Living as part of God’s kingdom community should result in husbands representing Jesus well in marriage...

At the church where I serve, we are in the middle of a sermon series entitled living as part of God’s kingdom community. Last week, we discovered that living as part of God’s kingdom community should result in wives representing Jesus well in marriage. We talked about the reality that as part of God’s kingdom community, wives represent Jesus well in marriage when they respect their husbands in a way that results in a win for God's kingdom community. As part of God’s kingdom community, wives represent Jesus well in marriage when they live in a way that brings honor to Jesus and their husbands. And as part of God’s kingdom community, Wives represent Jesus well in marriage when they live in a way that follows the positive examples of the past.

This week, I would like for us to spend our time together picking up where we left off last week. And as we jump into the next section of this letter, we will see Peter continue to address how followers of Jesus represent Jesus well in marriage by turning his attention to the role that husbands have in marriage. And it is in this next section of this letter that we will discover a timeless truth about how we are to live as part of God’s kingdom community in the midst of a rapidly changing culture as followers of Jesus. So let’s discover that timeless truth together, beginning in 1 Peter 3:7:

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman;

Now to fully understand what Peter is communicating to husbands in this verse, we first need to understand a few things. The first thing that we need to understand is what Peter means when he uses the phrase “in the same way”. With this phrase, Peter is continuing to connect what he had said in the previous sections of this letter to what he is about to say in this section of this letter.

As we discovered a few weeks ago, Peter began this stream of thought in 1 Peter 2:18, by commanding servants to be submissive to their masters with all respect. As we have talked about throughout this series, to submit is to willingly place oneself under others by placing others first based on one’s role in the relationship So Peter commanded slaves to willingly place themselves under their masters by placing their master first.

Peter then unpacked his command by explaining that slaves were to willingly place themselves under their masters by placing their master first in a way that results in obedience to their masters not only to those masters who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable. In other words, Peter commanded slaves, regardless of how their master treated them, to willingly place themselves under their masters by placing their master first in a way that resulted in obedience to their masters.

Then, as we discovered last week in 1 Peter 3:1, Peter used the phrase “in the same way” to command wives to be submissive to your husbands, in the same way that slaves were to be submissive to their masters. In other words just as Peter commanded slaves to willingly place themselves under their masters by placing their master first, Peter commanded wives to willingly place themselves under their husbands by placing their husbands first.

And for Peter, wives are to willingly place themselves under their husbands by placing their husband first even if the husband was disobedient to the word. With this phrase, Peter is referring to husbands who were disobedient to the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel. So even if their husband was not a follower of Jesus, Peter commanded wives to willingly place themselves under their husband’s leadership by placing their husband first.

To understand why Peter would make such a command we first need to understand the context and the culture in which Peter was making this command. We talked about the reality that, in the Roman Empire during the first century, many slaves, especially house slaves, did not have separate living quarters. Instead house slaves typically lived in rooms within their masters homes. So, in the Roman culture of the first century, the expectation was that both a slave and wife were to live under the authority of the male authority figure in the home, who would be their master and their husband, respectively. The only difference between a slave and a wife was that a slave was viewed as property. The only difference between a slave and a wife was that the wife was viewed as being capable of making moral decisions.

In addition, in the Roman culture of the first century, the expectation was that a slave would worship his master’s God and that a wife would worship her husband’s God. To not worship their master’s or their husband’s god would be a sign of disrespect to his authority in the culture of the day. As we discovered a few weeks ago, in this section of the book of 1 Peter, Peter is addressing how followers of Jesus, as a result of their new identity as part of God’s Kingdom community, were to operate within the culture’s most basic social unit, the home.

Peter is addressing how a woman who was a follower of Jesus was to conduct herself in the situation where she was married to a man who was not a follower of Jesus. Peter’s concern was that the behavior of a wife who was a follower of Jesus would be an apologetic for the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel to the husband who was not a follower of Jesus. And just like we talked about a few weeks ago, part of that apologetic for the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel would be living their day to day lives in that social order of the home in a way that affirmed part of that social order that lined up with the message and teachings of Jesus while rejecting those parts of the social order that were not compatible with the message and teachings of Jesus.

So, in 1 Peter 3:7, Peter continues to address how the readers of his letter were to submit and live in relationship with one another as a part of the institution called family by commanding that, in the same way that slaves submit to their masters; in the same way that wives submit to their husbands, husbands are to live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman. Peter's point here is that the way that a husband willingly places themselves under their wives so as to place their wives first is by living with their wives in an understanding way. Now when Peter uses the phrase, live with your wives in an understanding way, this phrase conveys the sense of gaining an intellectual grasp of something.

Peter then unpacks what husbands are to gain an intellectual grasp of when it comes to their wives, with the phrase as with someone weaker, since she is a woman. Now it is important to understand that when Peter talks about women being weaker, he is not saying that women are less valuable than men.  Peter is not saying that women are of less worth than men. What Peter is saying with this phrase is that women are different than men. What Peter is saying with this phrase is that men and women have been created and wired differently to fulfill different roles and responsibilities. And intuitively we know this to be true, don’t we?

For example, while men and women have been designed by God with equal value and worth before God, they demonstrate strength in very different ways. As a general rule, men are physically stronger than women. As a general rule, men tend to bench press more than women. However, while men can bench more than women, women demonstrate and display strength in areas that make men shrivel and shrink. And men, if you don’t think that is the case, then you have probably never been in a room when a woman gives birth.

Another example involves how men and women relate to one another. Mark Driscoll once illustrated the difference between men and women by explaining that men are like a thermos, while women are like a goblet. Men are like a thermos: a thermos you can place in the back of a pickup truck and let it get tossed around; a thermos you can drop from a second story building; a thermos is designed in a way that it responds to circumstances in certain way. However, if you were to take a goblet and place it the back of a pickup truck; if you were to drop a goblet from a second story building, the goblet would respond to those circumstances much differently, wouldn’t it? It is not that the goblet is less valuable than the thermos; as a matter of fact the opposite is the case. Instead, the goblet is different than the thermos; it has a different role and responsibility to fulfill.

You see, when we read the letters that make up the Bible, what we discover is that while men and women are equal in value and worth in God’s creation, men and women have different roles and responsibilities to fulfill. Men have been divinely designed to fulfill the responsibility of exercising a role of leadership and authority as first among equals by lovingly leading, providing, and protecting women in ways that are appropriate to their relationship. Women are to fulfill their role in relationships by lovingly coming under and following godly male leadership in a way that allows for growth in their relationship with Christ and to exercise the gifts that God has given them.

And in this verse we see Peter reveal for us the reality that the way that a husband willingly places himself in a position where they placing their wives first is to live out their day to day lives in relationship with their wives in a way that results in them growing in awareness of where their wives are when it comes to their relationship with God and in how God has wired their wives. Peter’s concern was that the behavior of a husband who was a follower of Jesus would be an apologetic for the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel.

And just like we talked about a few weeks ago, part of that apologetic for the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel would be living their day to day lives in that social order of the home in a way that affirmed part of that social order that lined up with the message and teachings of Jesus while rejecting those parts of the social order that were not compatible with the message and teachings of Jesus. Remember, in the culture of the day, the only difference between a slave and a wife was that a slave was viewed as property. The only difference between a slave and a wife was that the wife was viewed as being capable of making moral decisions.

You see, unlike the caricature that our culture paints of Christianity as being a male chauvinistic religious system, Peter here, in his command to husbands, reveals the reality that Christianity is based on the assumption that both husbands and wives have a moral responsibility for their behavior that exceeded the social expectations of the day. Peter and the writers of the letters that make up the New Testament actually subverted cultural expectations of the day by elevating the responsibility that a husband had when it came to how he treated his wife in a way that elevated that wife to a position of unparalleled dignity in the culture of the day.

So Peter here is calling men who were followers of Jesus was to strive to develop a deepening awareness and understanding of their wives in a way that promoted the spiritual good, growth, and flourishing of their wives. Peter is concerned with the key question “Are followers of Jesus representing Jesus well? What is the reputation of followers of Jesus in the eyes of unbelievers?” And it is here, in this shift that Peter makes in this verse, that we discover a timeless truth about how we are to live in a rapidly changing culture as followers of Jesus in that living as part of God’s kingdom community should result in husbands representing Jesus well in marriage.

 And in 1 Peter 3:7, we see Peter reveal for us two ways that living as part of God’s kingdom community should result in husbands representing Jesus well in marriage.  First, we see that husbands represent Jesus well in marriage when they live they live in a way that demonstrates an awareness of where their wives are at in their lives. Husbands demonstrate a respect for their wives by exercising an awareness of where their wives are at when it comes to having a relationship with God.

And husbands demonstrate a respect for their wives by exercising an awareness of how their wives have been wired by God. Husbands are to exercise an awareness that their wives have been wired differently physically and are to treat them accordingly in a way that results in the spiritual good, growth, and flourishing. And husbands are to exercise an awareness that their wives have been wired differently emotionally and are to treat them accordingly in a way that results in the spiritual good, growth, and flourishing.

Friday, we will see Peter reveal a second way that husbands represent Jesus well in marriage…