Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Peter 3:1-7

You don’t need examples, illustrations, news headlines, or statistics to know that it’s not easy to build a biblical, God-honoring home.

And as challenging as being faithful Christians in the world at large and on the job may be, it may be even more challenging to be a faithful Christian where it matters most – at home.

And that’s exactly where Peter goes to next in the middle and heard of this letter.

So, let’s jump right in and see what Peter teaches us about being a faithful Christian husband or wife, even when our spouse is a nonbeliever or is not being obedient to the Word of God.

This and the next set of instructions begin with likewise (similarly or “in the same way).

This connecting word does more than connect the passages together, but it links them together by a shared focus – that Christian employees, wives, and husbands should carry out both their occupational and domestic relationships “with all fear” (1 Pet 2:18).

This qualifier reminds us that we should do what Peter is about to say out of a personal and profound respect for God.

It also reminds us that we should do what Peter is about to say except for when doing so requires us to disobey God.

A wife should not sin to submit to her husband and a husband should not sin to honor his wife.

A Christian wife should support the leadership of her husband.

What does it mean to submit?

Submit speaks of order in social relationships, of the way various roles and positions in life relate to each other as God has designed society to work, not because some people are more important or valuable than others.

We submit to police officers, for instance, for that is how God has designed society to work, not because they are more important or inherently valuable than the rest of us (Rom 13:1-9).

Consider the greatest example.

Jesus Christ (who is God) submitted to the Father (who is equally the same God), not because he was inferior or less important than the Father but due to an orderly arrangement which made it possible for God to save us.

If Christ resented or resisted a subordinate role, we could not be saved.

His submission saved us.

To submit, a wife chooses to follow and support the decisions her husband makes for their home.

She should not seek to control, dictate, or manipulate the decisions he makes.

This does not mean she should not contribute to family decisions.

She absolutely should contribute, but after doing so she should entrust the final decisions to her husband.

Some claim these instructions are old and obsolete, that Peter is speaking about something rooted in ancient, outdated OT tradition.

Or they suggest that he is adapting to the culture of his first-century world.

Others simply feel like Peter is giving antiquated, out-of-touch instructions that no longer fit in our modern world.

These are not easy or popular ideas, but when have they ever been popular?

Just after Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, God recognized that wives would struggle to let their husband lead.

The influence of sin embedded in our nature encourages wives to resent their husbands’ leadership.

To the woman God said, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16).

This is a poetic way of saying that wives will struggle to respect their husbands’ leadership role and will have a strong desire to overrule his decisions.

While Peter is not merely promoting some outdated OT or 1st century custom here, he is addressing an ancient, historic problem that has pervaded since the beginning and teaching timeless, universal truth which never changes.

Wives have a challenging role.

After they express their feelings, concerns, and opinions, they must step aside to let their husbands make final decisions for their families.

They also face the challenge of not just letting their husbands make final decisions, but of getting behind those decisions rather than criticizing, pushing back, and finding ways to sabotage their husband’s choices.

Perhaps this submission is not so difficult when decisions involve what restaurant to eat at, what movie to watch, or what presents to buy the kids at Christmas.

Sadly, major marriage tensions erupt over minor decisions like these though they should not.

Consider the following scenarios:

A wife wants to deposit money from the refund of a joint tax return into a college savings plan for their child, but her husband wants to invest that money in a risky stock purchase instead.

A wife wants to spend Christmas Day with her side of the family, noting that she and her husband spent Thanksgiving Day with his side of the family that same year.

He wants to stay at home for a low-key, private Christmas instead.

A wife wants to rent a house with a private washer and dryer and larger kitchen, but her husband wants to move into an apartment that requires a laundromat because the rent is cheaper, and the location is closer to his work.

A wife wants to stay at home and home-school the kids, but her husband wants her to find employment and would rather send the kids to a school nearby.

In each scenario, the wife could make a moderate to strong case that she is pulling for a fair, reasonable, and even better or wiser decision than her husband.

You can also see how the husband may be wanting something unfair or ill-advised – though not sinful.

In all these cases, the wife should share her views, then she should submit to her husband’s final decision, not because she likes the decision and not even because she respects her husband, but because she respects and trusts the Lord above all.

Submission gets harder as the magnitude of decisions increase.

The more deeply and directly a husband’s choices affect his wife’s career, finances, sense of security, and children, the harder it is for her to accept his choices and follow his lead.

Yet even in the more significant choices of marriage and family life, wives should accept and support their husband’s choices.

This teaching applies to unbelieving and immature husbands.

This teaching doesn’t say, “Submit to your husband only if he’s a Christian,” or, “… if he’s an exemplary godly person,” or, “if he’s been nice to you this week,” or, “if he’s smarter than you.”

This truth applies to wives whose husbands may not be saved and who may be less mature, godly, talented, intelligent, or professional than their wives.

Wives should not make a husband “earn” her submission but should offer her submission out of a healthy fear of God and as a demonstration of the free and unearned grace of God.

Such relationships, in which one spouse is a believer and the other is not, are difficult to maintain, even more than working for an unbelieving employer (1 Cor 7:10-16).

Similar principles would apply to a spouse who is a believer but one who is not being sensitive to the Word of God as well as the other believing spouse would like.

“Even if some do not obey the word” primarily refers to not believing the gospel but it may include disobedience to the Word of God in other ways, too.

A wife should not make her husband “earn” her respect.

She should support her husband’s choices and leadership whether he is an exemplary husband or not.

She should submit to her husband not because he deserves respect, but because the Lord deserves respect.

We submit to our husbands out of respect to Christ.

Ultimately, this instruction applies to unbelieving husbands (and unbelieving spouses in general).

To be clear, a believing, unmarried person should not knowingly marry an unbelieving spouse (2 Cor 6:14).

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness?

And what communion has light with darkness?

But if a person has no choice (i.e., arranged marriage) or becomes a believer after marriage (which may be the very scenario Peter is most focused on in 1 Pet 3:1-7), then the believing spouse should not file for a divorce on the grounds of religious differences but should rather be as good and supportive of a spouse as possible to the nonbelieving partner.

If the unbelieving spouse chooses to divorce on the grounds of religious differences, though, then the unbelieving spouse should be free from guilty feelings and is free before God to remarry a believing spouse if God allows.

Your submission may influence your husband for Christ.

Why is submission important even in marriages to nonbelievers?

For such submission may persuade your husband to believe on and become more obedient to Christ.

“May be won by the conduct of their wives” gives a major reason for why a believing wife should support the leadership of her unbelieving husband.

By doing so, that wife might gain another follower for Christ if her husband is persuaded of the truth of the gospel through the way his wife lives before him.

A Christian wife should exhibit a clean, innocent lifestyle.

Her behavior should be morally pure and wholesome, and her attitude should exhibit a sincere respect for God (“accompanied by fear”).

“Do not let your adornment be merely outward – arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel.”

Translating this statement without adding additional English words reads, “Do not let your adornment (or appearance) be outward – arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on apparel.”

So, does Peter mean to say that Christian wives should not arrange their hair or wear gold jewelry?

Some churches teach women not to do so.

But if that’s how we’re supposed to understand this, then should Christian wives also stop “putting on apparel?”

This would be a preposterous conclusion, entirely incompatible with their responsibility to exhibit “chaste conduct” (1 Pet 3:2).

Peter is not forbidding Christian wives from arranging their hair or wearing jewelry any more than he forbids them from putting on clothes.

Instead, he first assumes that they will do these things.

More importantly, he teaches them to do more than these things – to give just as much attention, if not more, to cultivating a Christlike attitude, demeanor, and spirit that comes from within.

In other words, he is teaching them to give serious attention to being like Christ, not just looking nice on the outside – for unbelieving and disobedient husbands need more than an attractive wife to persuade them to believe on Christ; they need an example of a Christlike person.

Peter explains that such a wife will have a gentle and quiet spirit:

Gentle refers to being “considerate, humble, and meek,” which is the opposite of being self-centered, proud, and rude.

Quiet refers who is not loud, noisy, or obnoxious but is organized and peaceful.

According to Peter, these qualities are not only valued highly by God but are valued by him very highly.

This kind of wife contrasts dramatically with the kind of wife whom we are warned against in the book of Proverbs.

Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

(Prov 21:9)

Better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman.

(Prov 21:19)

It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

(Prov 25:24)

With this OT background in mind, we should realize that for an unbelieving husband to have any hope of coming to Christ or for a disobedient husband to be encouraged to obey God’s Word more faithfully, his believing wife should interact with him in a gentle and peaceful manner, not an argumentative or nagging manner.

Peter goes on to illustrate what he means by giving a real-life, OT example – Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

In her case, we know that her husband was a genuine believer who followed God by faith, yet Peter uses her submission to her husband as a timeless example for all Christian wives to follow today, whether their husbands are believers or faithful Christians or not.

With this illustration, he is specifically referring to the time when Sarah overheard a messenger from God tell Abraham that she would give birth to a son, even though she was approaching 90 yrs.

old.

When she heard this announcement, she laughed spontaneously saying to herself, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” (Gen 18:11-12).