I thought it would be a good thing to do today to take a second and do a little more extensive review to catch everyone up so we can all be on the same page as we dive in to today’s passage. In our first week together, we looked the Purpose of Marriage, and said that marriage exists to bring glory to God by displaying the covenant love between Jesus Christ and His bride, the church (Revelation 21:1-4, Ephesians 5:31-32). Next we looked at the Pattern for Marriage, and said that marriage is to be a monogamous, heterosexual covenant union entered into before God and consummated by sexual intercourse, in which the covenant partners, with their complementary roles, experience intimate companionship as a new union set apart from their parental bonds (Genesis 2:18-25). We then saw the Problem in Every Marriage: The problem every marriage has is sin: our acting in the place of God in rebellion against God. Because the first couple did this, every marriage now lives under the curse (Genesis 3).
A few weeks ago we begin looking at the Redemption of Marriage, and said that God is redeeming marriage through the gospel (vertically) and for the gospel (horizontally). This idea of God redeeming marriage is really where we are going to spend the remainder of our time in this series (with a few exceptions). We want to look specifically at what a redeemed picture of marriage looks like: manhood redeemed, womanhood redeemed, intimacy redeemed, parenthood redeemed, childhood redeemed, and singleness & dating redeemed. All of these are things that were corrupted by the fall and that God is redeeming through and for the gospel.
We began last week with what redeemed manhood looks like: God calls men to be leaders and lovers of His women (Ephesians 5:22-33). Again, if we had to pick one word to sum up the role of the husband, it would be headship. “Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christ-like, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.”[1]
Today we are going to look at what redeemed womanhood looks like. To do this we will turn our attention to 1 Peter 3:1-7, where Peter shows us what the overflow of grace is supposed to look like from a woman to a man in marriage. This is one of the richest passages on womanhood in the entire Bible.
1) The Exhortation of Biblical Womanhood: (3:1-4)
The word, “LIKEWISE,” in 3:1 is a red flag reminding us that understanding the context of this passage is crucial to understanding the passage itself. Peter begins in 1 Peter 2:13-17 with the general command to “Be subject to every institution for the Lord’s sake…” Then Peter, like Paul, begins to gives categories of what this command looks like (2:18-25). What Peter is communicating is that we have all been called to submit even to the point of enduring unjust suffering as Christ did.
i) Biblical Womanhood is a Call to Helpful Submission (1-2)
“Wives, be subject to your own husbands.” This is the sum total of the New Testament’s instruction to wives in marriage: to submit to your own husbands (Eph. 5:22-24, Col. 3:18, Tit. 2:5). Now there is a great need here to understand both what submission is and what it isn’t. The Greek word used here for “be subject” is “hupotasso,” and it means “to subject or subordinate” (to an authority). Every passage in the New Testament directed to wives instructs them to submit to their husbands and uses this Greek word to do so. In an earlier message, we defined “helpful submission” as “the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts.”[2]
While that is a sufficient definition, I want to also point out a few things that submission is from this passage. First of all, submission is as much an attitude as it is an action. It is “pure and respectful” (3:2). It is an inner adorning (3:5). It is an inward disposition, or inclination, to defer to and follow your husband’s leadership in everything (Eph. 5:24). Second, Submission entails respectful affirmation. Sarah respectfully and verbally affirmed her husband’s leadership, “calling him lord” (3:6). Thirdly, submission entails willing obedience. Sarah’s submission involved “obeying” Abraham (3:6). Now this is somewhat different than the command for children to obey their parents and for slaves to obey their masters, but obedience is entailed. This does not mean that a wife has no input on family decisions. On the contrary, a wife is to be her husband’s “helper” (Genesis 2:18). Decisions are supposed to be reached by mutual consensus between a husband and a wife and healthy, mature leadership should not seek to make unilateral decisions. But this does mean that there will be times when a husband and wife are in disagreement about an important family decision after much prayer and discussion and when that situation arises, a wife should willingly and respectfully defer to her husband’s leadership in the matter, trusting God to lead their family through him.
I want to also say two things about what submission is not. First, submission does not entail disobedience to Christ. Submission is for the Lord’s sake (2:13) and is ultimately to and for Him, so a wife’s submission to Christ may mean that she refuses to follow her husband into sin. That truth applies to any authority we are called to submit to under God. Secondly, submission does not imply inequality. Her call to submit to her husband does not imply inferiority, but is “an appeal to one who is equal by creation and redemption to submit to the authority God has ordained.”[3] The greatest example of this truth is the one we saw last week in the Trinity (1 Cor. 11:3). There we see both subordination and equality of being.
Probably the most profound thing about a wife’s submission to her husband is the power it wields upon her husband. Peter says that an unbelieving husband can be won without a word by the “respectful and pure conduct,” i.e. the submission, of their wives (3:1-2). Now this is where the context becomes extremely important. Peter is calling Christians to submit to every institution for the Lord’s sake, even if it means unjust suffering, and in that context calls Christian wives to submit to even unbelieving husbands. Andreas Kostenberger says that Peter’s counsel is “that winning an unbeliever to Christ is a greater cause than insisting on justice in our human relationships.”[4] In other words, your lost husband’s salvation is more important than how you deserve to be treated as a wife. That doesn’t mean that how you’re treated is not important, but it does mean that believers are called to suffer unjustly, following in the footsteps of Christ, in order to accomplish a greater good for God’s glory. I think this submission works out to win a husband in two ways: (1) His wife’s submission reminds him of his own lack of submission to an even greater authority (God) and (2) Her submission displays the love of Christ to Him (he experiences a grace from her that he does not deserve).
ii) Biblical Womanhood is a Call to Inner Adorning (3-4)
The word “adorning” here is referring to what one uses to make oneself beautiful. It is what a woman considers to be the source of her beauty. Peter says that a woman should not make the source of her beauty external (3:3 - hair, jewelry, clothes), but internal. He calls this internal source of beauty “the hidden person of the heart.” They are to adorn this person with the “imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.” I want you to see two things about this inner adorning here in 3:4. The first thing is that it is imperishable. It is not subject to aging or decay. The second thing is that it is beautiful to God.
I want to make sure we give more than just an intellectual nod to this point. This is a call to inner beauty and this means that part of what it means to be a woman is to not be enslaved to a focus on external beauty. There is nothing wrong with looking nice, but there is everything wrong with thinking that looking nice is where true beauty is. 1 Timothy 2:9-10 reaffirms this call upon women to, firstly, dress modestly and, secondly, do so in an effort to draw attention to inner beauty rather than outer beauty.
Also, I think that an implication of women being called to pursue inner beauty is that men are called to prize it. Again, our culture is so upside down here. May God help His men in the church to have their minds renewed so that we treasure what He does, so that we call beautiful what He calls beautiful.
2) The Example of Biblical Womanhood: (3:5-6)
i) Holy Women Hope in God (5a)
Peter now transitions and gives an example of the kind of women that He has been calling wives to be. His example is “holy women,” presumably from the Old Testament, “who hoped in God.” I cannot over emphasize the important of that phrase: “who hoped in God.” That is the vertical spring from which godly womanhood flows to men, in marriage or in any other arena. John Piper calls this the deep, strong roots of biblical womanhood. He says, “She looks away from the troubles and miseries and obstacles of life that seem to make the future bleak, and she focuses her attention on the sovereign power and love of God who rules in heaven and does on earth whatever he pleases (Ps. 115:3). She knows her Bible, and she knows her theology of the sovereignty of God, and she knows his promise that he will be with her and will help her and strengthen her no matter what. This is the deep, unshakable root of Christian womanhood.”[5] This is the root. This is the spring. This is the place where it call comes from: her hope and trust in God.
ii) Holy Women, Out of Their Hope in God, Adorn Themselves with Submission (5b-6a)
They adorned themselves “by submitting to their own husbands” (3:5). Now we have already said a great deal about submission, but what is important here is that we see where submission comes from: a woman’s hope in God. It comes from the inside. It is the inner adorning that we spoke of earlier. And what’s more is that the submission being spoken of here is a continual pattern of submission. Sarah is the example given here: she “obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.” The reference here is probably to Genesis 18:12 and what is important about that reference is that this is something Sarah said to herself, when no one was listening. She wasn’t trying to put on a show for anyone so they would think that she was a submissive wife. She was in a tent, by herself, and had so clothed herself with submission that she was submissive even in the very thoughts that she was thinking. It was a window into her heart, showing us how second nature it was for her to refer to Abraham this way.
iii) Holy Women, Out of Their Hope in God, Do Good (6b)
Peter tells the women that he is giving this instruction to that they can become Sarah’s daughters. What he means is that women can follow in her footsteps of being a holy woman whose hope is in God. What will that look like for them? First, it will mean that they must “do good.” The first thing that good means in this passage is obvious: submit to your own husbands. Titus 2:3-5 is another place where what is “good” for a woman to do is described. Here, the good things that younger women are to be trained in are being “self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” Proverbs 31:10-31 is another place where what it means for a woman to do good is described.
iv) Holy Women, Out of Their Hope in God, Do Not Fear in Anything that is Frightening (6c)
The second thing that women are to do to follow in the footsteps of the holy women who hoped in God is to “not fear in anything that is frightening” (3:6). When you stop to think about it, there really is much to fear for a woman in this call to Biblical womanhood (especially in biblical times). They are called in 3:7 the “weaker vessel.” That doesn’t mean inferior, but it means that women are more vulnerable than men in some areas that can be exploited by men. Physically, most men are stronger than their woman. Emotionally, women are much more sensitive than men, meaning that a husband can often cut a wife a lot deeper emotionally than a wife can a husband (another example: talking about marriage too soon in dating). Authoritatively, we have already seen that women are supposed to submit to men in marriage. What if a man decides to abuse that leadership? The idea here is that there can be much to fear for a woman who seeks to live in this type of submission, but not if her hope is in God! Listen to the words of Proverbs 31:25, “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” Piper here says, “she laughs at everything the future could bring because she hopes in God.”[6] I love the words of Psalm 3:1-6, “O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying to my soul, there is no salvation for him in God. But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill. I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.” Wow. I will not be afraid of thousands of enemy troops that surround me. Why? Because the LORD is my shield and sustenance! Because the LORD is my hope!
I want to suggest to you that hope in God is not just the heart of Biblical womanhood, but is also the heart of any true, mature Christianity. If fear and anxiety rule and reign in your life, then (with the exception of special cases) you are either not a believer or have not come to understand the reality of Romans 8:32: that God in His sovereign power and goodness has not even spared His own Son for you. He has given Him up for you and will also with Him graciously give you all things necessary to be conformed to His image, no matter who you are married to, no matter how they treat you, and no matter whether you ever get married at all. Hope in that, live in that, and let it be the air that you breathe.
[1] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 80
[2] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 80
[3] Knight, George W, III, “Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood,” pg. 169
[4] Kostenberger, Andreas, “God, Marriage, & Family,” pg. 63
[5]John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 97
[6] John Piper, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” pg. 97
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