbreathing (Genesis 2:7), is akin to the Divine.

II. He is the glory of God. The Divine glory itself is the eternal self-manifestation to the Triune God of His own holy nature. In the Divine counsel of creation this inner self-manifestation was to become an outer manifestation filling all creation. But it was through man, the created lord of the cosmos, the representative of God in the universe, the connecting link between heaven and earth, that the glory of God was to be communicated to the cosmos. As this derived glory was to be the effluence of the self-manifested Divine glory, which is itself the eternal effluence of Deity; so man in his higher nature of spirit, inbreathed into him from Spirit, was created actually the image of God, but in his lower nature of body, moulded from earth, was created potentially the glory of God, i.e., constituted with a possibility, contingent on obedience, of a glorified body and soul and spirit. The design was baffled by Satan for a season. Meanwhile humiliated in body, yet now transformed in spirit, fallen man awaits in faith and hope the unveiling of the “new creation” in Christ and his own bodily assimilation to the body of His glory. (Canon Evans.)