For God is not [a God] of disorder but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints.
Paul orders the meetings at Corinth by one rule: the character of God Himself. A gathering should look like the God it worships. So two questions follow. Where does confusion come from, and who keeps order when believers meet? (Older translations render the first phrase "God is not the author of confusion.")
The verse comes right after the words about the spirits of the prophets. Read together, they show what a scene of confusion really means.
The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, a statement that excludes all idea of being moved by an uncontrollable impulse. With men speaking under the power of demons it would be otherwise, resulting in unholy excitement and confusion. God is not the Author of confusion, but of peace. Any scene of confusion in the assemblies of God's people is clearly not of God.
The practical value of this is that it removes a standard excuse. A speaker is never at the mercy of his gift.
1 Corinthians 14:32 simply teaches that the spirit of the prophet was under the prophet's control — that he was not compelled, as by some irresistible force, to speak, but that he could wait, in calm self-possession, for a fitting occasion to speak. This is a most valuable principle, and one which ought to be deeply pondered. If it were fully understood and acted upon, it would preserve us from a quantity of mere fanaticism and absurdity.
If peace belongs to God, disorder must come from somewhere else.
A gift is not God, and the way a gift is used is not always an expression of His will. But God dwells in the assembly, and in each individual saint. This solemn and ever blessed truth lies at the bottom of all special direction as to behaviour in the Church. What God expects from His worshippers is not so much a ready awareness of gifts or powers in themselves. It is a deep and reverent sense of His immediate presence… Confusion is the fruit of human self-seeking, but grace makes us know the God of peace. When His abounding peace fills and quiets their hearts, their outward manner will show their inward state.
The same principle reaches beyond the meeting into every quarrel among believers.
Strife and contention in the churches could not come from God. He is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints… These things spring from the flesh. We read: "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?" (James 4:1). The devil, the relentless enemy of God, is behind the flesh. He can work upon it; he could have no foothold among the saints of God apart from it.
Because God Himself is the God of peace, one question presses: who presides when believers gather?
The assembly at Corinth had the worst confusion and disorder. Even there, the inspired apostle never hints at such a thing as a human president, under any name at all. God was there to keep order. They were to look to Him, not to a man, under any name. To set up man to keep order in God's Assembly is sheer unbelief, and an open insult to the Divine Presence.
The closing phrase widens the verse past Corinth. What Paul writes to one assembly holds for all.
God led Paul to write to the Corinthian assembly to set them right about many things among them. But all through the letter we see passages that prove the apostle never treated it as an independent, self-contained unit. He saw it as a responsible and representative part of the whole church of God on earth… The same teaching, and the same principles of action that applied to them, applied to all… What applies to one applies to all.
Commentators differ on where the phrase belongs. Some join it to the words before it; others to the sentence after it.
A full stop clearly belongs after the word peace. A new sentence then begins: "As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches."
These directions carry the weight of a command, so no one may shelve them as out of date.
Paul called on the saints at Corinth to see that these instructions, with all the earlier ones he gave, were not just his own ideas of what looked proper. They were "the commandments of the Lord." So our duty is plain. It is not for us to explain them away, or to treat them as only Paul's opinion, or as rules that suited the first century but are now out of date. Rather, as far as we understand them, we are to obey them.
- Character — Peace describes God Himself. So confusion in a meeting shows that something other than God is at work.
- Control — The prophets' spirits are subject to them. No speaker can plead an impulse he cannot resist, and wild excitement is not the mark of God's Spirit.
- Cause — Confusion grows out of self-seeking and the flesh. Strife between believers starts in the same place.
- Chairman — God Himself is present to keep order. Setting up a man to preside in His assembly counts as unbelief, not good management.
- Compass — "As in all the churches" makes this the pattern everywhere. And these are the Lord's commandments, not Paul's preference.
Let [your] women be silent in the assemblies, for it is not permitted to them to speak; but to be in subjection, as the law also says.
Paul is telling a church how to behave when it meets: who may speak, in what order, and why. This verse puts one limit inside that freedom. Two questions follow. What does "in the churches" mean? And how does it fit with the same letter's earlier words about women praying and prophesying?
Commentators tie the restriction to a place, not to a woman's gift. Once the setting is fixed, the apparent clash with 1 Corinthians 11:5 disappears.
There is no inconsistency between 1 Corinthians 11:5 and 1 Corinthians 14:34. The first applies to a woman's prophesying under any circumstances. The second is limited to the use of the gift in the Christian assembly, where it is firmly forbidden to the woman... If God gives spiritual power, He means it to be used. Yet He has been pleased to regulate its use. The Christians had made the mistake many have fallen into since: supposing that because someone has a spiritual gift, there is unlimited freedom at all times and in all places.
Some argue the word means idle chatter, so that only disruptive talking is banned. Kelly answers them from another passage that uses the same word.
The word "speak," they say, means only casual talk or chatter. This is completely untrue. It is the regular word for speaking out in public, as 1 Peter 4:10-11 shows... "whoever speaks" is to do so "as one who speaks oracles of God"; "whoever serves" is to do so "by the strength that God supplies." This is the same word for "speaking" that is forbidden to the women in this verse. It is speaking in public, not chattering.
Paul appeals to the Law, not to local custom. One writer follows that appeal back through the Old Testament, and asks where the women who prophesied actually spoke.
In a previous chapter the apostle has recognised the woman's liberty to pray and to prophesy. But in the churches or assemblies her voice must not be heard. The one exception is the shared praise that should always rise to God from such gatherings. Privacy is the woman's sphere, and subjection her appointed place in relation to the man. Both law and gospel teach this equally... Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. If Miriam prophesied, it was to the women of Israel. If Deborah was raised up, it was a mark of God's judgement and dishonour on the nation that had lost its true manhood by turning from the Lord... Scripture everywhere discourages a woman taking a prominent place, as out of keeping with the original law of creation.
Was this a one-off correction for one troubled city? Two things in the text answer that: the plural "churches," and Paul's own words in verse 37.
The instructions in this letter are not just local. They speak to all professing Christians everywhere. In the very passage under discussion the apostle speaks of women keeping silence in the "churches." He does not say "in your church," but "in the churches." ... Woman's place in the assembly is one of subjection and retirement, not of leadership. Those who take part publicly — in prayer, praise, or ministry — take a place of leadership, and that place is not given to women.
Notice that this ban on women speaking in the assembly is not just the word of the apostle Paul — a bachelor, as some would describe him. These things are "the commands of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 14:37). So anyone who wants to be spiritual and please the Lord here must accept that these instructions are the statutes of God.
Set against the rest of the chapter, this limit is narrow. Grant describes a gathering with no fixed leader, led by the Spirit Himself.
The Holy Spirit is really present with us as the infallible Guide and Director in the church of God... the whole Church, in its coming together, could be trusted to His guidance, without prayer-book, priest, or president — each man left to his own conscience before God... In the public assembly, the women were to be silent (1 Corinthians 14). The one exception shows how large the liberty for all else.
Silence in the assembly is not a verdict on a woman's worth. Scripture speaks of women with high honour elsewhere.
I believe sisters have a very honourable place in Scripture. They stayed close to the Lord when the disciples deserted Him. At His death and resurrection it is they, not the apostles, who are found there. In His life they cared for His needs. At the end of Romans the apostle gives them the highest praise. But the Lord never sends them out to teach or preach... Everything is beautiful in its place.
- Place, not person. The limit belongs to the assembly when it gathers. The same letter allows a woman to pray and prophesy elsewhere.
- Speak, not chatter. The word is the ordinary one for public speaking, the same word used in 1 Peter 4:10-11.
- Law, not culture. Paul grounds it in what the Law says, a subjection that both law and gospel teach.
- Churches, not Corinth. The plural "churches" and Paul's words in verse 37 make it a command of the Lord for all, not a local fix.
- Liberty, not silencing. The gathering has no prayer-book, priest, or president. This one exception shows how wide that freedom is, and the place it leaves the woman is honourable.