1 Peter: How to Glorify God in Your Marriage (3:1-7)

Hi, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into Newsong Churches Podcast.

We're a biblically faithful, gospel-centered Anglican church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

You can learn more about us at Newsongportperry.ca.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

The second lesson this morning is taken from 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 1 to 7.

1 Peter 3:1–7

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

Do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear.

But let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.

And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the women as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Lord Jesus, your servants Ezekiel and John remind us this morning that your word gives us life.

It takes dry bones and puts flesh on them.

It takes dead people and raises us to new life.

So, Lord, would you do that in the way that you intend?

Would you speak your life-giving word to our hearts that we would be refreshed and renewed and sustained to do your will and to know you as our Savior?

It's in your precious name, Lord Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, we've been journeying through Peter's letter, this letter of 1 Peter, written to Christians scattered around this Roman province of Asia Minor.

He's writing to Christians, not just living in a geographical exile, but Christians who live in a sort of spiritual exile, to be a Christian, is to live in some sense as an exile, hopefully a faithful exile by the grace of God.

We live in a world that God loves, that God calls to himself, that God in Christ is reconciling to himself, and yet we're not quite at home, are we?

We wait for that day when the world will be fully renewed and fully restored at the coming of Christ.

And this will be our true home.

In the meantime, it's the already not yet.

And we're called to live as faithful exiles here as Christians.

Exiles who live out, live on the basis of this living hope that Peter has talked about, a living hope through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus.

And what a hope that is.

When you think about Ezekiel and the John reading we just had.

This is new life we're talking about, and living on the basis of death giving way to life through the resurrection of Jesus.

This is a whole new way to be human.

And on that basis, we endeavor to live in a way that is consonant, in a way that agrees with this essential truth of the resurrection that we confess.

We endeavor to live in a holy way.

We endeavor to conduct to conduct ourselves honorably and in such a way that others would take notice and give glory to God.

That's what Peter said in chapter 2.

Here's what one commentator says, reflecting on the passage that we looked at last week.

He says, Christians are free in slavery to God.

We are free in slavery to God, free as followers of Christ, we submit ourselves to others freely.

Friends, this is uh what we are called to as faithful exiles, to live in a holy way.

First, Peter says toward the state, or at least chronologically speaking, how do we relate to the state?

Well, we endeavor to be the very best kind of citizens that we can be.

Endeavor to do the state good, endeavor to do others good as faithful citizens.

And we endeavor to do well by our employers, by our super uh superiors.

We endeavor to do well.

And then, likewise, is the key word in today's reading, likewise, in the same way, we're continuing this same way of living that Peter's been developing all through chapter two, and now we consider this uh profound and most sacred of relationships, marriage.

Right?

Marriage is the human relationship that God has designed to mirror the love of Christ for the church and of the church for Christ.

That's what one commentator says.

This is why Christians make much of marriage.

We make much of marriage because we recognize, with the Bible's help, a mirror of Christ's love for us, his redeemed people.

And one of the most profound and basic ways we can describe salvation is through the imagery of marriage.

A bridegroom who redeems and rescues his bride for himself.

That's the kind of love Christ has for the church.

That is the kind of love we are called, those of us who are called to marriage, to live out day by day.

And here's Peter's big point in chapter 3, verses 1 and 7.

Husbands and wives, you have a vocation.

You have a calling, a God-given calling, and it's this you are called to glorify God in your marriage.

You're called to glorify God in your marriage.

And so, with our time this morning, I want us to look in two parts, both at Peter's exhortations uh to wives, Peter's exhortation then to husbands, and then I want us to consider how that applies for us in our context today.

But I want us to consider as well, not just for those of us who are married, but for those of us who are single, and perhaps for those of us who've gone through divorce, what does this mean?

And how can we apply it today?

And I'm very mindful, by the way, that there are marriages in this room that have gone, that that have, there have been folks who've been married in this room for longer than I've been alive.

Let's put it that way.

This is not me pontificating my great experience and insight into marriage.

This is us diving into God's wisdom and God's design for this wonderful thing we call marriage and what it means for the Christian life.

So I hope that through this study we can glimpse a greater truth, goodness, and beauty lived out in marriage as we give expression to the gospel.

So turn with me, if you will, in your order of service or in the Bibles in front of you, page 954, and we're going to consider uh God's design for marriage and how we are called to glorify God in and through marriage.

What a wonderful reading from Cayley, by the way.

Well done.

Couldn't be a better person to read this passage, I think.

Way to go.

There you go.

All right, let's look at verses 1 to 6 to begin.

Uh wives glorify God by submitting to your husbands.

So verse 1.

Likewise, wives, Peter writes, be subject to your husbands.

And okay, let's pause here.

Because probably Peter's imperative might already unsettle us or irk us, right?

This imperative to be subject or to submit can sound, at best, outdated to some, a product of its first century context, or perhaps at worst, oppressive, an excuse for the subjugation and diminishment of women.

And some might say that this teaching's lost all relevance altogether, and what it needs is radical reinterpretation, revision, or even removal if we expect Christianity to fit with our times.

But as we handle this passage, I want us to keep in mind two things.

First, new song, let's remember what we believe about God's word.

It's true and it's life-giving.

It's true in its whole and it's true in every part.

And even, perhaps especially when a passage provokes us, we can be confident that our lives will benefit from what God has to say to us in Scripture.

God's truth is always relevant to us.

And second, we don't interpret one passage of Scripture in such a way that it contradicts or it's repugnant to another passage of Scripture.

Let's bear in mind that from page one, the Bible affirms the equal dignity and value of men and women both as image-bearers of God.

In fact, Scripture itself is the source of our Western culture's understanding of justice and equality.

So the question is, then, what does Peter mean by be subject?

Or some translations might say submit.

Submission is not inferiority.

It is not blind obedience.

It is not loss of identity or agency, nor is it passivity or silence.

The point is not subjugation, but the cultivation of unity and partnership within marriage.

In practice, as the CEV translation puts it, if you are a wife, you must put your husband first.

So after reading various definitions of this word, I asked my wife, Rachel, the great biblical scholar that she is, what she made of this passage.

And I thought her definition was the clearest and genuinely the most biblical.

Submission is deprioritizing yourself and prioritizing the good of another.

In this case, the husband, through humility, respect, and sacrificial love.

Someone give that woman an honorary doctorate, right?

Way to go.

So to be clear, Peter is not saying that all women ought to be subject to all men, but that wives have a unique calling to glorify God by how they partner with and prioritize the good of their husbands with a relationship within the context of a relationship of commitment and trust.

Properly understood, Peter is not diminishing women, but elevating them, directing them toward the lived expression of the gospel in their marriage.

And this gospel-shaped conduct can have powerful results.

Be subject, Peter writes, so that even if some husbands do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

See, in the ancient world, wives were expected to adopt their husbands' beliefs wholesale, right?

Greek historian Plutarch articulates the wisdom of the day.

He writes not too long after Peter.

He says this a wife should not acquire her own friends, but should make her husband's friends her own.

The gods are the first and most significant friends.

For this reason, it is proper for a wife to recognize only those gods whom her husband worships.

Peter's instruction strikes us as quite different, doesn't it?

A Christian's wife, a Christian wife's primary allegiance is not to her husband's beliefs, but to Christ.

Thus, even when words fail to convince, her conduct in the home becomes a powerful witness.

And what an encouraging thought that is.

So what could that kind of conduct that Peter is talking about, that gospel-shaped conduct, look like?

Verse three, do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing that you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

So Peter contrasts the allure of outward beauty with lasting inward character.

He's not saying that women don't have permission to try and look their best.

Rather, as Christians, to bear in mind what fades and what endures, and to order their affections, the affections of our hearts accordingly.

One commentator says the contemporary world resists the aging process at all costs.

Christians need God's values to reject the futility of the worldly search for beauty.

Isn't that still the case?

Rachel and I were watching YouTube not long ago, and whatever the algorithm spit out, it spit out an ad for an anti-aging cream, which is nothing new, but it was an anti-aging cream for your hair.

Because you know your hair is aging minute by minute by minute, right?

You need this cream.

We can, if we're silent, we can hear our hair aging.

We see what lasts and we see what doesn't, right?

Let's not make that mistake, is what Peter's saying.

Instead, wives are to cultivate a gentle and quiet spirit.

And this might sound like selling women short at first, until we consider that Jesus himself refers to himself as gentle and lowly in heart.

Peter's point is clear.

Do not chase the world's standards of beauty or value.

Pursue what's most and eternally important, Christ's own character.

Peter illustrates the point by pointing to Sarah, Abram's wife in verses five and six.

Again, Peter is not suggesting that submission means blind obedience or self-degradation.

Rather, Peter's point is that Sarah is a model of trusting God and doing good in the context of her marriage.

Even if she did it imperfectly, which she certainly did, Sarah chose what's important and what lasts, cultivating a character of unity and partnership through humility, respect, and self-sacrifice.

So to sum all of this up, within the context of marriage, wives are called to glorify God by their willing submission, the deprioritizing of self, and the prioritizing of the good of the husband.

Okay, gentlemen, in case we think we're off the hook, let's look at verse 7.

And let's not make the mistake, by the way, of thinking just because Peter spent six verses on women and one verse on men, that in some ways these words aren't any less weighty.

Let's look at verse seven together.

Husbands, glorify God by honoring your wives.

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives, Peter says, in an understanding way.

So let's begin with this word likewise, or some translations might say in the same way, right?

We've already noted that Peter's use of this word is meant to suggest that he's carrying on that same line of thought, that same argument from chapter 2, right?

Submitting ourselves to our state authorities, submitting ourselves to our employers, and that's true.

But the fact that this word is used in both verse 1 and 7 also suggests that this instruction to husbands is meant to sit side by side with the instruction to wives in verses 1 to 6.

So one biblical commentator writes the key expression here, likewise, or in the same way, is applied to the husband as well as the wife.

Both follow Jesus, the suffering servant.

Although the husband does not fulfill the same role in relation to his wife as the wife does to him, there is a fundamental identity of attitude.

Both are servants of God, seeking to serve others for Christ's sake.

So what are husbands called to do, Peter?

Live with your wives in an understanding way, he says.

Some translations might say compassionate or considerate way, which help us to clarify Peter's meaning here.

Husbands are to understand the needs of their wives and be ready to meet them with care.

So how is this expressed?

By showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel.

And okay, let's start here.

What does Peter mean by weaker vessel?

Interpreters differ, but broadly agree on this point.

Peter is probably thinking of the general truth that men are physically stronger than women and may be tempted to threaten their wives through physical or verbal abuse.

And perhaps to this list we could add sexual abuse.

Such ungodly behavior has no place in a Christian marriage.

And it is not something that a Christian wife is expected to submit to.

For the Christian, it is an abuse of one's strength to use it to intimidate or oppress or exploit the weak.

True strength is not used to coerce, but to serve.

And I think this is especially important to bear in mind as our culture wrestles its way through what it calls a crisis of masculinity.

True masculinity is not found in aggression or in dominance that benefits the self, but in the strength of sacrificial self-giving for the benefit of those more vulnerable.

This is the strength we see modeled by Jesus Himself.

Thus, Peter calls husbands to use their strength not to control or to coerce, but to honor their wives.

That makes us want to ask: well, what do you mean by honor?

To honor is to esteem or to dignify, to ascribe great value.

To honor is to elevate, especially to elevate above oneself.

And if that's the case, then we might say this honoring one's wife means the husband's prioritizing his wife's good by deprioritizing himself through humility, respect, and sacrificial love.

Why is this so important?

Peter gives us two reasons.

One, since they, wives, are heirs with you, husbands, of the grace of life, and two, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

First, husbands and wives share equally in what matters most, the grace of life.

One commentator writes, in relation to the gift of spiritual life, the woman is in no sense weaker, no less than her Christian husband, the Christian wife is a living stone being built up into a holy temple.

Husbands honor their wives as co-wares of God's grace in Christ.

Men honor women as those who share with them in the eternal life that Christ promises us in the world to come.

Second, husbands honor their wives so that their prayers may not be hindered.

Whether Peter has in mind the husband's personal prayers or the couple's shared prayer life, the point here is clear.

When a husband fails to honor his wife, his relationship not just with his wife is affected, but his relationship with God is affected.

Husbands fail to glorify God when they dishonor their wives, when they put themselves above their wives.

But Peter is saying that the opposite here is also true.

Husbands glorify God when they honor their wives.

So do you see the mutuality here?

Do you see the mutuality of self-giving in submission and in honor in Christian marriage?

Both deprioritize the self in order to prioritize the good of the other.

And in this is love, right?

This is Christian love.

And do we recognize the logic here?

Because if we do, we know it's the very logic of the gospel itself.

Jesus Himself says he comes not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

What is true on a cosmic scale with Christ is true on a micro scale in our homes and in our marriages.

On the eve of the cross, Jesus prayed to the Father, Not my will but yours be done, and he lives it.

Christian wives and husbands seek to practice submission and honor, not because that's what it takes to earn God's love, but because God in Christ has already loved us so greatly that he submitted himself to the cross.

us for our sake, so that we might share with him in Christ's eternal honor and glory.

If marriage is the human relationship that God has designed to mirror the love of Christ for the church and of the church for Christ, then what a powerful witness a Christian marriage can be to a world that is looking for true love.

Amen.

So what does this all this mean in what does all this mean in practice?

Let's just take a couple minutes here.

And I want us to consider in various stations of life, whether we're married or not, what this all uh how this could play out.

Okay.

Husbands and wives first off, this is my general experience.

Take it for what it's worth.

Husbands who I find tend to think that the problem with my marriage is that wives don't submit to me, my wife doesn't submit to me like she should, tend to be the sort of husbands who don't take the initiative to show the honor that their wife is due.

Right?

Years ago I spoke with a young woman who came to know Christ as an adult.

When she read this passage similar passages as a new Christian, her first gut instinct response was nope.

I can't say I blame her.

But after following Christ for a few years and growing in Christian maturity, she began to recognize that the Christian life was a calling to put others ahead of herself and that the call of a wife was to submit to her husband, it wasn't a diminishing calling, but rather an elevating one, since it was following the same pattern of Jesus love for us who willingly submitted to the will of his Father.

So she said, in theory I started to understand the logic of submission but but she says all the guys I dated were schmucks.

So I'm not really interested in submitting to a man if there's not a man worth submitting to then after a few more years of following Jesus in God's timing she met and married a man who's followed Jesus and consciously strove to show her the honor and love that she was due.

And she acknowledged that while she is she still struggles with a passage like this, she can uh she says it is easier to think about submitting to a man who I can trust to put me in my best interest ahead of himself.

So there's two dangers I think here at least two dangers one is to overapply this language of submission and honor to make long unending lists of roles that the wives have to fulfill and roles that men have to fulfill I just don't see those lists in scripture.

This is you know I wonder if this current Instagram trend of trad wives so to speak just falls into this kind of arbitrary thinking.

It's not the same thing as biblical submission and honor.

But at the same time there's another risk a risk of rejecting this language or this concept of submission and honor means risking the neglect in the application and expression of the gospel in our marriages.

So as Christians I encourage us especially as married Christians to think deeply and think biblically about these rhythms of the gospel as we live them out in the life of our marriage.

Avoid cynicism and avoid resentment when we look at the world around us.

Instead pray for wisdom and ask yourself what can I do today for the sake of my spouse?

When we live it out practically that's when we see that's when we see it happen.

If we're not married perhaps we're single and we've never been married perhaps we've been married and gone through divorce and we know the heartbreak of a marriage that breaks down I got to grant this that Peter is addressing specifically wives and husbands of course and that's probably the default vocation of his day not necessarily in the same way that it is for us.

And yes there is a distinct submission and honor that's showed specifically in marriage but here's what I would want us to consider.

If we're not married finding the right person is not the key to a fulfilling life Christ is.

Christians fear God.

They are his slaves therefore they do not fear people.

They are free because they are the royal people of God free in slavery to God free as followers of Christ they submit themselves to others freely no one else has the status and honor of Jesus Christ whom Peter confessed to be the Son of God.

Yet Jesus had washed Peter's feet like a domestic slave.

It is Christ's example that Peter calls us to follow in all the relationships of life.

The Christian who follows Jesus does not grasp for privilege he or she is already privileged beyond imagination.

The Christian seeks rather opportunities to imitate Christ in willing subjection to service.

Friends may we live out the gospel in the life of our church family and in each of our homes Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

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Go in peace to love and serve the Lord