Printable File
Common Greetings —
Two as One
Part Two
____________
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (1 Tim 2:5–15 emphasis added)
____________
3.
Again, according to Paul, sin did not enter the world through the woman but through the man (Rom 5:12), who was not deceived: Adam’s obedience covered both Adam and his wife, with whom he was one flesh both before the woman was created and after the woman was created; for the biology of the man and the woman would have the head of Adam in Eve, the means by which Adam knew his wife, with this—Adam in Eve during sexual intercourse—forming the central metaphor for two being one.
Adam was in Eve in the form of Eve receiving physical life via being constructed from the flesh and rib bone of Adam—from the chest of Adam that rose and fell in delivering the breath of life to this human person. Eve was constructed from the flesh and bone of Adam in the Garden of Eden; whereas Elohim [singular in usage] had breathed the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils outside of the Garden. Thus, the location of where life and the breath of life was given has significance; for after being driven from the Garden, Adam knew his wife (Gen 4:1) and she conceived and bore Cain, a man gotten with the help of the Lord.
In the Garden, both the Man and the Woman were naked except for the garment of Adam’s obedience: as the head of the Woman, the Man’s obedience covered his wife. It wasn’t the Woman’s obedience that covered the Man; for they did not know that they were naked until the Man ate forbidden fruit.
In the head citation—the cited passage from Paul’s first epistle to Timothy—if genuinely from the Apostle Paul [scholars have raised questions about the genuineness of the pastoral epistles], Paul ignites a firestorm of endtime controversy: the cited passage would seem to support oppression of half of humankind, or so feminist activists contend … as a culture, Greeks feared female power, the darkness and dankness of the bower, but they were also intrigued by the grotto. They wanted to hold female sexuality, but to hold it at bay without damaging it—and the myth of the virgin whore comes forward in time, crossing centuries as if they were decades, the myth immortalized in the statuary of Virgin & Child.
The virgin whore myth is seen in the Westerns of mid 20th-Century America, in which saloon women have hearts of gold, with variations on this myth coming through whether the protagonist of the narrative can possess in marriage the virgin whore. The answer usually was, No, they can’t. She cannot be possessed by anyone. If she is determined to be possessed, she will die in place of the protagonist in a climatic shootout.
Visible Christendom is baptized Greek paganism, a statement that can be supported and has been in other writings and will be supported in future writings on this website. However, visible Christendom as an earthly reproduction of the Greek sky god Apollo has traditionally oppressed women and all that is of the grotto, not permitting women even when born of spirit as sons of God to speak or to teach in church services.
The Old Church [i.e., the Roman Church] adopted the virgin whore myth as its informing metaphor, and took upon itself the role of the deceived Woman: instead of learning in quietness and in submissiveness, adorning itself with good works, the Old Church adorned itself with costly attire and refused to walk in this world as the man Jesus the Nazarene walked. The Old Church walked as a virgin whore might walk, selling indulgences that, like dancers in a Las Vegas show, promised more than could be delivered.
Daughters of the Old Church continue the lawless traditions that 1st-Century Greek converts to Christianity had instituted, lawless traditions supported by twisting Paul’s words, wringing spirituality from them, and hanging Paul’s epistles out to dry on lines of text preserved by the Old Church.
Because Christians have not walked as Jesus walked—Jesus walked in this world as an Observant Jew, as did the Apostle Paul (see Acts 25:8)—because Christians have not been one with the second or last Adam (see Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45) as an obedient wife is one with her husband, her earthly head, Paul’s admonishment that women were to remain silent has been, since the age of enlightenment began, very poorly received by Christian women. Paul’s words continue to fuel a female democratic rebellion against God … the ultimate rebellion is the body refusing to obey its head; is where the body does whatever it chooses regardless of what its head desires the body to do.
Adam did not want Eve to eat forbidden fruit. In fact, Adam seems to have added to the words of the Lord [added the prohibition about touching] to prevent the very thing that happened. But the Lord had told Eve nothing about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; rather, the Lord God spoke to Adam, the Woman’s head, before the Lord created the Woman, for the Lord knew that the Woman was covered by the obedience of the Man. The Lord knew that Eve would not die when she ate forbidden fruit—and He knew that she would eat, for the Woman in the Garden of God formed the spiritually lifeless shadow and copy of the 1st-Century Christian Church.
Context matters: Adam outside of the Garden of Eden is in a different context from Adam inside the Garden. And Adam and Eve driven from the Garden is yet another context. Thus, outside of the Garden and before the Garden was created, Elohim [singular in usage] was the Head of the man of mud; for the breath of Elohim [again, singular] was in the man, thereby causing the living man (as opposed to the corpse) to be of Elohim. But when the Lord God caused a deep sleep to come upon the Man inside the Garden of God and created the Woman from the flesh and bone of the Man, the Man became the head of the Woman because her breath of life was from the Man, and only indirectly from Elohim. Now when the Man and the Woman were driven from the Garden, the significance of Adam’s breath being in Eve was misplaced, and Adam was the head of Eve through Adam knowing his wife and Eve conceiving a man gotten [Cain] from the Lord.
Inside the Garden of God, Adam was the head of Eve because she was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, with the two being one flesh, not two separate fleshly creations, each given a differing breath of life. But outside of the Garden, Adam was the head of Eve because he was in Eve when she conceived a son gotten from the Lord. Thus, outside of the Garden of God, the invisible breath that animates the flesh and that metonymically represents the life of the flesh as the dead inner self—dead because it has been consigned to disobedience (again Rom 11:32)—is no longer recognized as the head of a person; for both men and women receive this invisible breath when conceived in the womb and then born of water, the water of the womb. Rather, the head of the penis serves as the head of the Man, with this head naturally covered by the foreskin as a representation of the Lord God making for the Man and the Woman skin garments before driving them from the Garden (Gen 3:21–23).
Circumcision makes the head of the Man naked and therefore figuratively returns the Man to the Garden of God where the Man can undo the unbelief of Adam by walking uprightly before the Lord, keeping all that the Lord has commanded the man to do—but walking uprightly before the Lord while continuing to be consigned to disobedience, meaning that to walk uprightly before the Lord the Man must overcome his fleshly body that the Woman represents. The Man must do what Job did when he commanded his wife to shut up: “‘You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?’” (Job 2:10).
Now, stepping into piled high cultural dung: Eve was covered by Adam being her head, with these two—Adam and Eve—being one flesh outside of the Garden because of the construction of male and female genitalia. And the problem inherent in gay marriage is the consummation of the marriage that will have the man being in the woman as her head, her covering; for one woman cannot enter another woman as her head, nor can one man enter another man as his head. Demon possession will have a rebelling angel bodily entering a physically living entity and attempting to be this entity’s head as the reality that casts as its spiritually lifeless shadow a man attempting to enter another man as his head; hence male homosexual intercourse is the shadow and copy of demon possession, a subject that awaits exploration, whereas lesbian intercourse introduces a lifeless third element into the relationship in lieu-of [not as an assist to] the male. In neither case can a consummated marriage occur—and all sexual activity should be limited to marriage. For whenever a man enters a woman, he becomes her head and becomes one with her, regardless of whether she is of good character or bad.
The Apostle John said that the person who receives a deceiver, an idolater, into his or her house—or whoever even greets such a person—takes part in the person’s wicked works (2 John vv. 7–11) … how much more so would the man who not only greets but has sexual intercourse with a prostitute take upon the man the sins of the prostitute? No Christian, male or female, should ever place him or herself in such a position.
Before the Lord, homosexual marriages cannot occur.
Although two men or two women can have carnal love for one another and can agree to share one another’s life and can be a loving couple, men cannot marry men, nor can women marry women; for such marriages cannot be consummated before the Lord. Therefore, a man is not to lie with another man as a man lies with a woman: to do so is an abomination. Nor is a woman to lie with a woman as she would lie with a man for to do so is an abomination. Nor is an unmarried person to lie with another unmarried or married person as if they were married for to do so is an abomination.
When an unmarried married person cannot constrain him or herself, the person is to marry …
But what if the person on fire with desire lusts for a person of the same sex …
Is it better to be on fire with lust or to be on fire in the lake of fire? You decide. The Lord has already made His position certain.
4
What would it be like if you, as a human person, desired to raise your right hand and instead of your right arm lifting your right hand, your left big toe wiggled—or in a real world example, imagine that you suffer from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS — Lou Gehrig’s disease), a disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control muscle movements, where nerve cells die and can no longer send messages to muscles. You want to move your hand, but you cannot. You desire that your hand lifts a pencil and begin to write, but your hand does nothing. You demand that your hand moves, and it doesn’t move anywhere. And you realize that you are trapped within an unresponsive body: you are a prisoner in a fleshly dungeon, desiring freedom but confined in unresponsive walls of flesh and bone that might as well be steel bars.
Now, imagine having escaped from imprisoning flesh; imagine walking through physical walls, walking out of a prison because the doors suddenly open as Peter did. Imagine the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who suffers from a motor neuron disease related to ALS that has left him almost completely paralyzed, suddenly standing up, pushing his wheelchair aside and walking over to a blackboard, picking up a piece of chalk and beginning to write. And if you can visualize Hawking returning to normal activities after been long imprisoned in a nearly immobile body, you can begin to appreciate what it means to be born of God while still a physical human person; for the analogy will have Hawking in his present state, a brilliant mind unable to control the fleshly body housing this mind, forming a shadow and copy of the born-of-spirit son of God dwelling in the fleshly body of a normal human person that has been consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32), with the two—e.g., the inner self (Hawking’s mind) and the outer self (Hawking’s body)—forming one person, one living entity, one son of God.
A person’s body is to the person’s inner self as the woman is to her head, her husband, with Paul writing that the woman shall be saved in childbirth forming a cryptic expression for saying that the mortal physical outer self must put on immortality [childbirth] before the living inner self [raised from dead by the Father as a son] is free to move against the arrow of time, thereby crossing dimensions. Thus, a son of God must be twice born spiritually; i.e., born a first time when the human person receives a second breath of life, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 1,@Ø] in the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø], then born a second time spiritually when the mortal flesh puts on immortality. And the period between when the dead inner self of a human person is born of God [born of the Father — John 5:21] and when the spiritually dead outer self [the fleshly body] puts on immortality through the Son giving life to whom He will [also John 5:21] is analogous to a human person being imprisoned by iron bars.
The analogy that Jesus used to make the above point is that of the prophet Jonah in the belly of the great fish [whale] … for as long as Jonah was in the belly of the whale, he was imprisoned in flesh and not free to come and go as he pleased. He was like a dead person buried in a watery grave of flesh. So when life was far from Jonah, Jonah prayed from the belly of the whale to the Lord and his prayer was heard (Jonah 2:2, 7): Jonah recounted what had occurred to him and promised to pay what he vowed, thereby going to Nineveh and ending his rebellion. Then, not before, Jonah was released from his imprisonment in flesh by the whale puking Jonah out upon dry land.
Stephen Hawking would understand the emotions of Jonah when puked from the belly of the whale if Hawking were suddenly miraculously healed so that he could again walk as a human person normally walks.
The inner son of God, born of spirit into a fleshly body that imprisons the now living inner self as the whale imprisoned Jonah—this inner self being directly analogous to Jonah and as such, far from the land of the spiritually living—is not merely begotten by God [Jonah wasn’t begotten by Israel for the three days and three nights that he was in the belly of the whale], but has received actual birth as a heavenly being, but a heavenly being imprisoned in flesh.
When Jesus told Nicodemus,
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and spirit [B<,b:"J@H], he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit [J@Ø B<,b:"J@H] is spirit [B<,Ø:V]. Do not marvel that I said to you, “You must be born again.” The wind [B<,Ø:"] blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit [J@Ø B<,b:"J@H] (John 3:5–8)
Jesus told Nicodemus a physical thing, assigning to <J@Ø B<,b:"J@H> a possessive [genitive case] article, disclosing that the person born of spirit has received indwelling life from the neuter spirit that is like air [aer] in that it is not a physical thing but surrounds physical things … modern physicists understand that aer is actually a physical thing consisting of gas molecules and microscopic dirt particles. And Latter Day Saint (LDS) theologians would have <spirit> being particle matter too fine to be seen by human eyes; hence, these theologians continue in the traditions of classical antiquity, understanding the invisible things of God at a physical level only, but as such they are a step ahead of theologians who assign personhood to the breath of God.
In classic Greek philosophy, B<,Ø:" [pneuma] was different from RLPZ [psuche], which originally was assigned meaning as <breath of life> but is usually translated into English as <soul>, thus confusing readers who have unwittingly accepted the principle lie of paganism, that people are humanly born with indwelling immortal souls.
· All that animates the fleshly body of a human person is metonymically named by the Greek icon, RLPZ;
· All that gives heavenly life to the inner self of a person that has been metonymically named by the icon RLPZ comes from receiving the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 1,@Ø] in the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø] and is metonymically named by the Greek icon, B<,Ø:".
A person is not the person’s fleshly body, but the spiritually lifeless [i.e., dead] inner self that animates the fleshly body … Stephen Hawking is not his fleshly body that has imprisoned the brilliant mind and emotions that is Stephen Hawking—and Hawking would be among the first to tell you that he isn’t his body. But Stephen Hawking has not yet been born of spirit so Hawking would also be an unreliable reporter when it comes to being born of spirit, the phenomenon that occurs when a human person is drawn from this world by the Father (John 6:44) and given a second breath of life, a breath of life that doesn’t further animate the person’s fleshly body but that animates in the heavenly realm the person’s inner self: it is the person’s RLPZ that is raised from death by the Father through the person receiving a second breath of life, a breath of life [metonymically, B<,Ø:"] that gives to the person life in the heavenly realm—and life in the heavenly realm is eternal life, or life outside of time; life not governed by the arrow of time; life outside of this physical creation and this age of starlight.
It is a person’s living RLPZ that sleeps under the altar, awaiting the martyrdom of his brothers who will be killed as he was (Rev 6:9–11) … again, people are not humanly born with living RLPZ, living souls, but are born with dead inner selves—
Jesus said to a disciple, “‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead’” (Matt 8:22) … it isn’t physical corpses that bury other physical corpses, but the physically living who have dead inner selves.
If the person who has been raised from the dead (again, John 5:21) has life in the heavenly realm through having a living inner self, then that person has already been glorified through having received the glory of the Lord that the prophet Ezekiel saw in vision; therefore, the living RLPZ at human death—i.e., the death of the fleshly body that has been imprisoning this living inner self—is not unclothed or found naked, but awaits being further clothed or housed in a body like that presently possessed by Christ Jesus, with this further clothing coming from the Son who gives life to whom He will (also John 5:21) by causing the mortal fleshly body to put on immortality.
The glorified Bridegroom is not His heavenly body, but is the living inner self that animates the body that He presently has. Hence, the indwelling of Christ Jesus is not the indwelling of a glorious heavenly body, but the indwelling of the spirit of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø]; for it is this B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø that is the glorious Son as a human person is not the fleshly body that is analogous to the whale that swallowed the man Jonah, but is the inner self, living or dead, that animates the fleshly body.
The whale no more obeyed Jonah than the fleshly body of a human person who desires to keep the commands of God obeys the inner self. The Apostle Paul wrote,
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of spirit [B<,b:"J@H] and not in the old way of the written code. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual [B<,L:"J46`H], but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Rom 7:4–25 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Within Paul’s fleshly body dwelt sin/lawlessness (from 1 John 3:4), with this indwelling of sin differing from the indwelling of the breath of Christ that caused his inner self to delight in the law of God and to want to keep these commands of God—and here is where what has been simple gets complicated: the head of every Christian is Christ Jesus and the head of Christ Jesus is God the Father, and the head of every Christian’s fleshly body is the Christian’s living inner self, the RLP0 that has been raised from death through receipt of a second breath of a life, with this second breath of life [the breath of God in the breath of Christ] being two breaths that function as one, with the RLPZ of God being in Christ where it functions as the Head of Christ … that which is inside functions as the head of the living entity. And as a husband is inside his wife when a marriage is consummated, the husband is the head of his wife. It is not the other way around: the wife is not the head of her husband for the wife cannot physically be inside her husband when a marriage is consummated. The anatomy of a human man and a human woman serves as the visible shadow and type of the inner self being inside a body of flesh as the head of the fleshly body.
But God consigned all human persons to disobedience so that He could have mercy on all (again, Rom 11:32); so the dead inner self is <dead> because it has been consigned to disobedience—and what Paul experienced when his fleshly body would not obey the desires of his living inner self but did the very things he hated is the reality of marriage in this world, where wives do not really obey their husbands but all too often do the very things that their husbands hate. These two [husband and wife] are nevertheless one flesh even when conflict exists between the desires of the husband and the actions of the wife. No conflict should exist, and none would if it were not for the inner self having been consigned to disobedience prior to being raised from death through receiving a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ.
Crucifixion kills slowly via shock and suffocation. The dead inner self is not without life—it could not animate the fleshly body if it were without life—but is <dead> because it has been consigned to disobedience; hence the inner self when resurrected from death must deal-with and overcome the life-it-had when consigned to sin. Temporary, the inner self of the Christian is at war with itself, not with the fleshly body in which the inner self dwells; for the fleshly body will do whatever the inner self tells the fleshly body to do …
But the whale would not puke Jonah forth until commanded to do so by the Lord. There was little Jonah could do inside the whale to cause this great fish to release Jonah other than to pray to the Lord. There was little Paul could do to cause his fleshly members to desist from doing those things that he hated. There is little that the inner self of an addict can do to cause the flesh to cease craving the thing to which the flesh is addicted, whether alcohol, drugs of any sort, sugar, even the need for human interaction and acceptance. However, there is much that the Lord can do: just as the Lord commanded the whale to puke Jonah out onto dry land, the Lord can sculpt the inner self of the person into a vessel intended for honorable usage if it is the person’s desire to keep the commands of God.
Prior to when a person receives a second breath of life, the person has no inner life but that which has been delivered to the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh: the inner self of every person is dead because it has been consigned to disobedience so as to destroy the fleshly body of the person, with the arrow of time pointing from order to disorder. The ordered body of a human infant tends toward disorder as the person ages, with genes no longer functioning as they should and with inner growths [cancerous tumors] sapping the strength of the person as conk knots sap the strength of trees on which they grow. Older immune systems do not work as they should, and the body begins to kill itself: slowly, silently, systematically, the fleshly body of the person orchestrates its own death about which the inner self can do nothing, as Stephen Hawking is well aware, a death brought about by the inner self being consigned to disobedience.
If a human person rejects the seemingly good things of this world and chooses instead to keep the commands of God, striving to walk as Jesus walked, the human person makes internal war against the inner self’s consignment to disobedience.
According to Paul’s gospel,
For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:12–16 emphasis added)
Regardless of whether the inner self of a human person is raised from death [released from its consignment to disobedience] in the person’s physical lifetime or in the great White Throne Judgment, the inner self that willfully transgresses the commands of God will perish; for it is the person who strives to keep the law who will be justified. The good works that this person does with hands and body matter little. What matters is the intentions of the heart, not the weakness of the flesh which can be overcome either directly [the Second Passover liberation of Israel — when the Father commands sin to release the holy ones] and indirectly through fighting the good fight of patiently enduing in the faith until physical death overtakes the person.
The head of a person is that which is inside the person: the head and the body form one entity. As a man and his wife form one physical entity, the inner self of a person and the fleshly body form one physical entity.
Paul writes,
Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.
Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. (1 Cor 11:1–10)
Because the spirit of God [B<,Ø:" 1,@Ø] is in Christ (see Rom 6:23; Matt 3:16), God the Father is the Head of Christ, now and forever. And because the spirit of Christ is in every Christian born of God, Christ Jesus is the Head of every disciple, regardless of whether the disciple is physically male or female. Hence, the disciple is to Christ as a faithful wife is to her husband, which is why Paul commands disciples to be imitators of him as he is of Christ Jesus; for if a disciple will imitate Paul who committed no offense against the Law or the temple (Acts 25:8), the disciple will be as a faithful wife should be to her husband.
When circumcision was outward, circumcision made the head of a man naked … a man and his wife had only one head that could be made naked by circumcision; however, when a Christian disciple is married to another disciple, both disciples have inner selves that have been made alive by the breath of God in the indwelling breath of Christ Jesus. Thus, the symbol representing that Adam was created first, then Eve; that the man was not made for the woman but the woman for man is the hair on a woman’s head, with long hair on the head of the woman disclosing to humans and angels that the woman understands she remains, in or out of marriage, as a disciple’s body is to its inner self. Therefore, since the woman’s long hair relates to the relationship between the inner self and the body, the fabric covering with which the wife covers, or should cover her long hair shows that the wife is under the authority of her husband.
Two coverings, one physical, one spiritual, with both coverings on the head of the woman where they function as one covering.
Adam and Eve had one head that could enter into the other, with this head covered by a skin covering that was analogous to the skin clothing that the Lord made for Adam and Eve before driving them from the Garden of Eden … so-called female circumcision is not circumcision at all, but mutilation of female genitalia; for in so-called female circumcision, the skin covering of the head is not removed so that the head is made naked—instead, what might be considered the head is removed as would occur in male castration.
Because outward circumcision made the head of a male naked, short hair on a man’s head represents circumcision of the heart; for the foreskins of hearts—the sack holding the heart—cannot be removed and the person still live. Hence, a man’s short hair and a woman’s long hair, both, symbolize that these two Christians desire to be obedient to Christ Jesus, their spiritual Head. But the hair on neither the husband’s nor the wife’s head says anything about the wife being obedient to her husband as the body is to obey its head, the inner self. And for this reason, the wife is to have a fabric covering that covers her hair.
Two being one as in marriage should not be a difficult concept to understand: what is difficult is death being disobedience.
My contention is that men—including Paul—do not have the authority to command women to be in subjection to their husbands and thereby cover their hair with a fabric covering to communicate to all sons of God, in this world and in heaven, that the woman voluntarily submits to her husband … Christ Jesus as the head of every disciple permits the disciple to choose or not choose to keep the commands of God. Likewise, husbands as the head of their wives need to permit wives to choose or not choose to obey their heads and to signal their obedience to angels and to other Christians by covering their hair. Why a wife is to cover can be explained (I don’t know if I have made the case in this Greeting, but I will occasionally revisit the subject), but whether a wife covers or not is up to the woman.
As the Lord God communicated with ancient Israel by giving or by withholding rain in its season (Deut 11:10–15), the Lord communicates with Christians through both the groaning of the spirit and through giving or withholding blessings—and a man communicates with the Lord through both his hair length and through his desire to keep the commands of God, whereas the woman communicates by her hair length and by whether she chooses to obey her husband, disclosed to all by the woman covering her hair with a fabric covering.
* * *
"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."