1 Corinthians 11

1Copy my example, because I copy Christ’s example. I copy the example of how Christ lived.

Paul talks about men and women in Christian meetings

2You make me very happy, because you always remember me. You remember everything that I taught you. And you are careful about what I taught you to do. 3Now I want you to understand that Christ has authority over every man. Christ is like the man’s head. Also, the man is the head of the woman and God is the head of Christ.

4So, when all of you meet together, you meet to worship God. When a man prays in your meeting, he should not cover his head. Or, when a man speaks a message from God in your meeting, he should not cover his head. If he covers his head, he is not showing the right thing about his leader. He is not showing that he respects Christ as his leader. 5But when a woman prays in your meeting, she should cover her head. Or, when a woman speaks a message from God in your meeting, she should cover her head. If she does not cover her head, she is not showing the right thing about her leader. She is not showing that she respects the man as her leader. It looks very bad when someone cuts off all the hair from a woman’s head. And it is bad in the same way when a woman does not cover her head in your meetings. 6So, if a woman does not cover her head, she should cut off all her hair. But, if it is bad for a woman to cut off her hair, then she should cover her head.

7A man should not cover his head, because God made the man like himself. God wanted to show how great and how good God himself is. That is why God made the man. But a woman shows how good and how beautiful people can be. 8God made a man first. After that, God made a woman from that first man. God did not make the man from the woman. 9Neither did God make the man to help the woman. No, God made the woman to help the man. 10That is why a woman should cover her head. It shows that she has authority on her head. It shows that to the angels.

11But we must live as the Lord’s people. The women need the men. But the men need the women too. 12It is true that God made the first woman from the first man. But it is also true that the mother of every man is a woman. But all things come from God.

13Answer this question for yourselves: Perhaps a woman prays to God but she has not covered her head. Is that proper? 14If a man has long hair, he should be ashamed. Everyone understands that. 15But if a woman has long hair, it is beautiful. God gave long hair to her to cover her. 16Some people may want to argue about this. But I have told you what we do. And all the churches do the same when they worship God.

The Lord’s Supper

17Now I must speak about something else. I am not happy about what happens at your meetings. Your meetings are more bad than good. 18First, some people have told me that there are different groups among you. And these groups do not agree with each other when you meet together as God’s people. I believe that some of this is true. 19But perhaps these groups have some purpose. Perhaps you need to be in separate groups when you do not agree. Then, as a result, you can see clearly which people among you are right. You can see which people God is happy with.

20You meet together so that you can worship the Lord. But you do not eat the Lord’s Supper as you should eat it. 21Each of you eats your own meal, and you do not wait for anyone else. So, as a result, one of you may be hungry, while another one drinks too much. 22But certainly, you have your own homes where you can eat! You can drink there in your own homes too! You seem to think that God’s church is not important. When you eat like this, you make the poor people feel ashamed. You cannot think that I will say good things about this. Certainly, I am not happy about these things that you do.

23The Lord himself gave me this message, which I taught to you:

On the night when Judas sold the Lord Jesus to Jesus’ enemies, Jesus had supper with his friends. Jesus took some bread at the supper. 24He thanked God for the bread and then he broke it into pieces. He said: ‘This is my body. I give it to save you. Eat this bread, so that you remember me.’

25Then after supper, Jesus took a cup of wine and did the same thing. He said to his disciples, ‘This cup shows the new promise that God makes because of my death. When I die, my blood will pour out. Every time that you drink from the cup in this way, you should remember me.’

26Every time that you eat bread together like this, you are telling about the Lord’s death. You eat bread and you drink wine together. You are showing that he died on your behalf. You should continue to do this until he returns.

27We want to show how great and how good the Lord is. So, we eat this bread and we drink from this cup together. But perhaps someone among us does not do it for that reason. Perhaps they do it in a way that they ought to be ashamed about. Then that person is doing something wrong. He should not be eating the Lord’s Supper like that. He is doing something wrong against the Lord’s body and the Lord’s blood.

28So, each of us needs to think very carefully about our own life. Then we will know whether everything is right. We need to be sure that everything in our life is right with God. We should do this first. Then we can eat this bread and we can drink from this cup. 29Nobody should ever eat and drink at the Lord’s Supper in a wrong way. Anyone who does that is not recognising the Lord’s body. That person will cause God to be angry with them because they are doing something wrong. So, God will punish them. 30That is why many of you are weak and sick. Some of you have died because of this. 31But if we really think carefully about our own lives, we ourselves can recognise the wrong things. Then God will not need to decide about us because we are doing wrong things. He will not need to punish us. 32The Lord decides to punish us now so that we will learn not to do wrong things any longer. At the end, he will punish all those people who do not believe Christ. But he does not want to punish us for ever, together with them.

33So, my Christian friends, you meet together to eat the Lord’s Supper. Wait for each other when you meet like that. 34If any of you are hungry, you should eat at home. Eat before you come. Then there will be nothing wrong. So then, when you meet together, the Lord will not need to punish you.

I will come to visit you. Then I will talk to you about all the other things.