What husbands and wives can do to follow Christ Week 5, 1 Peter 3:1-7 Day 2: Next group in a series (wives) Have you ever been in a situation where your actions spoke louder than your words? Throughout high school, I ran long distance races for our track team, usually the two mile run. As the Junior-Senior Prom approached, our coach sternly warned us, “Now, don’t go out drinking on prom night, because, if you do, I’ll know about it.” Now that made us wonder! Was there going to be a mole at the prom? Did the coach have a relative on the local police force? Some of us heeded his advice on prom night and some of us didn’t. On the following Monday afternoon, he asked us, “Did you go drinking on Saturday night?” To a man, we professed our innocence. He nodded and said, “We’ll see.” Little did we know, he had planned an especially vigorous work-out. We had to run three intervals of a mile each, at our normal pace time of five minutes and thirty seconds with ten minutes to rest between intervals. After the second mile, some of the guys were looking kind of strained. During the third mile, the culprits became evident. Without fail, the imbibers were the regurgitators. Our coach didn’t have to ask who drank on prom night. Our actions spoke louder than our words. This is similar to what the wife was facing in today’s passage. She couldn’t just announce that she had rejected her unbelieving husband’s gods and become a Christian. That could damage her husband’s honor and social standing and possibly bring harsh treatment to herself. She would have to convince him without speaking a word by the “purity and reverence” of her life. This meant she had to prove that she was a better wife to him as a Christian than she was as an unbeliever. Certainly, that included her willing submission. 1 Peter 3:1–4 1 Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, 2 when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. 3 Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. 4 Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. Where should a Christian woman’s beauty come from? Wives, how are you cultivating internal beauty as opposed to external beauty? Husbands, are you praising her for her efforts? What qualities in a young woman are you teaching your sons to admire and respect? God’s strategy in spreading the gospel Starting with Greco-Roman cultural assumptions Some parts of the Bible can be both baffling and discouraging if viewed through the lens of our current culture. Starting Bible interpretation with our cultural assumptions is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. One rule of biblical interpretation is this: a Bible passage cannot mean now what it did not mean then. We first learn what a passage meant to those who received it and then bring the concepts forward to us. So, our first task is to determine why people behaved as they did in the first century. Using that baseline, we next figure out what God is telling first-century believers to do and why. Only then are we ready to deal with contemporary applications of the Scriptures. Karen Jobes[1] provides the following insights into first-century, Greco-Roman marriage: It was expected that a wife would have no friends or gods of her own but would have her husband’s friends and worship his gods. People assumed that community prosperity and well-being depended on religious forces, so anyone introducing a new god was likely to be blamed for any adversity that happened to the community. Any unusual behavior or beliefs on a wife’s part could seriously damage her husband’s honor and thus his social standing and ability to earn a living. Husbands were expected to instruct both their wives and their slaves in all things. No one else could provide such instruction. These ancient cultural views flowed from basic ideas about men and women. The Roman philosopher Seneca (4 B.C. – A.D. 65) said, “Males are born to command, females to obey.”[2] The elite, whose writings have survived the centuries, simply believed that the woman was by nature inferior to the man. Remember that we are talking about first-century cultural assumptions. How do contemporary cultural assumptions about women differ from those in the first century? How Peter changes the rules We learned earlier that Christians had a duty before God to honor others, including the officials of the government (1 Peter 2:17). It is clear from this command that Christians were not to withdraw from society, nor were they to function as rebels against the social order. Instead, by leading a God-fearing, loving, decent life, Christians would attract others to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those same principles govern the commands given by Peter to slaves, wives and husbands in this Christian household code. The fact that Peter — backed by his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ — issued instructions to Christian slaves and wives was a move that totally bypassed each husband’s authority, yet he mostly affirms that authority! A thoughtful, unsaved husband who read these instructions would have concluded that his wife’s submission was not motivated by the expectations of Roman society. Nor was she behaving according to the principles of Greek moral philosophy. Instead, she was following the example of Christ, a man who had been crucified and resurrected.[3] Christians of all kinds (slaves, wives, husbands) were given roles by their Lord that would allow the gospel the greatest chance to spread in the community. This approach is designed to make the gospel the issue, not rebellion against social norms or anything that society considers dishonorable behavior. Historical records indicate that the greatest degree of female emancipation occurred in Asia Minor during the time when 1 Peter was written and in the area to which it was addressed.[4] This fact would imply that Peter’s recipients obeyed what Christ ordered in this letter. In understanding the roles given to husbands and wives, it will prove decisive to remember that both are to “live as free people ... live as God’s slaves” (1 Peter 2:16). We have freedom in Christ, but that freedom is defined by our service as slaves to God. This too is part of Christian identity! In what ways does being God’s slave limit your freedom as a Christian living in America? “Submit yourselves ... to every human authority” (1 Peter 2:13, NET) In 1 Peter 3:1, Peter continues constructing a household code suited to those who belong to Christ. Since he has finished talking to slaves and masters, he addresses Christian wives. Coming as it does after Peter’s command to Christian slaves, the translation “in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands” (NIV) is unfortunate.[5] Such careless wording suggests that wives are like slaves. Instead, the Greek adverb used here (homiōs) assumes its alternate guise: “Sometimes the idea of similarity can fade into the background so that homios means also.”[6] What Peter is actually doing is dealing with three different cases of “submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority” (1 Peter 2:13): case 1 (slaves), case 2 (wives), case 3 (husbands). Once again — as in 1 Peter 2:13 — the Greek form of the command “submit yourselves” (1 Peter 3:1) suggests a situation of reciprocity[7]; wives voluntarily submit to a certain human authority and receive in return certain benefits — God’s blessing and social peace. This kind of reciprocity does not generally imply equality. In this way, the wife’s voluntary submission is a special case of the general submission required of Christians in 1 Peter 2:13. But it is plain that Peter is not simply putting God’s stamp of approval on Greco-Roman social customs. There is an elevation of the wife’s status — when instructions to husbands are also considered — and her motivation in marriage is different. Writers in the first century talked about women but not to women. It would have surprised many in that day that Peter would give ethical instruction directly to women[8], but that simply shows that God does not evaluate women by cultural norms from either the first century or the twenty-first. The appeal for voluntary submission also demonstrates that Christian women in the first century had new freedom in Christ that their culture did not approve of. Peter had commanded in 1 Peter 2:13, “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority.” For Christian wives, this command is applied to mean: “Wives ... submit yourselves to your own husbands” (1 Peter 3:1). Why is she to do this? “For the Lord’s sake.” That such voluntary submission had nothing to do with what women are by nature should be clear from Galatians 3:28, which says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Male kings and their female servants are equals in Christ Jesus, but their respective roles in human society must also be considered. That Peter’s concern is evangelism is evident from verses 1b–2. This is the case of the non-Christian husband of a believing wife, and it is roughly comparable to the worst case for a Christian slave who has a harsh, non-Christian master. In either case, quiet submission follows in the footsteps of Christ (1 Peter 2:21). Verse 1 contains word play in which the Greek noun logos (“word”) is used twice. The text says first that some husbands “are disobedient to the word” (NET), where the idea is that they reject the gospel — they reject Jesus. When that happens, the strategy shifts to winning them “without words” through godly behavior (verse 2). Why should this strategy be as effective in the twenty-first century as it was in the first century? If you disagree, explain. A beauty that pleases God For a Christian wife, beauty is not the focus on external appearance described in verse 3 and seen in so much pop culture in our time. Instead, God treasures “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (verse 4). When NIV speaks about the beauty of “your inner self” (verse 4), the phrase sounds oddly psychological and was chosen to fit modern tastes. ESV has a translation closer to the Greek text when it says this beauty characterizes “the hidden person of the heart,” a beautiful metaphor that fits first-century ideas. Clarity is nice but metaphor is what God’s Word gives us here. A final word Our culture is all about external appearances. We focus on image while neglecting inner character. Advertising constantly creates a desire to look and dress a certain way and to associate with the cool people. Are you and your children equipped to combat the peer pressure and the propaganda barrage from the culture? This week’s passage gives us the ammunition to resist it.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 13:34:11 +0000
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