Marriage and Women

Tom Shrader works through 1 Peter 3:1–7 within the broader context of Peter's call for Christians to live supernaturally in difficult circumstances, covering government, workplace, and family. He emphasizes that a wife's respectful submission to an unbelieving husband is not a statement of inferiority but a Spirit-enabled witness that may win him to Christ, illustrating this with real testimonies from his pastoral experience. He challenges husbands to live with their wives in genuine understanding and self-sacrificial care, arguing that closeness to Christ is the only foundation from which either role can be faithfully lived.

“Our faith is a deeply personal matter, but it's not a private matter — everything that you do is driven by the fact that you have this personal relationship with Christ, so it affects everything.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: 1 Peter

Recorded: 2012 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 51 min

Themes: marriage, submission, wives, husbands, witness, inner beauty, respect, spiritual influence, wife with unbelieving husband, husband, wife, married couple, struggling in marriage, navigating spiritual differences, new believer, seeking to influence spouse

Scripture: 1 Peter 3:1-7, 1 Peter 2:11, 1 Peter 2:13-15, 1 Peter 2:18, 1 Peter 2:19, 1 Peter 2:21-25, Matthew 5:16, Luke 23:46, Isaiah 53:7, Isaiah 53:6, Ephesians 5, Psalm 23

Theological Themes: sanctification, biblical womanhood, complementarianism, holy spirit dependence, evangelism, biblical manhood, peter epistles, missional living

Full Transcript

servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also those who are unreasonable. Verse 19 and on, he says, if when you do what is right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. And then of course he pivots to Christ as the ultimate example. Christ was treated unfairly, unjustly, and yet He submitted, and through that submission, God was glorified and people were saved.

The Greater Context: Living Supernaturally Before a Watching World

So the passage we are in today, 1 Peter 3:1–7, fits into that same larger argument. Peter is not primarily giving us a marriage manual. He is illustrating what it looks like to live supernaturally in the most intimate, everyday relationships you have. The call that began back in chapter two, verse 11 — to live as aliens and strangers whose excellent behavior causes even those who slander you to ultimately glorify God — that call now comes home, literally, into the marriage relationship.

This is why Jesus' words in Matthew 5:16 are so fitting here: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." Peter is saying the same thing. Your marriage, your conduct as a wife, your conduct as a husband, is one of the primary stages on which the watching world sees whether your faith is real.

And this connects to a point that needs to be made clearly: our faith is a deeply personal matter, but it is not a private matter. It is not something we relegate to Sunday mornings, or to bedtime prayers with the children, while work and the rest of life carry on untouched. Everything you do is driven by the fact that you have a personal relationship with Christ. That affects everything — including, and perhaps especially, the hardest circumstances and the closest relationships.

Peter has now illustrated this principle in four relationships: citizens and government, servants and masters, wives and husbands, and husbands toward wives. In each case, the logic is the same. You are not submitting or showing honor because the other party has earned it or deserves it. You are doing it because of who you are in Christ, and because God can use that conduct to silence critics and draw people to Himself.

Submission in an Unlikely Place: The Wife and the Unbelieving Husband

With that framework in place, look at what Peter says in verse 1: "In the same way you wives, be submissive to your own husbands, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives." The phrase "in the same way" ties this directly back to everything that came before — the citizen, the servant, the example of Christ. The posture being called for is not new; it is the same posture applied now in the home.

And notice the specific situation Peter has in view. He is not primarily addressing a believing wife married to a believing husband. He is addressing a wife whose husband is disobedient to the word — an unbelieving husband, or at minimum one who is not walking with God. This is a genuinely difficult situation, and Peter does not minimize it. He addresses it head-on.

His counsel is striking: she may win him "without a word." That does not mean she never speaks. It means that her primary instrument of influence in this situation is not argumentation, not persistent religious pressure, not a campaign of correction. It is behavior. It is the observable quality of her life — what Peter calls, in verse 2, "chaste and respectful behavior."

Submission in All Circumstances

"Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable." He says, you submit to them. Now, the temptation is to pull this card: "I'll submit to him because he's really good, but you don't know my master." You can almost use that phrase in any of these illustrations. You don't know my government. Submit to my husband — you don't know this guy. Love my wife — you don't know this woman. So he is saying that's not the issue. The issue isn't them; the issue is you.

He says this over and over again, and he seems to follow a consistent pattern. He gives a command: submit to every institution. Verse 15 gives the motive: you may silence them. Verse 18: submit to them — why? You may find favor. Verse 19: for the sake of conscience toward God, a person bears up under sorrows when he suffers unjustly. Verse one of chapter three: wives, submit to your own husbands — why? Even those who are disobedient to the word may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives. You submit to them, and they are going to recognize that this is something supernatural, not natural, and that may be the instrument God uses to soften their hearts. Again, you want to talk about counterculture — this is it. He also says, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, and the motive is so your prayers will not be hindered.

Christ as the Example

Tucked in the middle of all this is an example Peter sets before us, which was addressed two weeks ago — chapter two, verses 21 through 25. He says, "For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps." The word translated "example" carries the idea of tracing — literally following the outline. As a young kid, we would take a picture, lay a thinner piece of paper over it, and trace the outline. That is the idea here: following in His steps, placing your feet exactly where He placed His.

I remember being about 12 years old during one of those snowstorms we might get once or twice a year — a real blizzard. You went to bed as a kid knowing there was a good chance school would be canceled. It was canceled. I turned on the radio the next morning and heard that all of the schools were closed, and I thought, "This is perfect." Then my dad came in and said, "You and I are going to go to Mass." My dad was not into dialogue or due process, so off we went. We walked — we couldn't drive — a couple of blocks to Locust, a busy street with nothing moving on it, deep snow everywhere. At some point I moved in behind my dad and literally placed my feet in the exact spots where he had just stepped. That is what "in His steps" means — literally footprints, or tracks.

He says, "I want you to be like Christ. He is the example." "He who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in Him; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously." There has never been a greater injustice in the history of mankind than the way Jesus was treated. He was perfect. Isaiah 53:7 says, "He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth." He did not revile — the idea is piling abusive language on someone. While He was suffering, He did not threaten. He did not say, "We'll get this back, we'll make this even." Just the opposite: He said, "Father, forgive them."

Entrusting Everything to the Father

Verse 23 contains a great phrase: He kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges. The word "entrusting" means to commit or to hand over, and the tense indicates a repeated past action. We see this throughout Jesus' life — He was always handing Himself over to the Father. Luke 23:46: "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." He was entrusting everything into the Father's hands — all that He was, all of His circumstances, all of life, all situations.

For us, this means saying, "God, we are going to take everything that we have and entrust it to You, because You are a better judge than we are." We trust that what He has called us to do is the right thing, and then we trust Him for the outcome and the results. And in reality, all we are doing is entrusting back to Him what is already His.

Stewardship: Owning Nothing, Entrusting Everything

A life-changing principle is that when I understand this is not my money but God's money, it changes my complete relationship with it. I am not an owner. I am a steward. When Tim talked last week about the church and the future — God's Word, prayer, intentional evangelism, biblical community, serving the church, and generosity — what we understand is that generosity encompasses all of life. It is saying, "God, You own all of this. Money is part of it."

As we talk about giving, about a building, about raising money, those are always potentially difficult circumstances. But what I need to understand is that all of it is a theological issue. Sandy and I are having those conversations right now, with a building coming and money coming. At the end of every year I reevaluate my giving and try to increase it.

The question we ask is not, "How much money should we give?" We ask, "How much of God's money should I keep?" That changes the answer every time. That is what this passage is saying: entrust it all. "God, this is Yours. Here is my life. I am going to invest it the way I think is right."

Raising Children as Stewards, Not Owners

When Susan and I were raising our girls, our philosophy was to make them independent of us and dependent upon God. That fleshed itself out in a whole variety of ways. There are all sorts of theories — something called "Raising Kids God's Way," and although there was a lot of really good material in it, I always had a bit of an issue with the arrogance of claiming there is one singular way to do it.

From the very beginning we said to our daughters, "You are God's kids, not our kids. Someday we are going to be held accountable for how we stewarded your lives." We did not want them to do things simply to make us happy. We wanted them to please God and understand that He is the authority in their lives, because we are not always going to be there.

They would grow into adult women living in the world, living on their own, or living in marriage — and marriage changes that context even more. So at each of their wedding ceremonies I said, "To this point I have been the man in your life and the authority figure in your life. But now it is not me — it is Tim, it is Tyler. If they say something and I say something, unless it is a moral issue and he is asking you to disobey God, then he is right for you, not me. Submitting to him is more important than obeying me. It is a new relationship."

The Fear of Submission and Trust

How do you do that? Because sometimes it is a scary thing to entrust everything. I felt so bad for Sandy — we have been married about six months now. I was so sick in August, literally lying in bed at Cannon Beach in a beautiful spot, feeling sorry for her. I even started to say, "You didn't sign up for this." But she did. She is the one who said, "For better or worse, rich or poor, in sickness and in health." She just did not know it was going to come in ten weeks.

It is a scary thing, wives, to submit to a husband. It is a scary thing for a husband to love his wife — to live with her in an understanding, nurturing, cherishing way. It is scary to submit to an employer. Scary to submit to a government. But the Lord says, "Don't worry about that. You do what I am calling you to do, and trust Me for the outcome."

The Gospel Foundation: Christ as Our Substitute

Verse 24 says, "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." Here is what Peter has said: let Jesus be your model and your example. He is not saying in verse 24 that you are to die for someone else's salvation. You cannot die for someone else's salvation — you could not even take care of your own salvation. Christ died, and that is the gospel. That is what we come back to again and again.

Because that is true, because I understand that gospel, because I have come in repentance and faith to Christ, because He has called me His child and changed my designation from sinner to saint — because all of that is true, now He is saying live this way.

Let me take a brief side trip and read a quote from Leon Morris to drive this home. He is speaking about the salvation described in verse 24 — not the process of Christ's suffering, not being reviled without reviling in return, but the salvation itself. Morris writes:

"Redemption is substitutionary, for it means that Christ paid the price that we could not pay. He paid it in our stead; we go free. Justification interprets our salvation judiciously. As the New Testament sees it, Christ took our legal liability — He took it in our stead. Reconciliation means the making of people to be one by the taking away of the cause of the hostility."

We are reconciled to the Father through the Son. He took away the cause of the hostility — in this case the cause is sin — and Christ removed that cause for us. We could not deal with sin. He could, and He did, and He did it in such a way that it was reckoned to us. Propitiation points —

Christ Our Substitute

To us, the removal of divine wrath came through Christ bearing that wrath for us. It was our sin which drew it down, and it was He who bore it. Was there a price to be paid? He paid it. Was there a victory to be won? He won it. Was there a penalty to be borne? He bore it. Was there a judgment to be faced? He faced it.

Morse continues: "To put it bluntly and plainly, if Christ is not my substitute, I still occupy the place of a condemned sinner, for my sins and my guilt are not transferred to Him. If He did not take them upon Himself, then surely they will remain with me. If He did not deal with sins, I must face their consequence. If my penalty was not borne by Him, it still hangs over me."

Morse is making the point of verse 24: Christ died in our place. That is what a Christian is. A Christian is a man, woman, student, boy, or girl who comes to the realization that they are a sinner, that their sin has separated them from God, and that there is nothing they can do to make it right. All of those things Morse talks about apply — there is a wrath to be borne, a penalty to be paid, and a judgment to be faced. And Christ did it. Any effort we make is insufficient, but Christ made it. Christ died. He died in your place.

That truth alone, if we just hit pause right there, should produce a great sense of gratitude, satisfaction, and joy in your life. There should be a desire to respond to it as you begin to contemplate it. As it gets bigger and bigger in the mind, you begin to see your sin, you see the situation you were in, you were rescued, you were delivered, and you understand that.

The Shepherd and the Straying Sheep

Peter says, "For you are continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and to the Guardian of your soul." That is what you used to be. Isaiah 53 says, "All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of all of us to fall on Him." He died in your place, but now you have returned. The idea there is repentance. He is the Shepherd — the perfect Shepherd, the Guardian, the One who oversees, and the One who cares for you.

My friend Larry Wright had a distinct phobia — and let's not play around with it — for the way the 23rd Psalm is generally used. It drove Larry crazy that he would go to funerals and hear the 23rd Psalm read, because he would say, "This is a psalm about living, not a psalm about dying." That conviction finally reached a breaking point for him. Sue had been invited to speak at a women's conference and said she would be happy to do it. When they called to ask for the topic so they could build a theme around it, she said she was going to talk about the 23rd Psalm. The person on the phone said, "Nobody died."

Larry was at a funeral eventually — a kind of country-western, ridden-hard affair — and the 23rd Psalm was read, and he said, "That's it." He finally decided to teach the 23rd Psalm. I want to read it to you from a different perspective — not from the perspective of someone who is dead, not as a little card you are looking at with a shepherd on one side and the psalm on the other. What about you, living?

The 23rd Psalm, verse one, from The Message: "God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I'm not afraid when you walk at my side. Your shepherd's crook makes me feel secure. You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing. Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I'm back home in the house of God for the rest of my life."

Suffering and the Witness of the Christian Life

Peter is talking about suffering — and suffering is not something that will be absent from the world or from your world. Because you confess Jesus as Lord, there are going to be aspects of suffering that the average person does not necessarily experience. One author writes this: "When one is suffering unjustly, trust in God and obedience to Him is not easy, but they are deepened through the undeserved affliction, and God is thereby more glorified." So you are in the midst of an incredible situation that is unjust and unfair, you are being mistreated, and Peter says to submit.

Peter seems to see this impossible and difficult situation in the Christian's life as an opportunity to bear witness to Christ. That same principle applies in the context of government, the workplace, and now in the husband-and-wife relationship. If we wanted to study the husband-and-wife relationship in depth, the primary passage would be Ephesians 5, and we might come here to fill in some blanks. That is not the main thrust of what Peter is doing here, but it is present and worth mentioning.

Wives, Husbands, and Submission

The connection is made through the phrase "in the same way." Chapter 3, verse 7 says, "You husbands, in the same way." Peter is continuing the same thread — submitting and serving in a way that is not always fair, in a context that is counterculture, whether it involves government, the workplace, or the husband-and-wife relationship.

Chapter 3, verse 1: "In the same way, be submissive to your own husbands, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without the word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe..."

Submission Is About Role, Not Status

Submission does not imply that women are morally, intellectually, or spiritually inferior in the family. Peter is going to acknowledge in verse 7 that there is a weaker vessel. It is a matter of role, not necessarily a matter of status. We can see this in the Trinity — the Son wants to do the will of the Father.

Let me give you a practical illustration. Think about a football huddle. In theory, there is one person speaking, and it is the quarterback. A huddle is not a matter of the quarterback saying, "Okay, we're going to run a sweep left," and the guard responding, "I don't feel like pulling — I pulled last play." That is not how it works. All the players are equal in status, different in role and function. To submit means to line up under.

John MacArthur writes that Peter refers specifically to "their own husbands," indicating the intimacy of marriage and pointing out that he was not commanding women to be subservient to men in every context.

A Couple Who Came to Object

When Peter says to submit to your husband and to live with him in an understanding way, we realize this husband may be totally oblivious to the Word of God — someone who has rejected the gospel and rejected all of its standards. I had a situation that illustrates this well. I was still officing here at the time, so it was years ago. I received a call from a couple who wanted to meet regarding a sermon I had preached the week before on the topic of wives submitting to husbands. We had not yet gotten to the following week's message on husbands, because we were going through the passage week by week.

They came in — a husband and a wife. It may sound judgmental, but it was accurate: she was very assertive, and he walked in somewhat sheepishly. I welcomed them and asked what I could do for them. He said nothing. So I asked him directly why they were there, and she said, "Tell them why we're here." He then said that they did not like the way I had taught wives to submit to their husbands. I asked whether they had any objection to the following week's message — husbands, love your wives. They said no, that was fine. I knew it would be.

As we talked, it became clear — it was like Edgar Bergen with a puppet on his lap. I asked how their marriage worked, and he told me it was a 50-50 marriage, with no leader. I said that arrangement works well at Starbucks, but it does not hold up when you lay it next to Scripture, and that is the issue.

Then he said something I could hardly imagine a man saying. He said, "My wife is submissive to me when I'm right and loving and kind." I asked her how often that happened. At that point it became clear there was no counseling taking place — they were simply announcing they were leaving. She said, "Just sometimes."

The True Test of Submission

I told them I wanted to take them to just one passage without confusing the whole thing with the Bible. Here is the point: the test of submission is not when he is right. The test of submitting to government is not when the government is wonderful and everyone agrees with its decisions. Submission is not an issue until you are called to submit to something you violently disagree with or see as blatantly unjust.

It is like the fruit of the Spirit. In the series I am currently preaching, one central element is this: my faith is personal, but not private. As I live out my faith, my task is to make the invisible God visible and to speak the truth boldly. The way I tend to make the invisible God visible is not primarily through coming to church, attending Bible study, or joining a small group — though all of those are good and necessary. It is through the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

The first four of those — love, joy, peace, and patience — require very difficult circumstances before you can even know whether you have them. I do not know if I am loving until I come up against someone who is unlovable. We are not talking about happiness here. Anyone can be happy when the market is up and everything is quiet at home. Joy is not happiness. Peace transcends circumstances — it is not the absence of turmoil, it is the presence of God.

Patience works the same way. I do not know if I am a patient driver if every light is green. That does not prove anything. The whole idea of submission, then, connects to this same principle — the virtue is only revealed when it is tested.

The Witness of a Wife's Life

That is the picture Peter paints: a husband who is unbelieving, who has rejected the gospel and rejected its standards. Peter is writing to encourage wives to accept the reproach for Jesus' sake. John Stott writes, "Christian wives can have an important part in the church's witness. That witness may not be easy. Their husbands may have resisted the claim of the gospel. They may ridicule the message and insult their wives. So strong may be their hostility that it is no longer possible for the wife to even speak to them about the Lord, to make the invisible God visible and to speak the truth boldly."

I have watched 1 Peter 3:1 come true in at least three instances that come to mind. My friend Larry Wright — that was Larry's testimony. Sue became a Christian before Larry, and she began to implement this truth in her life. Larry responded by saying, "I know what's going on here. It's reverse psychology. You're trying to be nice to me." Rather than respond positively, he grew tougher and tougher on her, until Larry said, in his own words, "I couldn't deny it. This was not the person I married."

A Wife's Transformed Heart

The second instance involves a lady who used to come to church here, whose husband was an unbeliever. This is her testimony, not mine. She hated him. She despised him. And she prayed — and I am not sure God is going to answer every prayer we fire up — she prayed every day that he would die in a tragic way so that everyone would lavish attention on her and feel sorry for her. That was her prayer.

She came to me when she was at rock bottom. She asked, "What should I do with this?" We talked, and I told her she needed to love this man. I said she should make him a fabulous dinner and make love to him, which, in my experience, fixes almost everything. She said, "I knew you'd say that." But the point was simply this: you have to love this man. That is what 1 Peter 3 is calling you to. She was a classic illustration of it.

Two or three months later, as I remember it, she was getting ready for church and her husband said, "I'll go with you." They came together, and on the drive home she asked, a little sheepishly, "What did you think?" He said, "Well, I didn't like him" — and that was me — "but you know what? It wasn't that bad." He said he would come with her through the study that was beginning. It was the Gospel of John. We spent three and a half years in it, and he was true to his word. In chapter three, God saved him. It was an amazing marriage. And looking back, that is simply what it was — 1 Peter 3 made visible.

A Letter from a Third Witness

One of the ladies of the church thought Tim would be teaching today, so she sent him an email. Tim wrote back and said he wasn't, that Tom was, and asked if he could forward it to me. She said sure. She writes — and I want to be clear, she was writing to Tim, not to me — "This coming week will be tough for a kind pastor to preach on, but I beg you to really go for it. As a counselor in both the church and in outreach, this is no small item."

She is speaking specifically about this section of Scripture. She continues: "We women scoff at this until" — and she put this in all caps — "WE SEE THE RESULT OF DOING IT. God is faithful. My husband's salvation was based on the Almighty using an unsubmissive wife" — she is speaking of herself — "and a heart that was changed to love him, to submit to him when he was not godly. After a period of time, with complete dependence upon God, He saved my husband. My salvation is amazing, but nothing like my love for my husband's salvation. God said to love my husband when it was impossible for me to do, yet I stood firm to obey the One who I love most, though imperfectly, and watched my husband's heart melt. God won my husband to Himself. My family will never be the same. Amazing grace. Go for it, Tim. Tom. Tell us wives that this is God's way, and that He may just use it to win our husbands."

The Compelling Power of a Transformed Life

Frankly, I have never seen a situation where an entire family was not completely blessed by the wife's submission — not necessarily saved. God is calling you to do what is right, to live in a way that he may be won. You may be the very instrument God uses, and there is something powerful about that. It is undeniable.

I am comfortable broadening this beyond the husband-and-wife relationship as well. The people in your life — your friends — see you in the most difficult circumstances. They see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. It is compelling, because in their own minds they are thinking, "I could never do that. How do you do that?" Then you have the privilege of telling them about Jesus.

True Adornment

Verse three: "Your adornment must not be merely external — braiding hair, and wearing gold jewelry, and putting on dresses." Peter is not saying women should be insensitive to style and clothing. What was happening in that culture is that women were obsessed with adornment. They would wear their finest costumes, dye their hair in outlandish colors — not entirely unlike today — and pile on jewelry. It was all about: look at me, aren't I beautiful?

Peter is addressing that obsession, but he is not issuing a license to stop caring about one's appearance. John MacArthur writes that it is certainly possible for a woman's appearance to be so unkempt and so unadorned that it embarrasses or discourages her husband. The passage is not saying that how you look does not matter, or that style is irrelevant. Peter is talking about something deeper — where the true focus of a woman's adornment ought to lie.

The Role of a Wife

I have a talk that I give to ladies — I haven't been invited to give it lately, so it's time to do it again — on the role of a wife. Here is how it started. I went in one day to teach on the role of a wife, and before I said anything, I asked the ladies, "What do you think the role of a Christian wife is?" There was a quiet moment, and then a hand went up, and then another, and pretty soon, in a matter of three, four, five minutes, they had laid out everything I had prepared for that talk. I said, "So the issue here isn't really knowledge. It's motivation. You know what to do."

These women had Bibles that were all marked up with arrows and highlights. They had been to study after study on Titus 2 and the role of wives. I'm not saying those studies aren't important — I'm just saying, you already know this material. So I shifted to questions instead.

My first question to the ladies was this: Would you want to come home to you? I think that's a really important question. Take a look in the mirror. One of the things Susan was awesome at, and that Sandy continues, is making home a true sanctuary — a place where the things that matter are present, but not in an obsessive way.

The Hidden Person and the Gentle Spirit

Peter says the thing to be obsessed about, in verse four, is the hidden person, the gentle spirit. He then quotes from the Old Testament to ground that point.

Then we come to verse seven — and unfortunately we are almost out of time — which says, "You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman." The motive Peter gives there is so that your prayers will not be hindered. He is talking to us now, husbands, and he says, "I want you to live with her in an understanding way."

Here is what that means. It is equally countercultural — especially in that culture — as submission was for wives. For a man to be sensitive and considerate of his wife's deepest needs, to live with her in an understanding way, was a radical demand. Luke is teaching this passage today at the Gateway Campus, and he has written in his notes that a husband selflessly understanding his wife was, in all caps, insanely countercultural in Peter's day.

What It Means to Live with Understanding

What Peter is calling us to, men, is this: we should be able to understand our wives' likes and dislikes, passions, dreams, hopes, fears, strengths, weaknesses, and insecurities. That means you are going to have to ask her, because you are not going to simply know it. I have been around enough couples to know that she will say, "I shouldn't have to say it — he should just know it." Maybe he should. But he doesn't. So you have to ask, and she has to tell.

I find myself in a particularly odd situation as I work through this material, because I have thirty-two years of marriage on one hand and twenty-five weeks on the other. I feel in many ways like I understand all of this, and yet I also feel like I am figuring it out all over again. After thirty-two years with Susan, you just know. Now I have to try to figure things out again, and I have to ask.

Asking is step one. Step two is that I have to see it — I have to genuinely perceive what those needs and vulnerabilities are. Step three is that I have to act on what I see, and I have to act on it regardless of her response, as verse four makes clear.

Crystal and Thermos

Mark Driscoll writes this about the phrase "weaker vessel" — and weaker does not mean inferior. Think of it this way: generally speaking, a wife is like a fine crystal glass and a man is like a thermos. One is not better than the other, but they are different. If you slam them together, the thermos wins almost every time.

Men are taught throughout their lives — from sports to business — to find a weakness and exploit it. I was watching a game yesterday and a safety went down, and the commentator said, "Watch them go for that — they're going to exploit that weakness in the secondary." That kind of thinking, while useful in some areas of life, will destroy a wife and destroy a marriage.

My calling is to understand her. It is to say, these are her strengths, and I want to put her in a place where she can operate from those strengths, and I want to protect against her weaknesses — that is my responsibility. As we would see if we studied Ephesians 5 fully, it is my responsibility and privilege to protect her, cherish her, and nurture her.

The Problem with the "Me Marriage"

Tim Keller writes, "Isn't it ironic? Older views of marriage are considered traditional and oppressive, while the newer view of the 'me marriage' seems so liberating — and yet it is the newer view that has led us to a steep decline in marriage and to an oppressive sense of hopelessness with regard to it. To conduct a me marriage requires two completely well-adjusted, happy individuals with very little in the way of emotional neediness of their own or character flaws that need a lot of work. The problem is, there is almost no one like that out there to be married."

Another author writes, "We always marry the wrong person. We never know who we marry — we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it time, while he or she will change. For marriage, being the enormous thing that it is, means that we are not the same person after we have entered into it. The primary problem is learning how to live and care for a stranger to whom you find yourself married."

One other wise voice puts it this way: it is not about marrying the right person — it is about being the right person.

Closing: The Prospect of a Truly Good Marriage

Tim Keller writes, and we will close with this: "If two spouses each say, 'I am going to treat my self-centeredness as the main problem in marriage,' you have the prospect of a truly" — and there the transcript ends, but the direction is clear. The work of marriage is not finding a perfect partner. It is each person taking responsibility for their own self-centeredness, and in doing so, creating the conditions for something genuinely good.

Marriage Requires Supernatural Power

This is not theory for me. I am involved in this deeply, sorting it out, trying to understand Sandy, and understanding that in the midst of any conflict, I am willing to flinch and recognize that my main problem in this marriage — exactly what Keller says — is going to be my self-centeredness. So if I can get closer to Him, I will get closer to Sandy.

I did a men's retreat a while ago, and there seemed to be a general disappointment that I did not talk about marriage and I did not talk about kids. The guy who expressed it shared this after most of it was over, and I had one session left. I said, "Your leader shared with me that there is a general dissatisfaction — I get it, I apologize, I was not told to talk about marriage and kids. I was told it was a men's conference." I did not know that the perennial, eternal, ubiquitous problem with men is apparently marriage.

I said, "I will give you a little secret. I am a better husband when I am closer to Jesus, and I have observed that my wife seems to be a better wife when she is closer to Jesus." The more I understand who God is, the more I understand what Peter is saying. He is saying: you are not going to pull this off — you are not going to pull off submitting to government, submitting to your master, submitting to your husband, or loving your wife. Those are supernatural things, and you are not going to do them on your own.

An Encouragement to Those Who Are Struggling

Some of you are sitting here today and you are struggling — I get it. I believe everything I have said is true, and I am totally confident it flows from the scripture. But you may be in a situation where you are just barely hanging on.

I would really encourage you to get some help. Talk to the men and women who are here at the front of either the chapel or the conference center after the service. Have them pray with you, contact the church, and let us come alongside and help you.

If you are about to take communion — Justin is going to come and lead communion — here is what I know: if you are going to take communion, you have the power in you to submit to that husband and to love that wife, because it is supernatural.

What Sixty Years of Marriage Looks Like

I taught through the book of Ephesians and hit the passage in Ephesians chapter five on husbands and wives. Afterward, an elderly woman came up to me — she was really old — and she said, "We have been married sixty years." I said, "Sixty years, what is the secret?"

You could see her look at me, and you could see the respect melt away. Her body language said it all: *You jerk, you just taught it. You moron, why are you asking me for some sort of antidote you can plug into your next message?*

And she was right. The issue is not whether it works — the issue is whether it is true. God has called us to this, and we are to take it seriously. I will pick up right there next week.

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Father, take these words and drill them deep into our hearts. Let us love You in a way that is beyond anything we could have imagined, and let us fulfill the role You have for us — whether in government, in society, or in the family. God, will You do the work in our lives? Thank You for Jesus. We pray to You in His name, amen.