The Quiet Strength of a Well-Ordered Church Text: 1 Corinthians 14:34-36
Introduction: The Egalitarian Tantrum
We now come to a passage that has suffered much at the hands of expositors. But the reason the passage has suffered is not because it is one of those parts of the apostle Paul's writing that is hard to understand. No, the passage has been greatly abused and twisted because it is easy to understand. It says what it means and it means what it says, and what it says is profoundly offensive to the spirit of our age. Our generation is in the grip of a full-blown egalitarian tantrum, and it wants no authority but its own. It despises distinctions, it loathes hierarchy, and it particularly detests any hint that God created men and women with different, complementary callings.
And so, when moderns encounter a text like this, they have a few options. They can try to argue that Paul was a crusty, misogynistic bachelor whose views were tainted by his unenlightened culture, and we, in our advanced state of wisdom, can safely ignore him. This is the liberal approach, which is simply unbelief with a pious gloss. Or, they can perform exegetical gymnastics, twisting the Greek into pretzels to make it say the opposite of what it plainly says. They will tell you that "silent" doesn't really mean silent, and "speak" doesn't really mean speak, and that Paul was actually a proto-feminist championing women's liberation. This is the approach of the cowardly evangelical, desperate for the approval of the world.
But we are not called to be clever, we are called to be faithful. We are called to take God at His Word, especially when it cuts across the grain of our own conceits. This passage is not a cultural relic. It is a divine command for the good ordering of Christ's church. It is not a restriction designed to stifle women, but rather a glorious calling that protects the church from chaos and husbands to their God-given duty. This text is not primarily about what women cannot do; it is about the beautiful, God-designed order of the covenant community, and the weighty responsibility it places upon the men.
The context here is corporate worship. The Corinthian church was a charismatic mess. Everybody had a tongue, everybody had a prophecy, and they were all talking at once. It was spiritual chaos, a free-for-all that looked more like a madhouse than the household of God. Paul has just spent the bulk of the chapter laying down rules for orderly worship, telling the tongue-speakers and the prophets to speak one at a time and to sit down and be quiet when someone else has the floor. Our text is the culmination of this call to order. It is not an isolated, random command, but an essential piece of how God wants His people to gather for worship.
The Text
The women are to keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. But if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church. Was it from you that the word of God first went forth? Or has it arrived to you only?
(1 Corinthians 14:34-36 LSB)
A Quiet and Submissive Spirit (v. 34)
We begin with the command itself, which is as clear as it is counter-cultural.
"The women are to keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says." (1 Corinthians 14:34)
The command is for women to "keep silent." This is not a prohibition on all forms of speech. Women sang in the corporate assembly. Women took vows. In the previous chapter, Paul assumed women were praying and prophesying, but instructed them to do so with their heads covered as a sign of their submission to authority (1 Cor. 11:5). The "speaking" prohibited here is of a particular kind, and the context defines it for us. It is the public, authoritative speech that governs the worship service. It is the speech that weighs and judges prophecy. It is the speech that would disrupt the divine order of headship that God established at creation.
The reason given is twofold. First, "they are not permitted to speak." This is not a suggestion. It is a divine prohibition. The authority for this order does not come from the Corinthian elders or from Paul's personal preference, but from God Himself. Second, they are to "subject themselves." This is the heart of the matter. The silence is an expression of a deeper reality: the principle of covenantal headship. This is not about inferiority or superiority of value. Men and women are equally created in the image of God and are joint-heirs of the grace of life. This is about order, function, and glory. God has designed the man to be the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of the church. This is the divine pattern, and the corporate worship of the church is to be a living icon of this heavenly reality.
Notice that Paul appeals to the "Law." He says, "just as the Law also says." He is grounding this command not in some temporary cultural convention, but in the creation ordinance itself, as recorded in Genesis. This is the same argument he makes in 1 Timothy 2, where he forbids a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man and appeals directly to the fact that "Adam was formed first, then Eve." The created order is the foundation for church order. To rebel against this is to rebel against the way God made the world.
A Requirement for Husbands (v. 35)
Verse 35 provides the practical outworking of this principle, and in doing so, it shifts the burden squarely onto the shoulders of the men.
"But if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church." (1 Corinthians 14:35)
This verse is frequently misunderstood as a patronizing pat on the head, as though the women were just empty-headed creatures with silly little questions. But that is to read our own cultural baggage into the text. This is a profound statement about the nature of the covenant home. The apostle is not stifling female intellect; he is establishing the household as the primary school of theology.
Notice the assumption: women will "desire to learn." Godly women are not meant to be ignorant. They are to be sharp, theologically astute, and hungry for the Word. The question is not whether they should learn, but how. The public assembly is for corporate worship and authoritative proclamation. The home is for discipleship, discussion, and catechism. And who is the designated teacher in that home? The husband.
This verse, therefore, is not so much a restriction on wives as it is a massive requirement for husbands. A man may not be a vocational theologian, but in his home he must be the resident theologian. He is responsible for the doctrinal health of his family. When his wife has a question about the sermon, about a difficult passage, about a point of doctrine, she is to turn to him. And what if he doesn't know the answer? Well, then he had better find out. He has his marching orders. He must be prepared to study so that he can remedy the deficiency. The tragedy in the modern church is not that this verse restricts women, but that so many women have to wonder why the Bible would tell them to ask their husbands. "He doesn't know," they think. And they are often right. This is a wholesale abdication of masculine duty.
The word "disgraceful" or "shameful" is strong. It points to a violation of the created order. It is shameful for a woman to usurp the headship role in the public assembly in the same way it is shameful for a man to abdicate his headship role in the home. Both are a rebellion against God's good design.
A Rebuke to Corinthian Arrogance (v. 36)
Paul concludes this section with a sharp, rhetorical jab. He anticipates the pushback from the proud, individualistic Corinthians.
"Was it from you that the word of God first went forth? Or has it arrived to you only?" (1 Corinthians 14:36)
This is Paul pulling rank, and rightly so. The Corinthians were acting like they were the center of the Christian universe. They were behaving as though they had received some special, private revelation that allowed them to ignore the apostolic order that governed all the other churches. They were spiritual mavericks, theological cowboys.
Paul's questions are dripping with sarcasm. "Did the gospel originate with you? Are you the source? Or are you the only ones who received it?" The implied answer to both is a resounding "No!" The word of God came to them from Jerusalem, through the apostles. They are not the fountainhead; they are downstream recipients of a tradition. They do not have the authority to invent new rules for worship that contradict the established practice of "all the churches of the saints" (v. 33).
This is a crucial lesson for us. The church is not a democracy. We do not get to vote on how we will worship or how the church will be ordered. We are not free to innovate based on the shifting sands of cultural preference. We have received a faith, an order, a "pattern of sound words" (2 Tim. 1:13), and we are bound by it. To insist on our own way, to claim that our unique circumstances allow us to set aside the clear teaching of Scripture, is to fall into the same arrogance that plagued the church at Corinth.
Conclusion: The Beauty of Order
So what are we to do with this? We are to embrace it as God's good and wise design for His people. This is not about oppressing women. A godly woman who understands her calling finds glorious freedom in it. She is freed from the burden of leading the church, a burden God never intended for her to carry. She is free to flourish in the strength of a quiet and gentle spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.
And for the men, this is a clarion call to step up. It is a call to put away childish things, to put away spiritual laziness, and to embrace the weighty responsibility of being the covenant head. You are to lead your families. You are to know the Word. You are to be able to give an answer for the hope that is in you, first to your own wife and children. Your home is to be a little church, a hub of theological vitality, with you as the pastor.
When the church gets this right, it becomes a picture of the gospel. The relationship between the man and the woman in the church and in the home is to mirror the relationship between Christ and His bride. Christ leads, protects, and provides for His church. The church joyfully and willingly submits to His loving authority. When we order our worship and our homes according to this pattern, we are preaching the gospel without even opening our mouths. We are showing the world a living, breathing picture of the beauty, wisdom, and goodness of our Creator God.