Likewise…Part 4 of 4
This post is the continuation of this, this, and this. I thought it might be helpful to give a more direct and detailed study of 1 Peter 3:1-6. This is part four. Answering some questions that some might be thinking.
Questions and Answers that might have arisen from this post:
Q: You said, “submit means obey.” Does this mean that a wife should sin if her husband asks her to?
A: No! The wife has committed herself to God who judges justly. This means that she is only submitting to her husband because God told her to. In submitting to God, she submits to her husband. This means that she doesn’t do everything her husband tells her to do. If he tells her to do something that God has already told her not to do, she may not do it. If he tells her to worship an idol, for example, she may not do it. She must respectfully decline.
Q: What if the husband is getting drunk every night, gambling their money away, leaving, being angry all the time, not spending time with the family? Does the wife have to stay in that situation?
A: This scenario might be very similar to whatever Peter had in mind when he said: “even if he does not obey the word.” It is true that men today can participate in sins that men in the first century couldn’t, but to a large extent, sin is sin. So, if the wife (and the children) is not in physical danger she probably should apply 1 Peter 3:1-6 and give her husband over to the Lord. She needs to respect him in any area she can (she needs to look for areas where he is doing a good job), she needs to fawn over him (not promoting his sin), she needs to make him the happiest man in the world, for Jesus sake. She should also pray that God would grab him by the throat and change him into Jesus’ likeness. But she should not let on to her husband that she is doing this. What he should see is her piety and chaste behavior toward him. And, she should expect that God will work through her chaste behavior to win her husband.
She should also talk with her elders and pastor about the situation. It would be good for the church leaders to pray for her, to encourage her, to pass along wisdom about how to submit to him and respect him. They can also get involved in the husband’s life as they are able. Depending on the situation, they might need to apply Mt. 15:18ff to his situation, but they need to always do it with Galatians 6:1 and winning him in mind.
There may come a time when the church leaders should advise the wife to prepare to leave her husband. She should not use the idea of leaving as a weapon against her husband. If she threatens him with leaving, he might change because of that and if that happens it won’t be permanent or heart change. While slaves were told to submit to their earthly masters (Rom 13:1), they were also told that they could escape if the opportunity arises (1 Cor 7:21; Deut 23:15). Wives in difficult situations like these should listen to their leaders’ wisdom and escape if need be.
Q: Does this mean a wife needs to stay in situations where they are constantly being harangued by their husbands (emotionally, verbally, etc.)?
A: We live in a time when a victim culture has emerged that seeks to “rescue” victims from this kind of treatment. Rescuing a wife from a difficult situation might be a good thing, but it is not the first thing the Bible expects or commands. Peter calls us to a higher calling. He wants us to draw near to God and get out of God’s way in dealing with our family members. Wives need to lay down their lives to God, stop talking, stop fixing, stop “trying,” and let God work in their husband’s life through their chaste and respectful behavior.
Peter didn’t say how long it would take to “win” the disobedient husband. It might take a long time, or it might not take all that long at all. My guess is that how long depends a lot on how soon the wife begins acting like a godly wife. Most wives love to fix things. When a husband starts going off the rails, his wife immediately jumps in to make things right. The problem is that both of these actions are sinful. His is sinful in that he isn’t loving his wife, or submitting to God. Her sin is that she is trying to be God in his life and fix her husband. Peter’s solution is exactly what both the wife and husband need when a husband gets into sin. And the sooner the better.
Q: Does this mean that women should stay in situations where they are in danger?
No! If a wife or children are in physical danger, they should leave yesterday. In fact, if they think they might be in danger, the situation is growing in intensity, they should make plans to leave and then when or if the time is right, they should “work the plan.” If the wife tells her husband she is leaving, she needs to be ready right then to leave. She shouldn’t threaten him and then make plans. She shouldn’t threaten him at all. But if she decides she needs to leave, she should have a workable plan when she tells him.
Having said this, I want to be quick to ask, why is the situation escalating? How are you talking to your husband? Is what you are saying or how you are saying it contributing to things getting worse and worse? Be honest. Are you submitting to him? Are you respecting him? Is he complaining about your quiet and chaste behavior? Or are you telling him how to be a better husband? Are you trying to fix things? Are you telling him what you want and expect? Are you nagging him? Are you being contentious? Have you become a yapping dog, never shutting up? Are you part of the reason things are escalating?
If you are, you may still need to leave (if you’re still in danger). If you are, you need to confess your sin to God and to your husband. Then you need to repent and begin living like Peter and Paul tell wives to live with their husbands (even if they do not obey the word).
Q: Does this mean that women shouldn’t expose the sin of their husbands? Doesn’t Eph. 5:11 say, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them”?
A: Remember what I said in the beginning about a text out of context being a pretext for a prooftext? Here is an example of one of those. Ephesians 5:11 is in a context where Paul is talking about how the church, in general, should live in a fallen world. He is not talking to wives about their husbands. And even if he was, which he wasn’t, right after that in verse 15 he tells everyone to “walk as wise men, not to be foolish, but to understand what the will of the Lord is…submitting to one another in the fear of God” (Eph 5:15–21). And then, right after that, he focuses on how wives should treat husbands and how husbands should treat their wives.
Notice here that I’m not saying that a wife should never expose her husband’s sin, or that she should pretend that he isn’t sinning. I’m saying that she should be wise, and should focus first on what the Bible specifically says about how wives should treat their sinful husbands. And it doesn’t include confronting him or treating him with disrespect.
It might include telling the pastor or elders about him, and it might include talking with her husband when things aren’t right in the middle of him sinning, but if he is an angry man, in the middle of a rage and she jumps in his face then, it could be a bad thing; a very bad thing.
Q; What about the way Abigail treated her husband in 1 Samuel 25?
A: People keep bringing this wonderful woman up to me and I can’t quite figure out why. Abigail was a godly woman married to a fathead of a husband. The story is that David sent a bunch of his young men to Nabal (Abigail’s fathead husband) to see if he would share some food with David’s troop (25:4-8). The young men went Nabal and waited for his answer. Nabal said “No way, Jose!” In his rude and raucous manner and so the young men went back to David with the news (25:9-12). So, David gets his back up and decides that he should just take the food, so he suits up 400 men and makes plans to go and have a little chat with Nabal (25:13).
Abigail finds out about the “mix-up” from some of Nabal’s men and decided to save the men by interceding with David (25:18-20). During this time David is fuming and getting more and more riled up. He decides that no will be left alive and prepares for battle (25:21-22).
While David is on his way, Abigail meets him, falls down at his feet and says in a nutshell, “my husband is a fathead, please blame me for his fatheadedness, take my gifts, don’t kill our young men, thank you for protecting us all this time, and please forgive my foolish and shortsighted husband. If you’ll do this, everyone will know you are a wonderful man and God will bless you. Also, please remember me after God deals with my husband” (25:24-31). David was impressed by her speech, and probably by the fact that she was a very beautiful woman and did what she asked. He stopped his army and didn’t kill Nabal or any of his men.
When Abigail got home, he was having a feast and was drunk as a skunk. Abigail waited until the next morning, when Nabal was sober and in his right mind and then told him about the bullet he just dodged. When Nabal heard the news, he had a heart attack and died ten days later (25:36-38).
With regard to how Abigail treated her husband, she did exactly what I’m saying she should have done. She respected him, she saved his life, she didn’t try to fix him, she didn’t confront him about his sin when he was in sin and God saved her and took away her burden.
Q: But didn’t she talk about Nabal behind his back?
A: Yes, she did, but David even said she did it with discretion and what she did was save her husband. I mentioned in one of my answers above that it would be good for a wife in a difficult situation to take her burden to the elders of the church. In one way that is exactly what Abigail did with her family situation. Nabal was going to get the whole lot of them killed, so Abigail did what she needed to do to save everyone. But she did it with grace and submission to God first.
These are a list of books and papers I read in preparation for this Blog post.
Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
(1996). Bibliotheca Sacra, 153. This journal contained three articles on 1 Peter 3:1-6. All by James R. Slaughter.
Calvin, John. The First Letter of Peter. Part of a 22 volume set published by Baker Books.
Clowney, E. P. (1988). The message of 1 Peter: the way of the cross. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Davids, Peter H. (1990). The First Epistle of Peter. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans.
Grudem, W. A. (1988). 1 Peter: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 17). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume. Peabody: Hendrickson.
Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
Kelly, J.N.D. (1969). The Epistles of Peter and Of Jude. Peabody: Hendrickson.
Lange, J. P., Schaff, P., Fronmüller, G. F. C., & Mombert, J. I. (2008). A commentary on the Holy Scriptures: 1 Peter. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
Lenski, R. C. H. (1966). The interpretation of the epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.
Michaels, J. R. (1998). 1 Peter (Vol. 49). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
Schreiner, T. R. (2003). 1, 2 Peter, Jude (Vol. 37). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Swanson, J. (1997). Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) (electronic ed.). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
Vincent, M. R. (1887). Word studies in the New Testament. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Walls, D., & Anders, M. (1999). I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude (Vol. 11). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest’s word studies from the Greek New Testament: for the English reader. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.