ENGAGE/TENSION
When it comes to being a witness for Jesus, which is more important - what you do or what you say? It seems that when Christians are asked that question they tend to come down on one side or the other.
Some say that the best way to be a witness for Jesus is to just love other people and serve their needs. They might justify that position by sharing this often repeated quote: “You may be the only Bible that some people read.”
Others might take the other side and quote Romans 10:17 to support their position that our words are more important than our actions:
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
(Romans 10:17 ESV)
What we’ll see this morning as we continue our study of 1 Peter, is that witnessing is not a matter of either/or, but rather a matter of both/and. Our words and our works are both necessary if we are going to be effective witnesses for God. There is an appropriate time and place for both. But when dealing with those who have been resistant to the Bible, how we treat non-Christians is usually more important than what we say to them. That is the major premise of the passage that we’ll study this morning.
Go ahead and open your Bibles to 1 Peter 3 and follow along as I read verses 1-7:
TRUTH
Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some 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. 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 woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
(1 Peter 3:1-7 ESV)
Most of the commentaries and other sermons that I’ve looked at in my study of this passage treat it as a general discourse on the roles of men and women in marriage. And certainly there is much that Peter teaches here that is consistent with Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5 and other Bible passages that deal with marriage. But the more I read and studied this passage, the more it seems that, given the context within his letter, Peter is actually dealing with a rather limited aspect of marriage here. Let’s put this passage in its proper context and see if we can identify the specific situation Peter is addressing here and then see what we can learn from his teaching.
Let’s begin with the big picture. After introducing himself, Peter begins his letter with this verse that summarizes the theme of his letter:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
(1 Peter 1:3 ESV)
The reason that his readers can endure the tremendous persecution that they were experiencing at that time was because God had caused them to be born into a living hope. And, as we’ve seen consistently in our study of Peter’s letter, the same is true for us. Regardless of what circumstances we may be facing in our lives right now, we can endure because of our living hope that results from the resurrection of Jesus.
Although, there is certainly some overlap, the rest of Peter’s letter is basically broken into three sections that describe three important pieces of that living hope:
• In 1 Peter 1:3 through 1 Peter 2:11, Peter’s message is: Remember your great salvation. He reminds his readers that they can have hope because of the salvation that has resulted in them becoming citizens of the kingdom of heaven which means that the life we live here on earth as exiles is only temporary.
• From 1 Peter 2:12 through 1 Peter 4:6, Peter’s message is: Remember your example before men. In the present, we are to live our lives in a way that gives glory to God and in which we bear witness for Him. The passage that we’re looking at this morning is right in the middle of that section.
• From 1 Peter 4:7 through the end of the letter, Peter’s message is: Remember Jesus is coming again. He reminds his readers that when Jesus returns to this earth, the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked will be judged.
So the first thing to note is that we’re in the section of Peter’s letter where the main focus is on how we are to live our lives while we are here on earth in order to give glory to God and be an effective witness. As we noted last week, the first part of that section focuses on how submission in our social relationships is a critical component of our witness.
In that section, Peter addresses submission in three primary social relationships here on earth – the government, the workplace and the family. Last week we focused primarily on how Christians are to submit to the governing authorities and touched briefly on how we are to submit in the workplace. This week’s passage shows us why submission in the marriage relationship is crucial for our witness for Jesus.
As we pointed out last week, right in the middle of this section on submission, Peter gives an illustration of what Biblical submission is to look like with the example of Jesus. In today’s passage Peter is clearly pointing back to that example of Jesus in both verses 1 and 7 of this morning’s passage with the use of the word “likewise”. So as we look at Peter’s teaching about submission within the marriage relationship, we need to keep in mind that it is to be modeled on the submission of Jesus in which He put the needs of others ahead of His own comfort and desires.
The reason that I don’t think Peter’s main purpose here is to give us general guidance on how marriage is to operate is because of that word “likewise.” In this entire section, Peter is dealing with those who face opposition and even hostility because of their faith. So, as we saw last week, he taught that Christians are to submit to governments even when those in authority are ungodly and employers are to submit to employees even I they suffer unjustly at the hands of their bosses.
So here in the beginning of chapter 3, Peter addresses the specific situation in which some believers are experiencing opposition and conflict in their marriages because they are married to unbelieving spouses.
We certainly have a few people here this morning who are in that situation, so this passage is going to be directly relevant for you. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing for the rest of us because we’re going to find that much of the instruction that Peter gives to wives and husbands has much broader implications that are relevant for all of us. And although Peter is specifically addressing marriages in which one of the people in the relationship is not a believer, that doesn’t mean that the instructions about submission here don’t have value in every marriage.
So with that background in mind, let’s look at our passage in more detail.
I don’t know about you, but the thing that immediately strikes me about this passage is that Peter takes six verse to address the women who were married to unbelieving men and only one verse to address men who were married to unbelieving women. But that actually makes a lot of sense in view of the culture of Peter’s day in which women were basically considered to be the property of men and had no rights. In that culture a single woman living in her father’s house was completely under the authority of her father and when she got married she was under the authority of her husband.
So in that culture it was unthinkable that a woman would change her religion apart from her husband first doing that. It was just assumed that the wife would adhere to the religion of her husband. Peter writes his letter early in the life of the church where many people became disciples of Jesus well after they had married. So imagine what would happen in a marriage between two unbelievers in which the wife somehow became a believer and her husband did not.
When his wife began to spend a lot of time with other people who were all talking about some guy named Jesus and she wasn’t at home as often as normal, it would have been normal for the husband to be suspicious and even jealous of these other people.
And imagine the temptations the wife would now face. Not only would she start to think that she knew more that her husband about God and the Bible, but she would keep seeing all these other men who had placed their faith in Jesus and wonder why her husband couldn’t be more like them. All of those pressures might cause the wife to either rebel against her husband’s leadership in the marriage or to constantly badger her husband to follow her example and become a disciple of Jesus. And either of those responses not only threatened to damage the marriage relationship, but they also made it less likely rather than more likely that her husband would become a believer. So Peter devotes quite a bit of his letter to address that situation.
On the other hand, in that culture, if the husband became a believer, it was just assumed the wife would, too. And even if she didn’t, she would be unlikely to challenge her husband about his faith. So Peter doesn’t take nearly as much time to address that situation.
Before we address the specifics of Peter’s instruction here, let me suggest that the overall idea in this section of his letter is that…
For those who are resistant to God’s Word
consideration beats conversation
In verse 2, Peter refers to husbands who “do not obey the word”. So it seems that he is not addressing a situation in which the husband has never been exposed to the gospel, but rather one in which he has heard the Word of God and chosen to reject what it teaches about his need for salvation through faith in Jesus. So I don’t think Peter is any way suggesting that if an unbelieving spouse hasn’t heard the gospel that the believing spouse shouldn’t share that with him or her.
While Peter is specifically addressing Christians with unbelieving spouses, I think it is certainly appropriate for us to apply Peter’s teaching here to any situation in which someone we know has been exposed to the gospel but made it clear that he or she has explicitly rejected the salvation that is offered through faith in Jesus.
APPLICATION
So what can we learn from Peter’s teaching here about…
THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO REACH THOSE WHO RESIST GOD’S WORD
Peter approaches this topic from both a positive and negative perspective. Let’s look first at the things that don’t work.
DON’T:
• Nag
That is the idea Peter is addressing when he points out that the husbands of these unbelieving men can be won “without a word”. Once someone has chosen to reject the gospel, there is usually little to gain by continuing to just “beat them over the head with the Bible”. Nothing will drive a husband further from the Lord than a wife who is constantly nagging him. Solomon, who probably knew a thing or two about nagging wives wrote this:
It is better to live in a corner of the housetop
than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.
(Proverbs 21:9 ESV)
Nagging an unbelieving spouse can be quite obvious, but it can also take on some much subtler forms. Although these techniques are usually employed with the best of intentions, they usually end up backfiring. Playing your favorite radio or television preacher’s sermons loudly in the other room while your husband is trying to watch the football game or arranging to just happen to run into the pastor somewhere in public or putting evangelistic tracts in his briefcase or putting Bible verses on the bottom of his beer cans probably won’t be very effective. That is not submission, it’s manipulation and it’s probably not going to work.
The same principle applies in our other relationships as well. Sometimes when we share the gospel with others, they may not put their faith in Jesus immediately, but they are still open to discussing spiritual things. In that case, by all means we should continue to talk about the gospel. But if they make it clear that they aren’t interested, the worst thing we can do is continue to badger them. As far as I know, no one has ever been nagged into the kingdom of God.
• Focus on the externals
Peter’s day was not so much different than our own in some ways. Today if we go to the supermarket and look at all the magazines near the registers, it’s not hard to see how much our culture focuses on outward beauty. Most of those magazine covers feature airbrushed photos of women who have spent a small fortune on clothes, hair and make-up. In Peter’s day, women, especially the well-to-do, went to great lengths to call attention to themselves in the very same way, although as far as I know they didn’t have Photoshop to get rid of all the flaws.
In verse 3, Peter tells these unbelieving wives not to focus on those externals. Unfortunately, some Christians have taken that verse and used it to teach that women are not to wear nice clothes or jewelry or use makeup or go to the hair salon. But that is not Peter’s point at all. He is merely urging these women to not try and compensate for an unhappy marriage by focusing on all these external things. That’s not the way to win their husbands to Christ.
It’s tempting to focus on the externals in our other relationships as well. We may not do that with clothing and make-up and hair, but we can do the same thing by trying to impress others by pointing out what a great job we have or focusing on the nice things we have or how much money we make. Unfortunately, there is a whole movement of those who call themselves Christians who are trying to persuade others to become Christians because of how they will proper financially if they do so. But, as Peter makes clear here, that kind of focus on temporary, external things won’t work in the long run.
So if we’re not to nag or focus on the externals, what are we to do?
DO:
• Develop inner beauty
In verse 4, Peter urges these women to develop the kind of inward beauty that won’t fade away like external beauty does. In particular, he urges them to develop a gentle and quiet spirit. That is really the essence of the way that women are to submit to their husbands.
The word translated “gentle” is the same word translated “meek” elsewhere in the New Testament. It is the same word that Jesus used to refer to Himself in Matthew 11:29, a word that describes “power under control”. A woman with a gentle spirit is a powerful woman, but one whose power is under the control of God.
The word translated “quiet” is an unusual Greek word that means “tranquil” or “undisturbed”, like the surface of a lake on a windless day. The idea here seems to be that this kind of wife is not constantly stirring things up and causing unneeded strife in the home.
We’ll see next week that Peter is going to expand on these ideas and apply them to our witness for Jesus with everyone who asks us for the reason for our hope.
• Treat others with respect
In verse 6, Peter gives an illustration of what it means to have a gentle and quiet spirit. I’m really glad that he uses the example of Sarah here, because while Sarah certainly had that kind of inner beauty, she was a flawed human being. She was the one who came up with the plan for her husband Abraham to have a child with her servant Hagar. But overall, she treated her husband with respect. When Abraham, in obedience to God, said “We’re going to move”, Sarah just followed his leadership.
But this idea of respect is also to be carried out by a believing husband toward his unbelieving wife. Look at verse 7. The first thing that Peter commands these men to do is to live with their wives “in an understanding way”. Literally he writes that they are to live with their wives “according to knowledge.” The idea here is that they are to be students of their wives, to learn about their needs and their desires so that they can subordinate their needs to those of their wives. That would have been an absolutely revolutionary thing in that culture. For a man to become a Christian and to suddenly treat his wife with sensitivity and respect would have been completely unexpected.
Peter also exhorts these husbands to treat their wives with respect as the “weaker vessel”. Peter is not in any way saying that women are inferior here. In the Bible, it is not uncommon to refer to the body as a vessel, so it is likely that Peter merely means that in general women are physically weaker than men. So one of the ways that a husband can honor his wife is by doing acts of chivalry – there’s a word that’s not in vogue today.
When I open a jar for my wife that she can’t get open, I honor her. [Although she always makes sure to let me know that she already loosened the lid for me.] I open the car door for my wife, not because she’s physically incapable, but because I want to show my honor for her in a tangible way.
Next week, we’ll discuss further this idea of treating others with respect in our other relationships.
• Trust God for the result
I’ve always looked at the end of verse 7 and thought that it was just a general statement about how the prayers of a husband and wife are hindered when they don’t mutually submit to each other in the ways we’ve discussed this morning. But the more I consider the context of this passage, the more I’m convinced that Peter has a particular kind of prayer in mind here.
Remember that the context here is that Peter is addressing how we are to live in order to be examples to others so that God would get glory and people would be drawn to Him. So my sense here is that that prayers Peter is referring to here are the prayers that a believer is praying for his or her unbelieving spouse to come to faith in Jesus.
If that is the case, then the overall idea of this passage is that because of our concern for others, we have a natural tendency to take things into our own hands and try to coerce others into becoming disciples of Jesus. While we do that with good intentions, as Peter points out, that kind of behavior can often be counterproductive. So what we have to do sometimes is to just back off, treat the other person with consideration rather than trying to badger them into the kingdom of God with our conversation. And that means that we just trust God for the results as we continue to pray for the other person.
We’ve seen this morning that…
For those who are resistant to God’s Word
consideration beats conversation
INSPIRATION
Obviously Peter is not making a guarantee here that
Others will commit their lives to Jesus if we treat them with consideration rather than trying to talk them into the kingdom of God with our conversation. Nor is he an any way implying that a verbal witness is not necessary. But what he is pointing out here is that when we are dealing with someone who has been resistant to God’s Word, be that an unbelieving spouse, or another family member, or a co-worker, or a neighbor or a friend, the most effective thing we can do is to love them and treat them with respect and honor and pray for them and trust God to change their hearts.
ACTION
So as we close this morning, here’s what I want to ask all of us to do. I’ve given you space on your sermon outline to list the name of at least one unbeliever that you are praying for. I’m going to give you some time to pray for the person or people on your list. And I’m going to encourage you to pray two specific things for that person:
1. Pray that God would do what only He can do and draw that person or those people to Himself.
2. Pray that God would reveal to you some specific steps that you can take to develop your inner beauty and to treat that person or those people with respect and honor. Write down what God reveals to you. If you have been guilty of nagging that person, confess that to God and to the other person and ask for forgiveness.
