Wives and Unbelieving Husbands
1 Peter 3:1–6
All
right, we are back in 1 Peter 3:1. Last week, and part of the lesson before
that, I went through the Doctrine of the Dance. The reason I did that is because we have
such a hard time in our culture because of the rise of these
anti-Judeo-Christian values related to roles in marriage. Today we have,
probably, three generations: the Baby Boomers, the Generation Xers, and the Millennials. As
they’ve gotten further and further away from knowing the Bible or understanding
the Bible and been more and more influenced through the political sphere and
through the socialization that has taken place through the promotion of radical
feminism in the university classroom, they don’t understand the roles that God
designed for marriage. Consequently, marriage breaks down.
We
would see this in high divorce rate. It’s hard to tell anymore, because people
don’t get married. The marriage rate has declined, so the divorce rate has
declined; but that’s only because people go live together, and then when they
decide to go their separate ways, they just go their separate ways. There is no
way to track the breakups in terms of statistics or anything of that nature.
But
from the biblical perspective, we know that stability comes only from
implementing—truly understanding and implementing—the five divine institutions.
And these fall apart—and have fallen apart. The first one is our individual
responsibility, that every person is responsible to God for their choices, for
their lives. Second is marriage. Marriage is between a man and woman, and it is
the foundation for the family, which is the third divine institution. It is to
provide the instruction, the framework of stability for the next generation, to
pass on the values from one generation to the other.
You
have the family, and there are clearly defined roles in the Scripture for the
husband, for the wife, and for the children. Ancient civilizations all
recognized this, but they perverted it. That’s what human viewpoint does—it
perverts it. But what’s interesting is that they still held to the importance
of marriage, even though, for example, in Greek culture, they almost
institutionalized having a concubine. The man had a wife to rear children, and
he had a concubine, or hetaira, as a mistress. So there are
these perversions of marriage, but they understood that marriage was the
foundation for the family and the training ground for the next generation. And
they had laws in Rome, they had laws in Greece and in older civilizations in
order to provide that stability.
What
we’ve got in our culture, I think, really began with the Baby Boomers. The Baby
Boomers were an antinomian reaction to their parents. They were rebels. They
rejected truth. They rejected absolutes. They were influenced by the
deterioration in thought and morality that had really begun in the late 19th
century that goes by various names—existentialism, postmodernism; but they
rejected absolutes.
When
you apply that, that moral relativism, to marriage, then marriage as an
institution is no longer significant or valued, that stability doesn’t come
from following a set parameter of rules. In fact, a set parameter of rules is
viewed as a box that hems people in rather than a framework that enables people
to perform to excellence. So you see that people reject the law; you see an
example in our president [Obama] who has an absolute disdain for the rule of
law, unless it happens to benefit his purposes.
We
have seen this just in the last week, and you’ll see much more of it in the
next three weeks. I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet. I read one report
today indicating that he and John Kerry have been colluding with the
Palestinian Authority. And they have more little things up their sleeve to go
against Israel with in the next two or three weeks, so be prepared. This is
antinomianism. This is against regulations.
You’ve
heard me teach many times from this pulpit about Israel’s legal right to the
land. You can talk to all manner of unbelievers who don’t care a whit about
what the Bible says, and they may not care a whole lot about history, but they
do seem to care about the law. Coming out of World War II, with the breakup of
the Ottoman Empire, those same nations redrew the borders—as victors have the
legal right to do. This was the foundation of the League of Nations.
They
redrew the borders for all the nations in Europe; that was their right. They
redrew the borders of Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, all
those. And that’s legitimate. They didn’t have time to complete the task, so
they completed the task at San Remo in Italy, concluding their findings in
1922. They redrew all the borders in the Middle East, including what was to be
set aside as the national homeland for Israel. That incorporated, within it,
the verbiage of the Balfour Declaration. It was approved—by I think it was 55
or 56 nations—in the League of Nations, and that is what gave the Balfour
Declaration international legal status. That is international law.
In
Article 80, in the UN charter,
they are required by their charter to enforce all of the treaties and laws that
were entered into by their predecessor, the League of Nations. That means that
the UN is obligated
to protect Israel’s right to the land west of the Jordan. So this recent
resolution that was passed down was illegal. It was completely illegal
according to the UN’s own charter, and yet nobody cares, nobody talks
about it; the world has forgotten it. But there are a few people who keep insisting
on it. And the reason is because people don’t care about law. Moral relativism
leads to social and political anarchy. These ancient civilizations, like Greece
and Rome, understood that, and so they had these rigorous laws and traditions
to protect the family and to protect marriage in order to preserve the
stability of the nation.
That’s
really part of the backdrop to understanding why both Peter and Paul take the
time to give instruction on the roles and responsibilities, from a biblical
perspective, based on Genesis 1–3, for the husband, the wife, the children, and
the slaves and masters. Because this had to be preserved, but not in the
distorted or perverted human viewpoint way in which it had come to be practiced
in these civilizations, but according to biblical standards. So that’s really
the backdrop here.
When
we come to this section in 1 Peter 3:1–6, Peter is applying this biblical
framework to a specific situation, that is, a wife that is married to an
unbelieving husband. The wife has converted to Christianity, but the husband is
not a Christian. That would really set up a difficult scenario in the
Greco-Roman culture.
We
started looking at some of the background two weeks ago. In 1 Peter 3:1–2, we
read, “Wives,
likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the
word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they
observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear.”
It
says pretty much the same thing in the NET translation, which I quoted
the last time. So it’s not a distortion. There are not real difficulties in the
translation of this verse. Some people wish there were, but that’s not the
point. Neither is it something that is culturally relative. We will get into
verse three in a minute.
I
want to talk about some background things. I mentioned the first two last time;
I want to touch on those and then move forward tonight. First of all, there is
a principal in hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is just the science of
interpretation. There is a science to it; there is also an art aspect to it.
But
there is a certain science to it. And one of the principles in interpretation
is to interpret something in the light of the times in which it was written and
also to interpret it in light of the culture—there’s a cultural context. So,
for example, Moses wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch. He
wrote that within a certain cultural context. Actually, there were two: There’s
the context of the Egyptian background, and then there’s the context of the
biblical revelation of God background. That is the cultural framework out of
which Moses is writing.
But
when we study it, we look at it from a totally different culture. We come from
a 21st century, Western civilization, United States framework, and
so we have to do a transference to understand how that relates. And that’s part
of application.
But
what you often hear today is, “That was their culture; this is our culture, so
it doesn’t relate.” That’s a misuse and a false use of this principle of
interpreting in the light of the culture. If we understand the cultural norms
at a time, we can get a better grasp of what the writer is saying and we can
see the universal principle a little more clearly to apply into the 21st
century.
So
we interpret in the light of culture. It doesn’t mean that the standards for
marriage, the standards for family, the standards for the roles of males and
females in marriage, are any different from God’s design. Because you read
these passages. 1 Timothy 2:8–12 is where Paul talks about not allowing women
to teach men or to have authority over men. You look at passages in 1
Corinthians 11; you look at other passages like Ephesians 5 and Ephesians 6,
also talking about the roles of men and women, fathers and sons, and slaves and
masters. The pattern—when you look at the text and Paul or Peter are saying
why—always goes back to before the fall, in the perfect environment of the
Garden of Eden.
They
are not looking to contemporary culture to provide the rationale for why women
are to submit to husbands. In fact, they say a lot of things that don’t fit and
are very different from the way that their culture—either in Judaism or in the
Greco-Roman Empire—viewed things. For example, in 1 Peter 3:7, which we will
probably get to next week, when Peter addresses husbands, he says, “Husbands,
likewise,” the same way that 1 Peter 3:1 starts off with the wives. “In the
same way” or “Wives,
likewise, be submissive to your own husbands.”
He
says, “Likewise,” or “in the same way.” “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with
understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel.” That’s
got to be understood in the context of that time period. A husband would have
treated the wife as something less than the husband—they were not on the same
plane. Here the husband is to treat his wife with honor and respect as if she
is a weaker vessel.
“And as being
heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.”
So that’s a warning men: If you’re married, if you’re not loving your wife as
Christ loved the church, then your prayers are not going to get answered.
That’s almost like being out of fellowship. You may confess sin, but if you
continue right after that to mistreat your wife and not to honor her, then
you’re just back out of fellowship again. That’s one of those situations in the
Scripture that says that you can just eviscerate your prayer life by not being
the kind of loving husband that the Bible says you should be.
So
getting your relationship correct with your wife is one of the best things you
can do to enhance your prayer life. That kind of a sentence would never be
communicated in the ancient world or by the ancient philosophers; that is
elevating women to a position that is much, much higher than any position that
would have been noted in the ancient world for women.
You
see the same thing with Paul. He does the same kind of thing. The modern
feminists like to call this an example of patriarchy, an example of continuing
to keep women down and submissive and beaten down and not being able to reach
their potential. That’s just the opposite of what the Scripture is saying. So
what they are talking about isn’t what the feminists have talked about and
tried to shape the arguments. They say, “The Bible just beats down on women.” It’s just the
opposite. You really have to have to change your thinking about that.
What
this means I pointed out last time.
It
is what I’ve just done. We must recognize what the cultural views on the roles
of men and women were and how the divine viewpoint reshapes that. There are
going to be, of course, points of similarity, but also great points of
difference. And don’t make the mistake of thinking, when you hear certain words
like “submission,” that that means what the feminists have frontloaded that
definition with for the last 50 years. They’ve tried to brainwash this culture;
it’s all part of spiritual warfare in the angelic conflict, to redefine the
terms of Scripture in ways that are unacceptable.
You
look at evolution. What’s the ultimate reality in evolution? It’s just matter
and energy that’s existed forever. It’s impersonal. You can’t develop a
philosophy of personal relationship if the ultimate reality in the universe is
impersonal. You just can’t do it. The result is that when you’re really living
consistently with an impersonal metaphysic, or an impersonal view of ultimate
reality, then it’s going to destroy people’s ability to relate personally and
to give honor and respect to one another. That’s exactly what we’ve seen over
the last hundred years or so.
We
have seen some of the worst wars in the history of mankind. We have seen the absolute
deterioration of relationships in marriage and in families, more so than in any
other time in history. So I used that illustration of the Trinity to
demonstrate that.
The
third point I want to make is getting into some new material.
Peter
is talking to women who are married to an unbeliever, and he says that you are
to “be
submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word,”
and that carries the idea of being hostile, or antagonistic, to the Word [the
gospel].
It’s
how should a wife behave if her husband’s an unbeliever and he’s hostile to the
gospel? Now in this situation it’s the first century. Today I would say, “Well,
first of all, you put yourself in your own trap, because Scripture says that
Christians are not to be married to non-Christians.” That applies to a lot of
people. In my first church, I was amazed. Four or five daughters of women in
the church—these ladies had grown up in the church. Their parents were still in
the church. Their parents were in their 40s or 50s, and these daughters had
gone out and had gotten married to some guy that they had met at college or
somewhere else. They married him—and the guy wasn’t a believer. And they had
grown up as a believer.
Five
to 10 years into the marriage they are having serious problems in their
marriage, and they want to know what the problem is. The problem is that the
pastor never emphasized that believers do not marry unbelievers. Now it might work if the
believer is totally carnal and in rebellion against God—just like the
unbeliever is; then they are going to be in agreement. But if the believer is
not living in rebellion, then they’re going to have a totally different
orientation toward life and towards reality than the unbeliever, and that just
sets the stage for conflict.
What
we see in this situation in the first century, is that you would have had, as
Paul and Peter and the other apostles went throughout the Roman Empire, and
other Christians preaching the gospel, there would have been many people who
would have responded. So you would have women who would respond to the gospel
and trust in Christ as Savior, and then they go home and they are in a tough
situation now because they are married to a husband who would probably be
hostile to the fact that she has converted to another religion. We’ll get into
that in just a minute. So the third point here is that the context specifically
deals with this situation where the wife is married to an unbeliever.
But
it was viewed with suspicion as a new belief system, and might often be viewed
by the husband that the wife who converted to this new belief system might be
thought of as attempting to disrupt the social order. Because they understood,
in the Greco–Roman culture, that prosperity and stability for the
civilization—for Rome, for Greece—was based on the foundation of the accepted
religions. They understood that religious belief brought cohesion to the
family.
Now,
of course, their religious belief was pagan, but it still would bind the people
together with a universal or homogenous belief system. As a result of that,
when somebody came in with another belief system, it would be viewed as being
disruptive and dangerous to the status quo. It could introduce new ideas and
maybe ideas that were licentious ideas, that were antinomian ideas that would
cause rebellion on the part of women and children and be totally and completely
disruptive.
In
Greco–Roman culture at the time, the wife and children were expected to have
the same religious beliefs as the father. Now think about that for a minute.
What’s an example where you see that in play in the New Testament? What’s one
of the favorite verses we often quote as a very brief verse for salvation? Acts
16:31. We often quote just the first half of the verse. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you
will be saved.” What does rest of the verse say? “You and your household.” Who is Paul
talking to? He’s talking to the Philippian jailer.
After Paul and Silas have been released from jail and they didn’t leave, the
jailer comes back and his life is going to be threatened. He said, “Sirs, what must I
do to be saved?” Paul tells him. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be
saved, you and your household.”
They
viewed the family as an important unit—that was a cultural thing. If the father
went a certain way, the rest of the family would follow him in those religious
convictions. If the wife went out and converted, apart from the husband, then
that might be viewed by the husband as an act of rebellion and it could provoke
a certain level of antagonism and hostility on the part of the husband. So what
Peter is addressing here is, “Now you’re a believing wife, a Christian wife,
and you’re in a hostile, antagonistic environment with this unbelieving
husband. How should you handle this?” This is very wise counsel.
First
of all, he’s really saying, “Keep your mouth shut. Don’t preach to the husband.
Don’t try to tell him how to straighten out his life. Live what you’re
believing, and don’t threaten the stability and status quo.” Because that’s
what the big concern is; now it’s just going to turn the household upside down.
That’s
part of the background here.
In
an orderly home, everybody’s going to believe the same thing; everybody’s going
to trot off to whatever religious worship together. The family that prays
together stays together—that general idea. Whatever the religious system was,
everybody would be together.
If
she adopted another religion, it would be viewed as something that would
disrupt an orderly home and therefore could disrupt society. And if the husband
viewed his wife’s worship of God and Jesus as open rebellion, then this could
bring serious consequences to her. She might be viewed as a source of public
embarrassment and criticism for the husband, which was completely unacceptable.
It
wasn’t like today where you have women going to work, and they develop a number
of friends that they’ve had from college and university and people they’ve
worked with over the years where they have a whole set group of people that
they socialize with that don’t have any relationship whatsoever with her
husband or with her family. So when she left to go to church, she’s developing
a new sphere of friends, a new sphere of associates, a new sphere of input,
ideas. This could be viewed as threatening to the husband and the stability of
the family.
Furthermore,
she needed to be careful how she dressed if she left home without her husband
so that she would not be mistaken for dressing like a wanton woman, a
prostitute, a hooker, however you want to put it.
I’m
always reminded, when I talk about this, of the fact that how people dress, and
how women dress, can be viewed quite differently from culture to culture. Most
the time I go over to the Ukraine it’s winter, and everybody’s all bundled up,
wearing sweaters and everything warm. But in 2000, when we went over to
Kazakhstan, it was summer. You would go to the market, you would go in any store,
you’d be walking on the streets, and a waitress would come up. And these young
girls, 18, 19, 20 years old, just dressed in really short skirts and really sheer tops.
They dressed like hookers!
The
Soviet Union had been broken up like seven or eight years before, and their
view of how Western women dress, which is the ideal, was often what they saw in
runway shows—how models dressed. So that’s how they would dress.
I
had seen this before, but George Meisinger had not. I
remember George making a comment. He said, “Robby, they all dress like
hookers.” Well, it’s a matter of your cultural perspective. They weren’t. Most
of these girls—one thing we noticed—had an innocence and a purity much like a
12- or 13-year-old girl in the United States in the 1940s would have. They
weren’t much older than that, but they had no idea; they weren’t debauched like
American 18- or 19-year-olds. They dressed this way, but they had a naïveté
that belied how they were dressed. So these kinds of cultural things enter in.
That’s
why Peter, and Paul also, address how women are to dress in public—going
out—that it would not bring dishonor on the family, or dishonor upon Christ. So
all of these were part of what Peter is trying to address here.
One
of the things that we should note—I pointed this out the last time. Paul says
the same kind of thing: “Be submissive to your husband.” He’s not making a statement here
that, “All women are an underclass, and all women need to submit to all men.”
“Women are at a lower level than men”; there is not that kind of a statement
here. It is saying that within the home there is a role structure, and the
husband’s the leader and the woman is to work together with him like we saw in
the Doctrine
of the Dance. This is what’s being emphasized here: to build up and
stabilize the family, and that Christianity isn’t an assault on the social
order.
That’s
really important. One thing I’ve observed over the years is that people are really different.
They really are! You can look around this congregation. You have many different
personality types. You have many different leadership skills. Different men
have different leadership skills. And different women have different leadership
skills. How that comes together in one couple is going to be different from how
it comes together in another couple. But what Peter is giving here are the
general principles related to the man is still the one accountable; God is
going to hold him accountable, and he’s the one who’s in charge. And the wife
is to work with him; she’s created to be his assistant to achieve God’s plan in
their life. So Peter is speaking in general terms, and it’s up to each
individual husband and wife how they are going to manifest this, or apply it,
in their own situation.
In
that culture, at that time, the woman was to show deference to her husband—not
nag him, not preach to him, not point out all of his sins and that he needed to
get straight with God or he was going to go burn in the Lake of Fire. That
would be showing a great deal of disrespect to her husband in that culture, and
it would be viewed as something that was quite shameful for a woman to say
something like that to her husband.
Now,
other cultures would be a little different. Today we have communication in a
very different way between husbands and wives, but it was very different in
that particular culture. So Peter is addressing that and saying that she should
win him through her conduct. Remember, we studied this word as it is used all
the way through Peter. We are to conduct ourselves a certain way; we are to
have a certain kind of conduct. In 1 Peter 1:15, “But as He who called you is holy, you also
be holy in all your conduct.”
1
Peter 1:17, “And
if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each
one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear.”
This goes on talking about how the believer is to live and how they are to
comport themselves. “Without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives.” She’s
going to be demonstrating that she’s not rebellious, she’s not antagonistic to
his leadership, she respects his position as the father, as the husband, and so
this is not an act of rebellion.
So
that’s the framework, and it makes much more sense when we understand that.
Then he’s going to talk about how she dresses. Because now she’s going to be
going to meet with other believers, she’s going to be, probably, going out of
the house, and so she needs to make sure that she comports herself in a correct
way. So in verse three, Peter says, “Do not let your adornment be merely
outward—arranging the hair, wearing of gold, or putting on of fine apparel—
rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty
of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.”
There
are some passages in 1 Timothy that are similar. They are taken out of context
by a lot of legalistic people. Peter is not saying that the wives shouldn’t
dress well. The emphasis is not on dressing down—that’s not what he is saying.
He’s saying that the emphasis needs to be on the inner character, not
necessarily on the outer character.
Today
I read this in a blog that I thought brought this out in a certain sense. Some
of you may be familiar with David Brooks; he’s a columnist for the New York Times.
Sometimes he’s conservative. Most of this last year he’s been very anti-Trump.
But on another note, a week after Trump was elected he came out and said, “He’s
really impressed me by the way he has gone about selecting cabinet members.
They wouldn’t always be my choice, but they are well-qualified people.” I
haven’t heard anything more; I don’t normally read him.
In
this book that he’s recently written, he talks about the difference between
what he calls “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues.” These are David Brook’s
categories. He’s arguing that our culture emphasizes attaining things in life
that enhance a résumé—education, wealth, fame, status—over striving for
character qualities—integrity, humility, dedication, and love. These are
usually reserved for a person’s eulogy. So his point is that we often
emphasize, in our culture, attaining things that would look good on our résumé.
They look like we’ve accomplished things; we’ve done things. We look good, we
sound good, we live in a good house, we drive the cars that have the right kind
of status; but, rather, we should be emphasizing the things that we want people
to say in our eulogy—that we had certain character qualities.
That’s
what Peter is emphasizing. He is not saying it’s wrong to have an education, or to dress
well, or to possess certain things that you can afford because of your wealth
or your success, but that that shouldn’t be the emphasis. Every time I read
this verse, I’m reminded of the first few months I was in Dallas when I went to
seminary in 1976. I went to seminary, and for a while I went to a very nice
large Bible Church in North Dallas. There were a lot of young people there—a
lot of twenty-somethings were in this church. North
Dallas is a very successful area—just north of Highland Park—which is like
River Oaks here in Houston. I was just amazed. I mean, I didn’t grow up in a
small country church; I grew up in a nice urban church here in Houston where
people dressed very nicely, where there were a lot of people who were wealthy,
who were well off, very successful, and they dressed well.
But
I was blown away when I went to this church. It was a fashion show every Sunday
morning! Because there were a lot of nice, spiritually squared away young
seminary guys who went to that church, and they attracted a lot of the SMU, socialite,
upper crust Highland Park young ladies. They wanted to be dressed in their
finest to attract these young men. So you would just see this every week. I’m
not judging their spiritual status; I just thought that was really interesting
because I had never seen that in my experience in Christianity. It was a little
over the top.
But
Peter is not saying here that it’s wrong to do these things. Obviously some of
the families in the church were wealthy because the women could afford to go
out and spend the extra money for all of the beauty treatments, for the hair
designs, the arrangement of the hair. Usually they would decorate the hair with
gold and precious gems and pearls, and all of this would take time—just as it
does today. There’s this view—I think it comes out of the somewhat Marxist
social justice movement—the idea that Jesus was a was a refugee at Christmas.
You’ve probably heard some of that in the last couple of weeks—that He was the
original refugee. So we have to we have to take care of the refugees just like
we would take care of Jesus. Makes you want to throw up.
You
often read that the early church was a movement among the slaves. Slaves cannot
afford the adorning of the hair. Slaves cannot afford wearing gold. They cannot
afford gold; they cannot afford to look at gold—or fine apparel. The word
“fine” there is not in the original—it is just apparel. But the idea there is
that this is costly apparel; they are not just throwing a robe on, not just
wearing shorts, T-shirts, and sandals.
Obviously,
there were people in the congregation who were wealthy and who could afford to
show their wealth. But Peter isn’t saying don’t do it. The sense here is
correct. Even though “merely” is not in the original, that’s the sense of the
passage. “Do
not let your adornment be merely outward.” He’s not saying it’s wrong to
dress well, or that it’s wrong to spend money on designer clothes, or it’s
wrong to spend money on suits—$1,500, $2,000, $3,000 suits. If God has blessed
you with the money to where you can do that, then you should enjoy the wealth
that God has given you—as long as you have your priorities straight.
That’s
what he is saying here. Don’t put the emphasis on the outward, but make sure
that you are focusing on the inner values of your spiritual life and your
spiritual growth. That’s the sense of the second verse. “Rather let it be the hidden person of the
heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is
very precious in the sight of God.”
Now,
it is interesting. The New King James language here needs to be modernized just
a little bit. First of all, this word “adornment” is the word KOSMOS. Ever hear the word KOSMOS before? That’s where it
comes from. Now you may be some old legalistic Methodist or Baptist or Church
of Christ saying that you shouldn’t wear makeup, and women should always have a
beehive hairdo or something like that, because having “adornment” is
worldliness! They would take that word KOSMOS and take it in its
other sense, which has to do with “worldliness.” That’s just an absolute
distortion and misuse of the original language.
In
fact, the original meaning of the word KOSMOS is simply that of an
orderly arrangement. That’s where we get our English word “cosmetics.” A woman
will put on cosmetics; she will “put on her face”. She will organize and
structure how she looks very carefully, and that’s the idea there. It’s not the
idea here of a world system. But that came to be applied to a world system,
because a philosophical system, or worldview, is highly structured and highly
organized. So that’s how the word came to mean more than just the orderly
arrangement of your clothing and your appearance.
In
verse four, it says, “rather let it be the hidden person of the heart.” This is talking about
the inner person, the real you. The real you isn’t what you camouflage by how
you dress, the status symbols that you use, the style that you choose to
present yourself. The real you is your soul—what’s going on behind the
façade—the way you think, the way your sin nature works, the thoughts that you
have—good and bad.
All
that’s the hidden person of the heart. The word “heart” here emphasizes the
center—the center of a person’s thinking. “Heart” has to do with that which is
at the core of something, not a physical beating heart. It’s talking about that
which is at the center of a person’s being, that hidden person in their soul.
“Heart” here would be comparable to soul.
“With the
incorruptible.” That’s a good translation. “With the incorruptible [or impermeable] beauty of a
gentle and quiet spirit.” Now what does that mean—gentle and quiet? Because
as soon as you read that, you’re thinking of some kind of weak, wimpy, little
doormat. The word translated “gentle” is the word PRAŸS, which is related to
the word PRAŸTES for humble;
but it’s also related to the other words that we’ve talked about in terms of
humility. That humility is being submissive to authority.
The
most humble person in the world—the Septuagint translated that for Moses. The
most humble man in the world, in the Old Testament, was Moses. Moses was a very
strong, powerful, focused leader, but he was submitted to the authority of
God—that’s what made him humble.
Jesus
was humble—not because He was a wimp and He was rolled over by people, but
because He submitted Himself to the authority of God. We just spent a lot of
time talking about Philippians 2, “He humbled Himself and became obedient” to God.
That’s what humility is—being obedient to the authority over you. So it’s the
incorruptible beauty of someone who is submitted to authority and is strong
because of it.
Then
“quiet spirit” is the word HESUCHIOS, which in
some cases means “quiet or silent.” It could mean that here, especially in
contrast to winning their husband “without a word”; but it also has the sense
of not being disruptive, rebellious, or contentious. This also fits in contrast
with a humble spirit—that is, submitted to authority and quiet. That is not
disruptive, not rebellious, not contentious.
Proverbs
has a few things to say about this. Proverbs 31:30 says, “Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing.”
It doesn’t matter how great you look when you’re 16, 19, or 25 years of age, or
how well you dress; it doesn’t matter how much you lose your looks or gain
better looks as you grow older. What matters is the state of our soul when we
are standing before the Judgment Seat of Christ.
“Charm is
deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord.” “Fearing
the Lord” is the beginning of wisdom and the foundation of knowledge and
understanding. “A
woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.” We can apply that to any believer
who fears the Lord; they will be praised at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
Proverbs
12:4, “An
excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who causes shame is like
rottenness in his bones.” So, a couple of applications. This is very
similar to what Peter is saying; it flows right out of the Old Testament.
Then
he gives an illustration in 1 Peter 3:5–6. He says, “For in this manner [that is, in this
manner of submission], in former times [talking about Old Testament stories], the holy women.”
That means the women who are set apart as believers; it is not talking about
the fact that they lived at a higher plane of spirituality. Because he’s
talking about Sarah. Now we can talk about Sarah and Abraham. They both had a
lot of flaws, and they are very clear from Scripture. They are not perfect.
“For in this
manner, in former times, the holy women [or the set apart women, the
sanctified women] who trusted in God also adorned themselves.” That’s the verb form
we will see—KOSMEO.
“Also adorned
themselves, being submissive to their own husbands.” See, it’s not wrong to
adorn yourself. “As
Sarah obeyed Abraham [so there’s this example from Sarah], calling him lord,
whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.”
Now
we have to understand what this is saying. This isn’t saying, ladies, that you
need to walk around and call your husband “lord.” It might be nice; maybe their
ego would approve of that, but that’s not what this is saying.
If
you read about the founding fathers of the United States, or you read the
biography of Abraham Lincoln—or any of those who lived prior to the Civil
War—it was rare, even in a home setting, where a husband and a wife addressed
each other by their first name. They would address themselves as “Mr. Lincoln”
and “Mrs. Lincoln”; or the wife would refer to the husband as “sir” and the
husband would refer to the wife as “ma’am.” There was a level of protocol and
deference on the part of both of them.
So,
when Sarah is addressing Abraham as “lord,” that wouldn’t be any different from
a wife today referring to her husband as “sir,” or as “my dear husband,”
because the cultural way of recognizing the head of the household was through
this terminology. It’s not some sort of futile type of arrangement.
“As Sarah
obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” [that means respecting his position as
the husband and the head of the home]. Then he applies it to these believers, “whose daughters
you are.” Just as we are all referred to “by faith as sons of Abraham.”
“Whose daughters
you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.” Now, did Sarah
do some things that were really squirrely and out of order? Certainly. Go read
Hebrews 11. After you read through Genesis 12 through 22 and you see all the
squirrely things that Abraham and Sarah did, they are praised by God over in
Hebrews 11.
Because
God is a God of mercy, a God of love, and He doesn’t hold every little sin—or
even the big ones. How many times have you read the life of David? David
committed some really nasty sins: adultery, murder, and conspiracy to commit
murder. He was pretty out of fellowship at times and did some pretty bad
things, but all the way through the Old Testament he is the standard for those
who love God. King after king after king that came in his line are evaluated.
Are they as good as David? Do they obey God, like David did? And when we come
to the resurrection, David is going to be resurrected. David will rule in
Jerusalem as a prince. God is going to reward him.
It’s
always been a great encouragement to me that Sampson, who is this failure, and
this womanizer, and this deadbeat, and he’s rebellious against his parents in
Judges, is listed in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11. Samson trusted God at a
key point in his life, and God praises him for that. The mercy of God is
tremendous.
These
are the examples of Sarah and Abraham. It is interesting that if you look
through the Old Testament, it’s hard to find a place where you can pin this.
And that’s because Peter is probably referring to the general view in Judaism,
in the second Temple period, that Sarah was a good wife and that she’s the
pattern for submission to her husband in various ways.
In
terms of a corrected translation, 1 Peter 3:5 we read, “For in this manner, in former times, the
holy women who trusted in God.” This isn’t PISTEUÓ here, the verb for
trust; it’s ELPIZO.
ELPIS
is the noun for “hope.” This is the verb, “to hope,” the active participle. “For in this
manner, in former times, the holy women who hoped in God.”
They
looked to the future. Hope is a confident expectation related to future reward.
“Because they hoped in God, they adorned themselves—not only externally—but
also with good works.” And that’s the point. They were submissive to their
husbands.
I
put the verb in this slide for adorn, to arrange; they set themselves in order
by being submissive to their own husbands. “Being” there would be an
instrumental participle—that this is how they adorned themselves, or organized
themselves spiritually, was by being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah
was submissive to Abraham.
Then
we have to recognize, and we will come back and start with this next time, the
mandate to the husbands in relationship to their wives. So we see that this is
not quite the harsh, evil perspective of some vile, woman-hating misogynist in
the Scriptures, but is reflecting the grace and the love of God in terms of how
men and women are to live to their fullest capacity, by fulfilling the roles
that God has designed for them.