📖 1 Peter Intensive — Unit 7: Wives and Husbands

Text: 1 Peter 3:1-7

Wives, Won Without a Word

Peter has been teaching the whole church how to live under those in authority — citizens under government, servants under masters — and now he turns to the home, beginning with wives. "Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear" (1 Peter 3:1-2). It is worth noticing how much space Peter gives here. He says about six times as much to wives as he will say to husbands, and the reason is the special situation many of these women were in. Often a wife had come to faith after marriage, so that now a believing woman was living with an unbelieving husband. To her especially Peter gives a strategy of quiet power: she is to win her husband not by argument but by her life.

Here the lesson must speak honestly, because to the modern ear the very word "submission" sounds unfair, and anything that suggests a wife yielding to her husband is quickly branded as backward. Yet Peter says it, and Paul says almost exactly the same thing, so we must ask what they actually mean. They do not mean that a woman is worth less than a man, nor that she is a servant without a voice; as we shall see, Peter calls husband and wife equal heirs of the same grace. The submission he commands is voluntary, freely given, and it is aimed at a goal — the winning of the husband. Rightly understood and carefully explained, biblical submission turns out to be something very different from the harsh subservience its critics imagine.

A remembered remark from this seminary’s own history makes the point with a smile. Andi Cook — the late wife of the seminary’s founder, and herself a much-loved teacher here — used to say that she believed a wife should be subservient to her husband. Yet by the time she had finished explaining what she actually meant by the word, there was so little of the harsh subservience left in it that scarcely anything of the caricature remained. That is just how it is with this command: what sounds severe at first softens, under careful and honest explanation, into something a believing woman can embrace with joy.

This is especially clear in the case of the believing wife and the unbelieving husband. Her submission is to be voluntary, never forced. And Peter's counsel is striking: she is not to become a sort of preacher in the home, lecturing her husband and arguing the gospel at him day after day. You cannot nag or argue an unbelieving spouse into the kingdom of God. It can be done only by humility and a godly life. The husband who will not listen to a sermon will, over months and years, be unable to ignore a transformed wife living quietly and beautifully before his eyes.

Won by a Godly Life

Church history offers a shining example. Monica, the mother of the famous Augustine, lived with an unbelieving and difficult husband, yet by her witness and her prayers God in time won both her son and her husband to Christ, though her husband was not converted until shortly before his death. Augustine remembered that his mother served his father and sought to win him to God not by words but by her conduct, and that this very behavior made her lovely in her husband's eyes. Her patient, prayerful, godly life did what no argument could have done.

The same thing still happens. There was once a godly woman in one congregation whose husband was not a believer and was, by every account, a hard and difficult man. She did not drive, and so before the service had even ended he would pull up outside and lean on the horn, impatient for her to come. Without a word of complaint she would quietly rise and walk out to the car. Year after year her steady, gracious character pressed against his hardened heart — and in the end that hard man became a believer, won by the godly behavior of his wife. This is exactly the power Peter is describing: a life so plainly changed that it preaches without speaking.

The Hidden Person of the Heart

Peter now describes the kind of beauty that wins. "Do not let your adornment be merely outward — arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel — rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God" (1 Peter 3:3-4). Peter is not forbidding a wife to fix her hair or wear a ring; he is teaching her where real beauty lies. Outward adornment fades, and the most carefully arranged appearance cannot win a husband's soul. But the hidden person of the heart — the inner character clothed with a gentle and quiet spirit — does not fade; it is incorruptible, and it is precious in the sight of God Himself. A gentle and quiet spirit is not weakness or a timid personality; it is the deep, settled calm of a heart at rest in God, and it is far more attractive and far more powerful than any ornament money can buy.

It is striking that this is the very beauty God Himself prizes. The world spends fortunes on the adornment that fades and scarcely notices the beauty that lasts, but heaven’s estimate is the reverse. A gentle and quiet spirit is the same spirit Christ Himself displayed, and it cannot be bought, painted on, or worn for an evening; it is grown slowly in a heart that walks with God. Such beauty does not fade with the years but deepens, and it carries a quiet authority all its own. A wife adorned in this way commends her faith more powerfully than any argument could, and makes the gospel she believes look as lovely as it truly is, so that her very character becomes a sermon her household cannot help but hear.

Daughters of Sarah

To show that this is no new or strange teaching, Peter points back to the godly women of long ago. "For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror" (1 Peter 3:5-6). The holy women of the Old Testament were beautiful in exactly this way: they trusted God, and out of that trust they honored their husbands. Sarah is the great example, the mother of the faithful, who treated Abraham with such respect that she called him lord. Peter then says something wonderful to the believing women reading his letter: they are Sarah's daughters — her true spiritual children — if they do good and refuse to be ruled by fear. A woman who trusts God can do right without being terrified of what may come, because her confidence rests not in her circumstances but in the Lord.

Husbands: Strength and Tenderness

Peter says less to husbands, but what he says is weighty. "Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered" (1 Peter 3:7). The husband is to live with his wife thoughtfully, taking the trouble to understand her, and he is to give her honor. The phrase "the weaker vessel" does not mean she is worth less or is less able; it pictures something precious and finely made, to be handled with care, and it calls the husband to protect and cherish rather than to dominate. And then Peter levels the ground entirely: husband and wife are "heirs together of the grace of life." Whatever difference of role the home may have, before God they inherit the same salvation in equal measure; she is his equal in worth and in grace. To this Peter attaches a sobering warning: a husband who treats his wife harshly will find that his prayers are hindered. A man cannot be right with God while he is wrong with his wife.

How then is a husband to do all this? The best counsel is simply that a Christian husband should pattern himself after Jesus Christ. In Christ we see a beautiful blending of strength and tenderness, and that combination is exactly what it takes to be a good husband — strength without harshness, tenderness without weakness. But no man can copy Christ from a distance. A husband cannot follow Christ's example unless he first knows Christ as his Savior and submits to Him as Lord, spending time each day in the Word and in prayer. And here Peter's instructions to wives and to husbands meet: a Christian husband and wife are to pray together and to encourage one another in the faith, so that the home becomes not a place of struggle for power but a partnership of two heirs walking together toward the same grace.

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