LESSON 11 STUDY OF 1 PETER
More on Submission 1 Peter 3:1-6
1 Peter 3:1-6 Wives, in the same way be submissive to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without talk by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
What is Beauty and Why are Women Beautiful?
God gave all mankind senses. They are so important that we consider anyone with subaverage senses to be disabled or challenged. Our senses are the physical way we access God and God's creation. Since Man is the only thing God created that reflects God's image (Genesis 1:27), senses are very important. Who can challenge the notion that a blind person is not able to fully appreciate God's creation because they cannot see. Similarly, someone who is deaf misses so much of creation from bird's songs to the 'noise' of children playing. When we consider someone who is severely impaired like a Helen Keller, who does not feel an extreme sense of pity or sadness?
At root, the absence of senses cuts us off from a portion of God's creation. What does it cut us off from exactly? Many things, but today we want to focus on what Peter is telling women, wives specifically, about beauty. Without our senses our ability to access physical beauty if impaired, hampered, or even blocked entirely. All of the forms of beautification that Peter cites are accessed by our senses. But he radically turns the focus away from beauty accessed by the traditional five senses, and towards beauty that is accessed by our heart or mind. In effect our passage today is a warning against the wives indulging their desire for physical, 'sensual' and propagating a beauty of the soul.
This pericope is directed at wives. I am not a professional woman, but I have been married to one for a very long time, and with her have created two more, and in God's providence have participated through them in creating four more. Number 4 is coming along nicely and will be breathing our air soon, thank you.
So I know a bit about women. But even if I didn't, Peter inspired by the Holy Spirit does, and he shares some things important to wives and about women. If you are uncomfortable please utilize one of the exits at your convenience, stone throwing is discouraged.
I'll Wade In Now
Why would Peter address wives this way? Why not all women? All women naturally want to be beautiful. Its built in. But there is a difference when a woman becomes a wife. The natural desire to look attractive and to attract a mate is one thing. But once that phase of life has ended with the consummation of marriage, the desire to attract is dangerous. The excusable desire to appear attractive in a single woman becomes potentially sinful sensuality in a married woman. But Peter makes a very important point, he does not condemn the desire to be attractive to one's husband. Rather he pushes the element of a wife's desire to be attractive into a form that enhances her sanctification, and also enhances her witness – particularly when the husband is unsaved.
The element he pushes is submission. This is consistent with what he has been stressing from the last few weeks. Makeup, fine clothing, beautiful hair, are all worldly things that all women have, but the one thing a Christian wife has that worldly women do not, is her character. These other things are just not that important (Matthew 6:28-29) A Christian woman's submission to her husband is a screaming loud witness to him, and also the world. No burkha required.
Paul ties this same kind of thinking back to the Creation in Ephesians 2:10:
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
A final note on this can be found in 1 Timothy 2:9-10 where Paul takes very similar language and applies it to all women, but we aren't studying 1 Timothy so I will leave that alone.
Submission is Not Just for Citizens
Peter exhortation to submit, is a carryover from the previous lesson he gave all of us – to submit to God's ordained authorities; very few exceptions granted, and only under very specific circumstances.
So his submission exhortation for wives to submit to their husbands should not strike us out of place or odd or misogynistic. Its important to do a carve out here: Peter is addressing married women, wives, not all women. This is not a command that women should obey men, we will return to that in a moment.
We are born into a hierarchy; a chain of command. Our parents are to be submitted to (Colossians 3:20), even though we had no choice in the matter. We had no choice in the Government Peter admonished us to submit to (1 Peter 2:13-14), aside from every few years when we go through election make-believe. We chose a college to attend, an employer, and so on (1 Peter 2:18). Aside from a very brief period each year, we have no choice in the Church Leadership we are to submit to (Hebrews 13:17).
But there are a few areas where we had a choice, where we, using God-ordained means, chose who we were submitting to. Once the choice was made, the submission was no longer optional. So when you hired on with a company, you chose to submit yourself to the Company's chosen leaders. Some also have clients that once selected, now require a level of submission. Likewise when you chose a church and when you participate in Elder selection, you have a level of choice. The choice, once made, is replaced with the requirement of submission. And so with women, once they choose a Husband, their submission obligation begins at the consumption of that marriage. And as Paul noted, this obligation ends at the Husband's death (Romans 7:2).
There are lots of differing nuanced viewpoints on this. I don't think Peter is interested in options at this point. His interest is in righteous submission. In holy submission. In glorifying God by the very act of submission. But why? Because as sinful fallen people we are obligated by God to submit to authority, but we still have the ability to rebel. It is this ability to rebel that Peter is flagging for married women (husbands come the week after next). Wives can rebel. Employees can rebel. Slaves can rebel, children can rebel, citizens can rebel. But in Christ we have been given His Spirit so we can overcome the flesh and submit. And in doing so we glorify God.
As the most important chapter in the Bible, Romans 8 says in the beginning:
Romans 8:1-9a [Selected] ... through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. ...And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. ... The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.
At our salvation we entered into a new realm, one where we have been enabled with the power to obey God's law, the ability and the desire to submit to God. Before this, we could not desire nor submit to God. When we got a job we desired to submit to God by obeying our boss. When a woman got married she has the ability and desired to submit to God by obeying her husband, and by husbands submit to God by loving their wives to the point of dying for them.
Women submitting to Men: Good Idea or Not?
There is a tendency to conflate this command of Peter's directed to wives, generalizing it to be about women and men. It is not. Peter is very specific here with his words, and the context going back into Chapter 2 makes it very clear that he is addressing married women with this command as a sequence of instructions for people in different stations in life. So, no, this is not a blanket command for all women to submit to all men all the time.
There is in fact an opposing extension for Peter's directions. As women enter the workforce in greater numbers, and as women achieve greater status and position in companies, there arises a conflict for Christian wives: they are under submission to two masters. Firstly, their Husbands, and secondly, their boss(es). This places them in a unique position of having two, possibly competing, Biblically-ordained heads. While I don't think Peter's command prohibits wives from working, it does suggest that working wives should consider this matter, and be ready to deal with conflicting heads.
Returning to the false generalization, there is one other matter to consider and be cognizant of. Presently we are seeing signs that those advocating the ordination of women into Biblical offices will use this tactic: saying the Apostles commanded women to submit to men. Then saying its cultural and no longer relevant. Thus all such commands are void. By setting up a false premise, they then pivot to an equally false conclusion. The command is not cultural, it is built into creation, and even fallen creation.
I will leave two issues open due to time. Issue One is the wives with relation to church authorities. Issue Two: the military draft of women who may be wives. Consider these as homework, or consult your elders.
FINAL THOUGHTS AND TAKE AWAYS
Even in a good day, physical beauty is fleeting (2 Corinthians 4:16)
Rebuild your thinking about beauty. Physical beauty is not bad, but its not true beauty. Focus on the heart to seek after true Biblical beauty.
Recognize that submissiveness is not degrading, but is a unique tool God uses for His glory and humanity's good.
Peter's command should not be extended beyond the bounds of wives and husbands
Wives submitting to their husbands is part of a larger hierarchy of submissions that all people
are under, with particular differences based on their various stations in
life (stations that are not static nor immutable).
Submission is one of the key's God uses for all of us to give Him glory as a
testimony to a fallen world. Not just wives to husbands, not just employees to
employers, not just citizens to their government. When we submit in line with
God's Scriptural commands, we are submitting to God. (Romans 12:10, Colossians 3:12-13)
1 Peter 2:16-17 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.
64. What is required in the fifth commandment? The fifth commandment requireth the preserving the honor, and performing the duties, belonging to every one in their several places and relations, as superiors, inferiors, or equals.(1)
We'll end with the Carmen Christi: Philippians 2:5-11
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death —
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
NOTES
The Westminster Confession of Faith, The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle PA, 2018