Reaching Your Spouse | 1 Peter 3:1-7
Peter prescribes three strategies for women and men to reach their unbelieving spouse: (1) submission and understanding; (2) quietness and honor; and (3) faith and prayer. This sermon is part 4 of “A Fisherman’s Passion,” Bryan Craddock’s series on 1 Peter 2:11-5:14.
Watch on Youtube | Listen on Spotify
Some people present the Christian faith as a golden key to unlock every problem, and from the standpoint of eternity, it absolutely is. Your sins are forgiven in Christ so that you can live forever with God in a state of perfect blessing and joy, free from all suffering. Some passages in the Bible liken it to a great feast of celebration. We cannot overstate how good it will be!
But the decision to believe in Jesus can also make life more difficult here and now. It can stir up conflict with those we love. Matthew 10:34-37 tells us that Jesus himself warned people,
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Now Jesus was not telling his followers to instigate conflict or to break off relationships. That would contradict much of his other teaching. But he wants them to accept the possibility of such difficulties. Nevertheless, following him must be our highest priority.
I experienced some of this difficulty in my own family when I became a Christian at the age of sixteen. My parents were not opposed to churchgoing, but they thought that I was overdoing it. They worried that I had joined some sort of cult. I tried to share my faith with them, but I was not very tactful. On a few occasions, my dad mocked me for it. My mom just seemed to resent it, particularly when I later gave up a college scholarship to go to Bible school.
Thankfully, the Lord worked through some trying circumstances to lead my dad to repent and believe in Christ. But he then faced tension in his relationship with my mom. Maintaining unity in a marriage is challenging in the best of circumstances. It becomes far more difficult when a husband and wife hold contradictory beliefs and values. That is why it is so important for a single believer to only marry another believer.
But life is messy, so what should you do if your spouse does not believe in Christ? The Apostle Peter addresses this problem in 1 Peter 3:1-7. He prescribes three strategies to reach an unbelieving spouse: three for women in verses 1-6 and three for men in verse 7. But I think that it will help us to jump back and forth, considering them side by side.
Now the truths in this passage still have application for those who are not married to an unbeliever. They present God’s overarching design for marriage. So, even if your spouse is a believer, these strategies should shape your response when he or she is struggling spiritually or walking in disobedience. They also give us practical wisdom about how to be a spiritual influence in any close relationship–with parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, in-laws, and even close coworkers.
Submission and Understanding
The word submission may bring to mind images of someone overpowered and forced to bow before an opponent. But we find a better analogy in music. It is said that the conductor Leonard Bernstein was once asked to identify the most difficult instrument to play. He said, “Second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find one who plays second violin with as much enthusiasm–that’s a problem. And yet if no one plays second, we have no harmony.”
Whenever two or more musicians play together, someone must take the lead and others must follow. To make great music, the followers must play strongly and skillfully, supporting the direction set by the leader. At the same time, the leader must bring out the best in the followers, allowing their abilities to shine. God has designed marriage to work in a similar way. In 1 Peter 3:1-2, Peter says,
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.
Peter says “likewise” because this is his third mention of submission. He has called for all Christians to be subject to governing authorities and for Christian slaves to be subject to their masters. So, it is often assumed that wives had no freedom in the ancient world and were treated like slaves. Some claim that Peter is telling them to just go along with it and make the best of their oppressive patriarchal culture. But that interpretation suffers from two major flaws.
First, though men still held higher status in the Greco-Roman world, women seem to have had significant freedom and power. We see this influence at the highest levels of society as the mothers and wives of emperors played major roles in shaping the politics of the empire. But we also see it among normal people. Acts 16:11-15, for instance, tells us that the first convert in Macedonia was a woman named Lydia who made a living selling purple fabric. She seems to have run a household and led them to faith, but there is no mention of whether she was married. She was independent.
So, Peter’s call for wives to be subject to their husbands cannot be dismissed as a temporary accommodation to the culture. The other flaw in that interpretation is that Paul presents a clear theological basis for submission in Ephesians 5:22-24. He says,
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
We might be tempted to see this command as oppressive, but Paul’s instruction to husbands counteracts that. In Ephesians 5:25-30, he continues by saying,
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
It is not overly difficult to follow a loving Christ-like leader who demonstrates true care and personal sacrifice. But that is not the situation that Peter addresses. He speaks to women whose husbands are disobeying the word. He could have been thinking of disobedience in general. But since he speaks about the possibility of a woman “winning” her husband, this disobedience is probably an unwillingness to obey the gospel’s command to believe in Christ. Submission in that situation is bound to be more difficult.
As we discussed with citizens and slaves, if a husband demands that his Christian wife do something sinful, she cannot submit. Peter says that her conduct must be pure. The ESV also says that she must be respectful, but a more literal translation of that phrase is “in fear.” Back in verse 17 of chapter 2, Peter anchored honoring and submitting to government leaders in the fear of God, and I think that he is making the same point here. God’s authority is supreme.
So, a Christian wife should seek to follow and support her unbelieving husband as much as she can, and Peter argues that this will have an impact on him. He will take note of her behavior, and I think that Peter has the same idea in mind as he addresses Christian husbands in verse 7 of chapter 3. He says,
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.
Here again the word “likewise” continues Peter’s string of instructions about relating to unbelievers, so that is probably the scenario in view here. He does not tell the husband to assert his authority or to make his wife submit. Men are never told to do that in Scripture. Submission is a wife’s responsibility before God.
Instead, Peter tells husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way, or a more literal translation of the phrase is “according to knowledge.” But what knowledge does he have in mind? In Greek the phrase “as with a weaker vessel” comes next. Some translations move that phrase back to associate it with the idea of showing honor. But I think that it makes more sense to connect it with living together according to knowledge.
Now Peter does not elaborate on what he means by weaker, and there is probably no value in speculating about that. His point is that husbands should relate to their wives with gentleness and compassion. They should understand their fears and struggles. In this case, a man might be tempted to demand that his unbelieving wife become a Christian. But genuine faith must be free and uncoerced. A husband must lead by example. As Paul says in Ephesians 5, husbands should reflect the love of Christ, and every Christian should do the same. That leads us to a second strategy.
Quietness and Honor
I have only played golf a handful of times, and I found it to be maddeningly difficult. I even had some help from a golf pro once. He showed me how to firmly grip the club and kept telling me to relax and loosen up. He told me to follow through on my swing and let the club do the work. But I kept swinging hard, and that sent the ball in every direction but where I wanted it to go.
There is a similar paradox in Christian witness. We must hold firmly to the gospel. We must believe that the world will be judged and that salvation is only found through faith in Jesus Christ and his saving work. We are called to share this message with others. But we must also relax and trust God to do his work in people’s hearts according to his timing.
Instead, we often press hard for people to believe and obey, particularly those we care about most. Some take a positive approach, seizing every opportunity to comment on the goodness of God and the benefits of salvation like a relentless gospel salesman. Others resort to negativity and condescension to shame someone into believing and obeying. Both tactics lead everywhere but where we want them to.
Peter presents a strategy of quietness and honor. We saw in verses 1 and 2 of chapter 3 that he spoke of wives winning their husbands without a word through their submission and their pure conduct. He expands upon this thought in verses 3 and 4 by explaining true beauty. He says,
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.
Some translations add the word “merely”. They say, “Do not let your adorning be merely external…” I think that helps us grasp Peter’s thought here. Some might take this as an absolute prohibition of elaborate hairstyles, expensive jewelry, and fancy clothing. But Peter does not use modifiers like that. To interpret it that way, you would have to take it as a prohibition of all clothing, and he is certainly not saying that. He is making a comparison. Internal beauty is more important than that which is external.
True beauty is a matter of the heart. It is often hidden from people, but it is imperishable. It lasts forever, undiminished by age. In fact, it should keep growing over time. Peter describes it as a gentle and quiet spirit that is precious in God’s sight.
Some might deride this description as an attempt to maintain male dominance and keep women in their place. But all Christians are called to live this way. Matthew 5:5 tells us that Jesus used the same word for gentleness. The ESV translates it by saying, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
This gentleness is the opposite of being forceful and demanding. You would never expect it to lead to such a great inheritance. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus describes himself as gentle and lowly in heart. That is how he ministered to people, and it clearly distinguished him from the Pharisees who were always pushing people around.
Quietness, then, does not mean absolute silence. It is an attitude of the heart. It is the opposite of both frantic worry and constant complaining. Several verses in the book of Proverbs speak of the difficulty of living with a wife who is quarrelsome like that (Prov. 21:9; 25:24; 27:15). Other proverbs testify to the power of quietness and carefully chosen words. Proverbs 15:23, for instance, says, “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!” In a day when people recklessly vent their thoughts and feelings, we should all apply the powerful strategy of quietness.
As Peter addresses husbands, he speaks of showing honor, and I think this attitude is closely related to quietness. It is condescending to badger people and nag at them. It suggests that they are not intelligent enough to understand what we have said or not responsible enough to make their own decision. So, in 1 Peter 3:7, Peter says,
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…
This is not the first time Peter has mentioned honor. Back in verse 17 of chapter 2, he called believers to honor everyone in society. So, he should not even need to repeat it here. Perhaps he does so to balance off the idea of the wife being a weaker vessel. How ever that weakness is defined, it should not elicit condescension.
Instead, a husband must show his wife honor because she is a fellow heir of the grace of life. But what is “the grace of life”? In Paul’s writings, these words are usually associated with eternal salvation. But since Peter has been speaking of relating to unbelievers, we should probably understand it in a more general sense.
Physical life itself is a gift of God’s common grace to all people. As descendants of Adam and Eve, none of us deserve to enjoy it. Every human being is a recipient of God’s love and should be treated as such. Jesus made this argument. Matthew 5:44-45 tells us that he said,
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Since we are called to show honor and love to our enemies, how much more important is it for a husband to treat his wife this way? Or a wife her husband? Or children their parents and parents their children? Why would anyone listen to us speak of eternal life, if our actions suggest that we do not value their existence? Show them honor and love. Speak carefully and gently. That leads us to one more strategy.
Faith and Prayer
Faith and prayer are like the ABC’s of Christianity. They are the basic building blocks of spiritual life. So, they might seem too simple to be an effective strategy for reaching an unbelieving spouse. But are they really that simple? Sometimes we take overly simplistic approaches to very complex topics. On the other hand, we can also make things unnecessarily complicated that are fairly straightforward. We encounter both problems as we seek to understand 1 Peter 3:5-7.
We often treat faith as something simple. People are quick to claim that they trust in God. We even use it as a national motto. But Peter wants us to recognize that putting faith into practice in a messy world can be very complicated. In verse 5 and the first part of verse 6, he continues to make his case for submission and internal beauty by saying,
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.
All the commentaries that I have read on this passage give a very simplistic explanation. They say that Sarah’s life is characterized by a general pattern of humble submission. So, women should trust the Lord and submit like Sarah did. But the biblical account of Sarah’s life is not so neat and tidy, and if we fail to grapple with the complexity of her story, we will never grasp Peter’s point.
She is first introduced in Genesis 11:29 as Sarai, and we are told that she has no children. But in the opening verses of chapter 12, the Lord promises to give her husband, Abram, a land and to make him into a great nation so that all the families of the earth might be blessed in him, even though he is already seventy-five years old and Sarai is sixty-six.
So, Abram takes Sarai to Canaan, and there is no indication of how she feels about it. There is a famine in the land, so they continue down to Egypt, and Sarai is so beautiful that Abram fears that an Egyptian will kill him to take her as his wife. Rather than trusting the Lord, he tells her to say that she is his sister. We find out later that she really is his half-sister. We are not told how she responds to his direction, but she must have submitted because the Pharaoh himself seeks to take her as his wife. The Lord graciously intervenes, however, to prevent that.
Sarai is not mentioned again until Genesis 16. Ten years have passed, and she still has no children. Rather than trusting the Lord, she takes charge and decides that she will have her servant, Hagar, marry Abram and bear a child for her. The text makes a point of telling us that Abram listens to her. When Hagar bears a son and looks with contempt on Sarai, Sarai blames Abram. He tells her to do whatever she wants, so she treats Hagar harshly.
Another fourteen years go by, and at ninety years of age, Sarai still has no child of her own. Nevertheless, Genesis 17 tells us that the Lord reiterates his promise and even changes the couple’s names to Abraham, father of a multitude, and Sarah, princess. In Genesis 18, Sarah overhears the Lord say that she will bear a child within a year, and verse 12 says, “So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?’”
This is the only mention of her ever calling Abraham lord, and she was not saying it in a spirit of submission or obedience. The Lord even asks why she laughed, and she denies that she did so. Why, then, would Peter allude to this as an example? Was he just glossing over the messiness of Sarah’s story? I think it might have been his way of highlighting the next event in Sarah’s life.
Genesis 20 tells us that Abraham goes to an area called Gerar. His faith falters again, and he tells the local king that Sarah is his sister. She must have gone along with it, trusting the Lord to protect her. He reveals himself to the king in a dream, and Sarah is vindicated. Then chapter 21 begins by telling us that she finally becomes pregnant. Hebrews 11:11 seems to speak of this time in her life when it says, “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”
Sarah was far from perfect. Her spiritual life is complicated by a lot of ups and downs. But she did submit to her husband on this occasion when he was not trusting God. She trusted the Lord in the face of danger. So, Peter finishes his instruction to wives in the second half of 1 Peter 3:6 by saying, “And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.”
So, did Sarah’s faith have an impact on her husband? Genesis 20:17-18 tells us,
Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. For the LORD had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.
It may surprise you, but this is the first explicit biblical reference to someone praying. Abraham had talked with the Lord before, but the Hebrew word for prayer is first used in this chapter. The Lord’s purpose all along was for Abraham to bless the families of the earth, but his fear kept him from doing so. Perhaps Sarah’s faith played a part in bringing about this change in Abraham.
Abraham’s prayer may also help us understand Peter’s final instruction to husbands. In 1 Peter 3:7, he says,
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.
We often take a very complicated view of prayer. We assume that there must be some special formula, posture, feeling, or behavior that will convince God to give us what we want. But we draw near to God by his grace through Christ. So, I think that Peter may be making a simpler statement here.
When a Christian husband has an unbelieving wife, one of his main prayers should be for her salvation. But if he fails to treat her with understanding and honor, it is not God who hinders his prayer. He is doing it himself by behaving in a way that pushes his wife away from Christ.
How often do we do that in other situations? We pray for someone we care about to be saved and to grow in Christ, but then we relate to them in ways that undermine our witness. We make a big deal out of things that don’t really matter. Don’t make it so complicated. Pray for people and trust God to do his work.
__________
These strategies show us God’s design for marriage and give us insight for reaching anyone with the gospel. Practice submission and understanding, quietness and honor, and faith and prayer.
Do you have a relationship with the Lord? It does not matter how messy your story has been. You can start trusting him today. I invite you to believe and start learning from his Word. If you want to learn more about salvation and God’s design for marriage, Ephesians 5 would be a great chapter for you to read.
Does your understanding of marriage align with what we have learned here? The biblical view of marriage is not the same as the traditional view or the modern view. I encourage you to ground yourself in God’s Word. Follow his design even when it is difficult. Perhaps you know someone who is struggling with marriage challenges like those we have considered today. Would you pray for them and encourage them?
May God help us walk by faith!
Reflect
How does the understanding of marriage in this passage differ from views in our culture?
What lessons can we draw from this passage about encouraging people to change?
How can we support and encourage those who find themselves in the situation described in this passage?