The New Testament teaching on the submission of wives to their husbands is not teaching that applies only to the marriage relationship. The attitude of submissiveness, as we have seen, is an attitude which all Christians are to show in all their relationships. It is an attitude to others we see supremely in our Lord Jesus.
Put at its simplest it means the voluntary subordination of our own interests to the advancement of others' interests. We put others before ourselves. We serve their best interests before our own. That is what Jesus did, and it is only because He did so that any of us has any hope of salvation. He put our interests so far above His own that He was willing to suffer the last deprivation of death - even a humiliating death, as Paul points out in Philippians ch. 2 - to secure our well-being. In the light of what we all owe to Him it ill behoves any of us to be self-assertive or to make self-fulfilment any sort of priority. The spirit of Jesus is a spirit of subservience to the interests, first of God, and then of God's interest in others; and if it is His Spirit we receive then that is how we shall be.
Now the apostles spelled this out in some detail because the way in which we may best serve others' interests varies from relationship to relationship. What it means for a worker is not the same thing that it means for his boss. The employer is an employer, not an employee, and he must serve his employees in his employer role. It makes no sense for an employer to abandon his managerial responsibilities to be just one of the boys. He is the boss, and if he is a Christian boss he will be a good one, and that means accepting responsibility for them as a boss. And vice versa. The Christian employee does not serve his boss's best interests by refusing point blank to acknowledge him as a boss, and insisting that nobody in the work force has any authority over another. We have to respect each other's roles in our relationships.
Now this applies also to marriage.
i. The husband has a role in marriage which is not the same as the wife's; the wife has a role in marriage which is not the same as the husband's. And whilst each is to serve the other's interests, the way that works out will not be the same for both.
There can be only one leader in a social unit as small as the family, and if a leadership role is admitted at all, it has to be clear whose it is. Is the wife to bear rule, or the husband? There is no room for confusion in the matter. If the question is at issue all the time then there never will be any leadership exercised by anybody - and both experience and common sense tell us that that spells disaster for any family unit.
The Bible makes no bones about the fact that in the marriage relationship the leadership role belongs, by God's own decree, to the husband, not to the wife. The wife's Christian submissiveness to her husband therefore consists in her serving his interests as the God-appointed authority in the family unit. She is to strengthen him in that role, not fight him in it, nor undermine his authority. But equally the husband's Christian submissiveness consists in him serving his wife's God-appointed nurture role in the family.
That is why both Paul and Peter, when they deal with the marriage relationship, address husbands and wives separately.
They do not tell the husband to obey the wife, because it is not God's intention that the wife should bear rule in the family; He means the husband to do that. There is no way of getting round it. You can bring forward all the arguments you please in these days of anti-chauvinism and women's liberationism, and anti-discrimination sentiment. The hard, stubborn, knobbly fact of the matter is that God means the husband and father to accept responsibility for bearing rule in the family. Somebody has to, and so far as God is concerned there is no room for argument about who it shall be. If we do not agree, our quarrel is with God. There is nothing I or anyone else can do about that.
The husband is the head of the wife and the
wife must accept that headship.
The husband is the head of the wife and the husband must accept that
headship!
If a wife rules the roost it is because the husband has abdicated from his God-ordained responsibility, sold the pass, chickened out. And he will deserve all he gets. He will rule truly only as he rules in a spirit of self-sacrificing service to the best interests of every member of his family; there is to be nothing selfish or chauvinistic in the way he does it, but rule he will.
ii. Notice second where Peter puts the emphasis in these paragraphs.
He does not address the wives on what they have a right to expect from their husbands, nor the husbands on what they have a right to expect from their wives. He addresses wives on what they owe to their husbands, and husbands on what they owe to their wives. The Bible insists that responsibilities always take precedence over rights.
When we read passages like this one in I Peter 3, or the other in Ephesians 5, husbands are apt to put the emphasis on what the Bible says to wives, and wives are inclined to put the emphasis on what the Bible says to husbands! When we do that we betray ourselves! We are thinking of our rights, not our obligations - of what our partners owe to us, not what we owe to them. While we think like that we will not even begin to understand what God is saying to us. Rather than call our partner into question, we should allow the Scripture to call us into question. If our partner is failing, we are to seek strength, wisdom, love and patience to bear that failure in such a way that we still put our partner's interests above our own. In that sense we look to ourselves, not them. An example of how Jesus Himself did this is His lament over the failure of the disciples to heal the epileptic lad they met at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration. It was not easy for Him to put up with us. "How long shall I bear with you?" But He did! ... and does still, what is more!
iii. Finally, by way of introduction, it is interesting to observe that Peter rather seems to assume that Christian wives are more likely to have unbelieving husbands than that Christian husbands will have unbelieving wives. Things appear not to have changed all that much! The early church evangelised households, which means they evangelised the men first. When you have a Christian husband you have a Christian household; it does not follow in quite the same way that when you have a Christian wife you have a Christian household. It underlines the importance of targeting men for the Gospel.
But Peter also shows a pastoral heart in the balance of his discussion, for if a wife remains an unbeliever she is not so likely to suffer the same harsh treatment that many a Christian woman has suffered from an unbelieving husband. That is not a discriminatory statement - it is a harsh fact of life. Women in the church whose husbands show no sympathy with their Christian conviction deserve special consideration from us all.
i. 3:1-2 : "Wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behaviour of their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behaviour."
How can a wife truly love Christ and not long for her husband's conversion? But how to win him? By sharing the Gospel with him? Yes, of course - she can hardly forbear to share her faith at all. But to nag someone who does not want to hear only hardens their resistance. So ... "no nagging!" says Peter, least of all about religion; "without a word." The life must tell. God prefers folk who do not have the gift of the gab, it would appear! It is a gift of deceptive and doubtful worth. A caution here to those of us blessed with partners in the faith: it is all too easy for us to busy ourselves in the Lord's work because we enjoy our partner's sympathy in it, and regard critically others who do less.
Beware that you judge not!
ii.3:3-4 : "Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious."
Peter does not mean that Christian women should be dowdy or slovenly. But he puts his finger on a sensitive spot - vanity! If the only way you can present yourself as an attractive person is with the aid of paint and powder and glamorous haberdashery, something vital is missing. Your manufactured beauty is a sham. Real beauty is not skin deep. It goes to the roots of a person's character and personality. Be beautiful before the Lord and beautiful you will be!
I wonder what a character transformation would appear in many of us if we woke up every day to say, as I heard said of one person, "I have nothing to do today but please my Lord."
iii. 3:5-6 : "So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrify you."
"You will show yourself as a true daughter of Sarah, Gentile though you may be," says Peter, "if you follow her example." Peter here uses language the same way Jesus used it of Zacchæus when he said of him, "He is also a son of Abraham," meaning, "He has emulated Abraham's faith."
As to Sarah calling Abraham "lord" the most telling illustration of this comment of Peter's I know was in the film "The Bible." In it, Deborah Kerr plays the part of Sarah and George C. Scott the part of Abraham, and there is a scene (when they are discussing Abraham's decision to take Isaac with him to the mountain as I recall) in which Sarah quite literally addresses Abraham as "my lord." The regard she shows for him is profound, the acceptance of his authority complete, but there is not a trace of subservience in her as she does so: she is all woman - and magnificent woman.
iv. But do notice Peter's recognition that for a wife to maintain a truly Christian spirit toward a hostile husband calls for courage: "Do right and let nothing terrify you ..." I say again, "Beware that you judge not! Pray for women in that position. It is not easy.
Now it is the Christian husband's turn!
i. "Likewise you husbands ..."
The "likewise" means that Peter is here calling for the same spirit of subordination. You husbands are to exercise your authority responsibly; you are to "honour" your wives every bit as much as wives are to honour their husbands.
What Peter says here has nothing to do with male domination - nothing whatever! Peter's reference to women as the "weaker" sex does not imply that they are inferior intellectually, emotionally, morally or spiritually, but rather physically ... and in terms of the status generally accorded to them by society. But you are over the family, you husbands. All men are not equal. There has got to be authority; can children run the world ... or idiots? Peter calls for three qualities in the husband's relationship with his wife :
ii. Understanding
He must be sensitive to her feelings and her needs. The phrase in the Greek translated "considerately" is in the Greek "according to knowledge." Peter is saying that husbands are to study their wives, with a view to satisfying their needs at every level - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Somerset Maugham's mother was a very beautiful woman, with the world at her feet. His father was not in the same mould at all. Someone once asked his mother, "Why do you remain faithful to that ugly little man you married?" Her answer was, "Because he never hurts me."
To put the same point negatively, most marriage counsellors are agreed that the prime motivation which leads men to leave their wife for another woman, or women to leave their husband for another man, is not primarily sexual, but rather that they find someone who "understands" them as their partner does not - and makes them feel ten feet tall.
iii. Chivalry
It is a sheer fact of history that it was Christianity which introduced chivalry into the relationships between men and women.
iv. Respect as an Equal
The old rabbis used to say that "God did not make Eve out of Adam's head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, from under his arm to be protected by him, and from next to his heart to be beloved by him."
However, Peter is in no doubt about the fundamental equality of men and women before the Lord: he describes them as "joint heirs of the grace of life." Equals in function husbands and wives may not be, but equals they are in the regard God has for them.
If husbands and wives regard each other in that light women will never fail to be taken seriously, and can never be thought of, even for a moment, as drudges, or child-bearing machines or playthings.
Finally, " ... that your prayers be not hindered."
Two truths are implicit in that statement.
i. Selfishness in the relationship between a husband and a wife, any degree of exploitation of one partner by the other, is a certain way of spoiling their spiritual life.
Husband, if you do not treat your wife right, you will degenerate.
Wife, if you do not treat your husband right, you will degenerate.
ii. Marriage is only rightly understood and rightly used when it is recognised that it is not an end in itself, but is given to us to serve a higher purpose: namely, our fellowship with God, and our service and testimony to the world.
Right back at the beginning, in the Creation story, God said in the very simplest language a most profound thing about the man-woman relationship: "In the image of God created He them; male and female created He them." If that means anything at all it means that it takes a marriage to reflect the image of God in human life! The distinctive characteristics of man and woman - both - are needed to set forth in any way that is even halfway true the full glory of God's nature. God's attributes are not exhausted by male characteristics. You cannot say what God is like except as you reckon in as well those qualities that are distinctively feminine.
It is true that the Bible never speaks of God as "Mother" the way it refers to Him as "Father," but it does speak of Him as "the God Who gave you birth." And He likens His attitude to a mother's when He says (Isaiah 49:15) "Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you." Isaiah 66:13 "As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you."
God has a man's strength ... and a woman's tenderness.
He has a man's toughness ... and a woman's softness.
He has a man's initiative ... and a woman's responsiveness.
He has a man's hard-headedness... and a woman's soft-heartedness.
He has a man's manliness ... and a woman's womanliness.
It takes a man and a woman in their togetherness to reflect the full glory of God's character.
The goal of marriage is nothing less than to set forth the glory of God ... in the very blending of differences!
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